Miscellaneous

.: Conor Friedersdorf posted the kind of list I wish I could assemble. It's a collection of some of the best magazine writing of the year. I printed off the articles that were of interest to me and brought them to Indiana for the great Geriatric Christmas. It seems that Conor and I have very similar tastes in reading. (You'll note that his list includes Hanna Rosin's Atlantic piece that I wrote about earlier.) Among my favorites from his list:

• The End by Michael Lewis on, well, the end of Wall Street
• Sebastian Junger's piece on Afghanistan
• Two Weird for The Wire about a troublesome criminal defense
• Hot for Creature about Bigfoot. Yes. That Bigfoot.
  

I got The Dark Side (also on his list) for Christmas (nothing says Happy ChrisKwanziKuh quite like a recap of the War on American Ideals!) and have no doubt it deserves a place on this list.

.: I caught the end of On the Media while driving home today. I always want to like this show more than I actually do. I think the concept of it is great, but I guess I sometimes find the execution to be a bit lacking. The long story at the end of today's program was a good example. Brooke Gladstone explores the upcoming release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM which only gets updated every decade or so. The story is really quite interesting and good. Except for two minor quibbles: the first is I have no idea what this has to do with the media. I guess there's some passing conversation about how the press covers psychiatric illnesses and studies, but that's certainly not a major theme of the piece. More troublesome is that Gladstone wraps up a pretty interesting, well balanced, newsy piece with her own editorializing. The last minute of the report is Brooke Gladstone's take on how she thinks we should view the DSM and this latest update. Not cool! Either be a reporter or give an editorial. You can't do both in the same piece . . . especially not on a program that's supposed to be about holding the media accountable.

.: And while we're in public radio mode, it was recently announced that Weekend America is going away. Good riddance. Like Day to Day, Weekend America essentially tried to be yet another All Things Considered/Morning Edition news magazine except "lighter!" "for the weekend!" Bah. Humbug. M/NPR already has two great newsmagazines and frankly that's plenty. Is it too much to ask that they find something else to fill up the hours between them, especially on the weekend?

.: And while we're in bah, humbug mode, my Christmas was fine. I was going to post my three part treatise on why I'm not a merry man for most of December but I didn't get off my lazy butt to make it happen. Besides, the truth was I really wasn't all that miserable. I went to Indiana. I got a good book and a great disc (among other gifts). More importantly I saw my family. So I'll just save my complaints for Christmases future.