From The Economist, a special report on water. Like Demand Media and AOL’s new Seed project, Yahoo has joined the race to mass-produce content for the web with its purchase of Associated Content for a rumored $90 million. Michael Yessis asks Andrew Potter, author of The Authenticity Hoax, if authentic travel experiences exist — and about the cost of our search for them. You've been framed: Consumers are suckers for “special” deals that are costlier than they first appear. A review of Meaning in Life and Why It Matters by Susan Wolf. Treasure Island: Richard Beck on how TV serials achieved the status of art. Michael Miller reviews Evening's Empire: The Story of My Father's Murder by Zachary Lazar. The power of a gentle nudge: Phone calls, even voice recordings, can get people to go to the gym. From THES, a review of The Myth of Popular Culture: From Dante to Dylan by Perry Meisel; a review of Gothic Histories: The Taste for Terror, 1764 to the Present by Clive Bloom; and a review of Boys will be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton, et al by Ernest Sackville Turner. Some experts say exposure to a variety of bacteria, viruses and parasitic worms early in life helps prime a child's immune system; that raises a question: Are we too clean? A large chunk of missing matter — theorised but never before measured — has been discovered as a vast smear of extremely hot intergalactic gas 400 million light-years away. The Joy of (Outdated) Facts: Older books of supposedly impartial information can be a useful reminder of just how slippery facts really are. North Korea, a nuclear-armed state, seems to be increasingly unstable — what can the big powers do about it? Time for North Korea’s friends and foes to start preparing for the worst.
