I spent most of my journalism career at The Times-Picayune and have many friends there, so the news that its owners are slashing the staff, dismissing top editors, and cutting back publication days is very difficult to process. My heart goes out to my valiant former colleagues, and to the city itself, which will suffer from having reduced news coverage and seeing one of its signature institutions diminished. During my time at the paper I was involved in many of its ambitious and award-winning journalism efforts. Clearly I was lucky to be there during that era, and that era is now definitively over. (Ironically or not, the TP just published a great series on the Louisiana prison system. But where will the next one come ... Continue reading →

This evening, the New Yorker Fiction Department (@NYerFiction) will start tweeting Jennifer Egan’s new story “Black Box,” which will appear in its entirety in the Science Fiction Issue, out on Monday. We asked Egan what inspired her to structure her story in paragraphs of a hundred and forty characters or fewer. Several of my long-standing fictional interests converged in the writing of “Black Box.” One involves fiction that takes the form of lists; stories that appear to be told inadvertently, using a narrator’s notes to him or herself. My working title for this story was “Lessons Learned,” and my hope was to tell a story whose shape would emerge from the lessons the narrator derived from each step in the action, rather than from descriptions ... Continue reading →

Burning Question Do women have better gaydar than men? A new study suggests that the female eye can correctly guess a stranger's sexual orientation more often than men can posted on May 18, 2012, at 7:54 AM Gay pride flags: In the University of Washington study, women were able to correctly guess a stranger's sexual orientation 65 percent of the time. Men were able to do so 57 percent of the time. Photo: Orlando Marques/First Light/CORBIS SEE ALL 17 PHOTOS It turns out that college students can spontaneously gauge a complete stranger's sexual orientation with startling accuracy, according to a new study from the University of Washington. What's more: It appears that women possess much stronger "gaydar" than their male peers. Here, a brief guide ... Continue reading →

Charlottesville, Va. (PRWEB) May 17, 2012 As the University of Virginia prepares for Final Exercises in Charlottesville, the university will be saying goodbye to its innovative Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Yoke San L. Reynolds, who retires in May. Reynolds has had a distinguished career in finance, during which she pioneered new techniques that will save the university up to $1 billion in financing costs in the coming decades. Reynolds made U.Va. one of the first state universities in the country to use a planned portfolio approach to structuring debt during her 11-year tenure there. She worked closely with state government to gain more flexibility to invest non-endowment funds, created an internal bank that has become a model of efficiency for public universities around ... Continue reading →

The Fashion Whip is a political style column in The Huffington Post by Lauren A. Rothman and Christina Wilkie. Rothman is the founder of Styleauteur. WASHINGTON -- When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed up in Bangladesh last week sans makeup or a freshly blown-out 'do, the predictable backlash from snarky news outlets said she looked "tired and withdrawn," to quote Fox News. But, then, the story turned. As the so-called faux pas went viral, all sorts of people lined up in support of the incredibly hard-working secretary of state's right not to look 100 percent made up all the time. Women spoke out to defend Clinton and other female political figures, who are expected to labor at demanding jobs and still look great in ... Continue reading →

Why do leaders risk so much over what, in the grand scheme of things, is a small dishonesty? Former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson By Katherine Reynolds Lewis FORTUNE -- In the wake of Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson's departure amid controversy over his padded resume, the question remains: why did he do it? Whether Thompson embellished his bio with a college major he didn't earn, or simply signed his name to a document that someone else falsified, the lie cost him a flourishing career. It also added him to an ignominious list of powerful leaders who stepped down in disgrace over resume deceptions, including former RadioShack (RSH) CEO Dave Edmondson and Notre Dame head football coach George O'Leary. Why do they do it? Why do they ... Continue reading →

I wrote recently that I’m trying to eat more mindfully rather than just eating toast all day because it’s easy and convenient. For the most part I’m doing pretty well. It’s easy enough to make an egg or dish out some yogurt at breakfast time, and I’ve become disciplined enough about dinner time that most days, it’s a healthy, balanced meal. But lunch has been a much bigger challenge. The middle of the day seems so busy, even when it does just consist of getting out the Playdoh, and putting it away, and getting it out, and putting it away. On the days that the kids are hanging out with Dad or with my friend who watches them a couple of days a week, I ... Continue reading →

by Andrew Beaujon Published May 15, 2012 9:48 am Mike Daisey | The Washington Post “This American Life” is considering fact-checking David Sedaris’ work for the program, Paul Farhi reports: In an interview, Glass said no one at his program was concerned about Sedaris before the [Mike] Daisey episode. “We just assumed the audience was sophisticated enough to tell that this guy is making jokes and that there was a different level of journalistic scrutiny that we and they should apply,” he said. But the Daisey debacle has brought about a reassessment. Glass said three responses are under discussion: fact-checking each of Sedaris’s stories to ensure their accuracy, labeling them to alert the audience that the stories contain “exaggerations” or doing nothing. At the moment, ... Continue reading →