From New York, have we reached the end of book publishing as we know it? Attack of the Megalisters: These days, the used-book business seems to be less about connoisseurship than about database management. "Why Real Estate Won't Go Bust", and other book-title bloopers. From The Independent, can intelligent literature survive in the digital age? Prospero's Island: Shakespeare's classic set two hours from Boston? Scott McLemee scours the books to find out. After more than a decade as Czech president, Vaclav Havel has returned to writing plays; has his artistic vision survived the compromises of power? Guru Papers: An article on the rise and fall of a Swedish little magazine in the 1970s. LOL, OIC, and WTF at ROFLThing: Meet the latest academic discipline and realm for cultural criticism: Internet culture studies. The guys behind social trendcasting site Edopter want to know how, exactly, something becomes popular, but they need you to do it; can they build the Wikipedia of trends? From Edge, Nassim Nicholas Taleb on The Fourth Quadrant: A map of the limits of statistics. From THES, a review of Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays by Jurgen Habermas; and Raymond Geuss foresees a future of strict controls or war over resources. From ResetDOC, a look at when soccer divides people. Cities are being swept up in a wave of inane pranks.
