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Omnivorous yet discriminating sensibility

From The New York Times Magazine, a special issue on college teaching. From Nerve, here's a look at the 50 buzziest blog posts of all time. From NYRB, Steven Weinberg is without God. With the publication of Vanity Fair, The Portraits: A Century of Iconic Images, Christopher Hitchens charts the magazine’s omnivorous yet discriminating sensibility; and across the board — from "The Sopranos" and "Weeds" to "Bones" and the "C.S.I." franchise — television is eating the movies’ lunch. From The American Scholar, the censor in the mirror: It’s not only what the Chinese Propaganda Department does to artists, but what it makes artists do to their own work; and in a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds; Bill Kovach asks twelve questions for the future of journalism; and in a speech given at Harvard 22 years ago and never before published, Leonard Bernstein offered a warning that remains timely. What if the impossible happens and Obama loses the election? Among Democrats, expect a rash of rage, depression, angst and finger-pointing at the media. The Politics of Schadenfreude: Why taking pleasure at the pain of political opponents can hurt everybody. From The Chronicle, online literacy is a lesser kind: Slow reading counterbalances Web skimming. More on Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe.