In Other News...

I can't write everything. Luckily, there are thousands of other publications doing all kinds of interesting writing without my help. Here's some stuff from the news wires that's caught my attention, plus a few mediating comments.

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I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You
The Sherpa's guidance: How News Feed, Twitter and other forms of incessant online contact have created a brave new world of "ambient intimacy."

The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can't Have
The Sherpa's guidance: Ford's Fiesta ECOnetic gets an astonishing 65mpg, but the carmaker can't afford to sell it in the U.S.

The Resentment Strategy
The Sherpa's guidance: Mitt, Rudy and the millionaire+ Republican Old Guard decry the elitist Democrats? Cf. the Nixon playbook.

Jon Stewart Annihilates Sarah Palin's Media Surrogates
The Sherpa's guidance: If you like flip-flopping, you will LOVE Karl Rove.

Chocolate Lovers Pained by Candy's Changes
The Sherpa's guidance: In recent years, rising cocoa prices have led candy companies like Hershey's to replace cocoa butter with cheaper vegetable oils.

Roman Empire Raised HIV Threat
The Sherpa's guidance: The spread of the Roman Empire through Europe could help explain why those living in its former colonies are more vulnerable to HIV.

On McCain's Bad Judgment
The Sherpa's guidance: Sarah Palin is a right-wing creationist in the mold of Rick Santorum. She is as anti-choice, anti-science and anti-stem-cell
research as anyone who thinks it's okay to teach creationism in the school system... What kind of President picks that kind of candidate?

William Faulkner Reviews Season One of Gosspi Girl
The Sherpa's guidance: So Serena van der Woodsen's recrudescence was to her previous life, an atavistic reacquaintance at long last after her exile, and so back, back, back
now to a dovehouse that had known so many purebred swallows and gilded wingspans since her disembarkment for reasons dark and unknown...

London from above, at night
The Sherpa's guidance: Is it weird that this makes me wish for a GTA game set in London?

The book on Sarah Palin
The Sherpa's guidance: Excerpts from Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down.

A navy without an ocean
The Sherpa's guidance: Bolivia's landlocked sailors pine for the high seas.

Palin Is Ready to Pitch In for Sox
The Sherpa's guidance: Sarah Barracuda Palin has agreed to take Josh Beckett's spot in the Red Sox starting rotation if the DL'd Boston ace can't take the mound this Friday night.

Amy Goodman Arrested at RNC
The Sherpa's guidance: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested by the Minneapolis Police Department, charged with conspiracy to riot.

Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer
The Sherpa's guidance: A riddle: when is a web browser not just a web browser?

Some Sad Hollywood Attempts at "Feminism"
The Sherpa's guidance: Just insert a feisty woman into the story. That ought to please the ladies.

Cubeecraft Papercraft Toys
The Sherpa's guidance: Get yourself a color printer and an X-Acto knife, and get to it!

Charitable Donations Appeal to the Heart, Not the Head
The Sherpa's guidance: Small and her colleagues, in a series of field experiments, delved deeper into the issue of sympathy and how it relates to charitable giving -- with surprising results.

Crazy Anti-Feminist Lawyer Suing Columbia Gives Craziest Interview Ever Granted
The Sherpa's guidance: He is suing Columbia, where he attended business school, for having a women's studies department. Et cetera.

Cows Point North
The Sherpa's guidance: Using satellite images on Google Earth, German scientists were able to see that all over the planet cows stand with their bodies pointing to magnetic north.

How the Nose Sniffs Danger
The Sherpa's guidance: The next time someone says, "I smell danger in the air," that might literally be true — and the odor might be coming from you.

42 Great Photos of Abandoned Properties
The Sherpa's guidance: There is something intriguing about deserted places and abandoned buildings -- a combination of mystery and history, danger and thrill.

Minority Report-Style Ads Coming To Life
The Sherpa's guidance: Really, I want police to swoop in and rescue me from bad purchases that I am about to make.

John McCain Was Never Tortured!
The Sherpa's guidance: Everything that happened to McCain during his captivity now falls under the category of perfectly legal interrogation, as practiced by the United States.

Get me girl-drink drunk!
The Sherpa's guidance: Statistically, the reader base for The Urban Sherpa is 67% female. This one is for them.

How to Meditate
The Sherpa's guidance: Simple tips to help silence that noisy noisy mind.

Does air conditioning make people vote Republican?
The Sherpa's guidance: Blame A/C for the decline of the labor movement and for the election of George W. Bush.

Oh, Well -- the Internet Hasn't Led Us Into a New Dark Age
The Sherpa's guidance: Socrates thought the advent of writing would wreak havoc on the powers of the mind.

The Best Books Ever Written About Love
The Sherpa's guidance: John Armstrong, author of The Conditions of Love, recommends his top ten books on love.

The Newer Deal: The path to a Democratic supermajority
The Sherpa's guidance: How Democrats can win big in 2010 and beyond -- by doing the opposite of what they're doing now. Think FDR-style liberalism, not McGovern.

A pre-convention memo to Hillary Clinton
The Sherpa's guidance: Ignore your sniping campaign team. Smart advisors would tell you to give Barack Obama your undivided support from now until Election Day.

and always...
Slate's "Bushisms"