Well, this week's New Yorker is on the newsstands, and it's something of a mixed blessing: On the negative side, there's not one word about climate change to be found, which means you'll need to re-up your Ambien prescription if you want to get a decent night's sleep this week. On the positive side, repackager-of-the-obvious Malcolm Gladwell takes a gander at Everything Bad Is Good For You Steven Johnson's new tome that takes the philosophy Don't Worry, Be Happy to a whole new level. Johnson's thesis, via Gladwell: What is making us smarter is precisely what we thought was making us dumber: popular culture. Which is, of course, a completely Gladwellian concept. Now we feeling like frigging geniuses for having skimmed almost all of Blink. —AB
Brain Candy [New Yorker]

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