Over The Edge

I could have told you this was coming. Gruner + Jahr, the publishing arm of the German media giant Bertelsman, repackaged the failing 127-year-old McCalls magazine around the actress and comedienne Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie — host of a popular daytime chat show — appeared to be pretty involved (or as involved as a daily talk show host can […]

I’m hesitant to even touch this subject because I know it’s far more complex than I want to deal with. Suffice to say that everyone agrees (or at least gives lip service to the idea) that breast milk is the preferred food for infants. The reality is somewhat different. There’s an interesting story in today’s NYTimes about […]

Now that all this dot-com bubble is behind us, the Bear Stearns brokerage is ordering its employees out of chinos and back into suits. To help, the ever-helpful Brooks Brothers store across the street is staying open late and giving Bear Stearns’s employees a 20 percent discount. A couple of observations: Business must be bad […]

The American Prospect carries an informed piece about the perceived anti-war and anti-Bush tilt of the New York Times under new editor Howell Raines. The Prospect — a left-of-center magazine — makes the interesting point that the conservative pundits who roast what they see as the Times’s agenda haven’t actually spent much time working in the […]

The Register reports that after an exhaustive search, Microsoft Research has found the first known use of an “emoticon,” those smiley things like this: : – ) Given the transient nature of so much online content, it’s actually a pretty impressive feat of archeology. It turns out that, unless prior art can be demonstrated, emoticon usage […]