http://www.gelfmagazine.com/ en Copyright 2010 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:13:48 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss In Gelf Magazine's weekly podcast, The Hack and The Flack, journalist Michael Myser—the hack—and PR guru Merrill Freund—the flack—break down the news of the week. From their different perspectives, Michael and Merrill discuss sports, tech, politics, and media—much like Gelf. In this week's episode, Michael and Merrill whistle Tebow and his critics for penalties over his controversial Super Bowl ad, analyze Mark Cuban's Google-boycott strategy, seek reasons to watch the Winter Olympics, and visit Jersey Shore. Click here to listen to the podcast. You can email Michael, Merrill, and Gelf to let us know what you think. Front-page image of Tim Tebow courtesy of OPEN Sports's Flickr via Creative Commons.]]> http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_snowjobs.php http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_snowjobs.php The Hack and the Flack Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:13:48 -0500 What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, he compares satellite photos to mammograms and connects pit bulls to crime. But there is one field that the 46-year-old Gladwell has returned to time and again throughout his career, perhaps more than any other: sports. From the January-born hockey players in the first chapter of Outliers to Jana Novotná's devastating Wimbledon collapse in the article "The Art of Failure" to girls' basketball in a more recent New Yorker story, Gladwell uses sports—at all levels—to delve into deeper psychological and sociological issues.]]> http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_thinking_mans_games.php http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_thinking_mans_games.php Books Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:16:16 -0500 Chuck Klosterman's new collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, expertly tackles topics as varied as time travel, the Unabomber, and Friday Night Lights. Klosterman is like some mutant free safety who can be everywhere on the field at once. No topic escapes his monster intellect.]]> http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/chuck_klostermans_wide_world_of_sports.php http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/chuck_klostermans_wide_world_of_sports.php Books Sports Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:15:11 -0500 In Gelf Magazine's weekly podcast, The Hack and The Flack, journalist Michael Myser—the hack—and PR guru Merrill Freund—the flack—break down the news of the week. From their different perspectives, Michael and Merrill discuss sports, tech, politics, and media—much like Gelf. In this week's episode, Michael and Merrill break down the New York Times's pay-to-read-online strategy, find a lot to be desired with the iPad (or is it iSlate?), assess the state of the union, and debate the relevance of tennis as Federer extends his range. Click here to listen to the podcast. You can email Michael, Merrill, and Gelf to let us know what you think. Front-page image of Conan O'Brien courtesy of vtdainfo's Flickr via Creative Commons.]]> http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_longers.php http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_longers.php The Hack and the Flack Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:14:06 -0500 The critic blurb is a staple of arts advertising. Yet if you look behind some blurbs, you'll find quotes out of context, quote whores, and other questionable ad practices. Blurb Racket exposes the truth behind critics blurbs in movie ads from the New York Times. Movie titles link to metacritic.com, which compiles movie reviews in a far-more honest way than do movie ads. See the inaugural Blurb Racket column for background and useful links, and find out what critics think of the racket.]]> http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/a_book_with_a_preachy_ending.php http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/a_book_with_a_preachy_ending.php The Blurbs Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:02:32 -0500 Little Ukraine is interspersed with the East Village of Lou Reed, and the boundary between Morningside Heights and Harlem is porous enough to put Columbia students on edge. Nowhere is this fact clearer than the current turf war between Hasidim and hipsters in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood. While the two groups generally stay out of each other's way, their vast cultural and costume differences recently collided when the city decided to remove some bike lanes in the area. After biking advocates alleged the deletion was the result of shady politicking, some hipsters embarked on a late-night repainting of the lanes in a particularly busy intersection, and even a planned topless protest through the heart of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.]]> http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/between_a_hipster_and_a_hard_place.php http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/between_a_hipster_and_a_hard_place.php Politics Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:34:42 -0500 top 10 neighborhoods in the country, more than once, and its condos yield some of the highest prices in the borough, New York City's most populous. Probably unsurprisingly, Park Slope is also predominately white, educated, and affluent. Plenty of neighborhoods in America fit the same description—what up, Buffalo Grove!—but most of these places are in the suburbs, and have thus been exposed time after time after time. Perhaps it's just as well, however, as studies indicate Park Slope, not Wisteria Lane, is steadily coming out the winner in the battle for upper-middle-class white angst. One of the first people with publishing connections to identify this trend is New York Times columnist David Brooks. Back from four years abroad, in 2000 Brooks published Bobos In Paradise, an anthropology of Americans who find it "more prestigious to look like Franz Kafka than Paul Newman." As the type to demand a "vente almond frappuccino" be made with organic, north slope-facing cane sugar, what this individual lacks in irony (s)he makes up for in sanctimony. Thus the Bourgeois Bohemian, or Bobo. Though never as well-received as yuppie, Bobo survives as a cultural category, and the way demographics are headed, may see a second life yet.]]> http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/brooklyn_brownstone_or_bust.php http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/brooklyn_brownstone_or_bust.php Books Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:31:16 -0500