A new issue of Airman Magazine is out. From The American Scholar, Sven Birkerts on Reading in a Digital Age: Notes on why the novel and the Internet are opposites, and why the latter both undermines the former and makes it more necessary; and William Deresiewicz on Solitude and Leadership: If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts. Japan is not funny anymore: Japan hasn't really changed — something else, however, has. Is Japan giving up? Devin T. Stewart wants to know. From America, John Henry Newman, Harriet Beecher Stowe and “Juno”, among others, have much to teach about changing the minds of individuals and the collective mind of a culture. A radical shift in the practice of mathematics and a radical shift in stories about mathematics took place at exactly the same time. Natural disasters like the recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti are often followed by near-instant assessments of the economic impact — but the figures, closely monitored by insurers, can be unreliable (and more). The Ten Commandments were set in stone, but it may be time for a re-chisel; with all due humility, Christopher Hitchens takes on the job, pruning the ethically dubious, challenging the impossible, and rectifying some serious omissions. Building a nuclear weapon has never been easier: NATO's Michael Ruhle provides step-by-step instructions for going nuclear, from discretely collecting material to minimizing the fallout when caught. An empirical test of ideas proposed by Martin Heidegger shows the great German philosopher to be correct: Everyday tools really do become part of ourselves. Nobody wants to hear about how much they suck — that’s why rejection letters should be as simple as possible. Say "Fromage!": Morgan Meis on photography's surprising impact on the Surrealists.
