Esquire articles from December 2007

Esquire archives from December 2007

In its seventy-four-year history, there's a good chance The Sound and the Fury has never contained this much fury.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In its seventy-four-year history, there's a good chance The Sound and the Fury has never contained this much fury. We praised a flourishing part of Iraq; you warned us of impending world war. We put fiction in the...

And this is the friendlier bunch.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... October included the Esquire 100, our compendium of people, things, places, and ideas we think you should be aware of. This year's list included artist Wayne White (right), a functioning part of Iraq, a powder that regrows fingers, a previously...

You'll really hate next month's marginal fashion.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... In the debut of Marginal Fiction, "So Far from Anything," a short story by Benjamin Percy, ran in the bottom margins of each page of the October issue, starting on the first and ending on the last. Do you really expect me to flip page by" page...

Don Wigal, where have you been?(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... Before I'd gotten my October issue, I saw my neighbor reading his at the elevator. He would look for a second or two at the bottom of a page, then turn to the next, over and over. I wondered how the page numbers could be that interesting, until...

Context-free highlights from letters we're not running.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)
December 1, 2007... "Pizza cheese, mozzarella, is the lowest in fat and salt. I eat light ice cream every night to cool off." "I invented photographing newswomen." "If you're not married, take off the Hawaiian shirt and allow love to find you." "Tell...

The Esquire Canon (abridged).(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... Recently I started making an effort to read books more worthwhile than the crime novels I liked ill college. I enjoy the book reviews and fiction in your magazine, but how about a list of books that every man should read? KEVIN ROUSOS...

You're welcome.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... As a social experiment, articles editor David Katz spent a few days wearing a high-fashion--and, as he discovered, not unmockable-signature suit by clothing designer Them Browne, complete with Browne's trademark ankle-exposing cuffs and a...

Fashion advice that doesn't smack ass.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... I'm a twenty-nine-year-old physical-education teacher, and while I love some of the clothes that you feature, most are not practical for my job or income. I stick to name-brand "fitness" gear, but what can I do to improve my look and be more...

Okay, but only for you. And only really small.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... There's a woman who is ambitious, beautiful, and elegant, and her name is Sarah Michelle Gellar. You should put her on your cover. She loves fashion. I think she knows how to dress. Also, she cares about the people who need help, and she's a...

Elsewhere in the bin.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... As my age leads me closer to the gates of heaven (or hell), I think I have a right (or wrong) to speak (or write) my piece (not of ass) with you. I counted your ad pages in October (a waste of time): 146. That's pure overkill. DENNIS...

This year's winner.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In case you missed it, on September 4, live on the Today show, Miami-based business-development manager Frank Kelly was named Esquire's Best Dressed Real Man in America. We were already proud of him, but more so when...

Recognizing those who recognize us.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... THE AMERICAN Society of Magazine Editors has compiled The Best American Magazine Writing 2007 and it includes two articles from Esquire. The first, by contributor C.J. Chivers, is the story of the 2004 terrorist hostage taking in Beslan,...

Big ideas.(This Way In: EDITOR'S LETTER)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] EVERY JUNE, we kick into high gear preparing our Best and Brightest issue. We invite a few new honorees, along with a few alumni, to what we immodestly call the Best and Brightest Summit. It consists of drinks and...

Dedications & acknowledgements.(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To Esquire alumna Anna Godbersen, whose first book, The Luxe (right) comes out November 20. To Mary Couch, who kept track of the more than a hundred gadgets tested by director Barry Sonnenfeld for his gift guide...

The $2,654 wardrobe: part 1 (of 1).(This Way In: THE SOUND AND THE FURY)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... OVER THE LAST NINE MONTHS, we've helped you build an entire wardrobe, everything from shoes to pocket squares, for $5,000. The process concludes this month with the suit (page 92). But for some of you who wrote in, either because you're too...

The vocabulary: terms and ideas you will encounter in the pages that follow. Great for conversation.(Man at His Best)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] RICHARDSIAN CONTRADICTION n: Inspired by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, the ability to do stupid things--such as cocaine, heroin, strychnine, the cowriting of "Indian Girl" and somehow live through it. (SEE...

My Blintz with Giamatti.(Film)(Paul Giamatti)(Interview)
December 1, 2007... Autumn in Brooklyn Heights, late morning,: Two men at a table on the patio of Teresa's Restaurant. The balding guy with black-framed specs and crooked teeth is Paul Giamatti--America's finest little actor. Raab, the other one, is a fat magazine...

The leisure meter: how to allocate your free time this month.(Man at His Best: 1 THE CULTURE)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WATCHING Redacted, the powerful new documentary-style film from Scarface director Brian De Palma that provides a fictionalized account of the real Life gang rape of an Iraqi teenager and the murder of her and her...

The 8 best songs you probably didn't hear this year ...(Music)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "HUSH HUSH" Omar Kent Dykes & Jimmie Vaughan (On the Jimmy Reed Highway) In Texas, they say, "Simplicity don't need to be greased," which goes a long way toward explaining why this all-star Austin...

... And the year's 5 best reads: endorsements from five great writers--including a few of our own.(Booksr)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... CHRIS JONES [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Far Afield, by S. L. Price (The Lyons Press, $25) When S. L. Price, one of the last good writers left at Sports Illustrated, was offered a job by the Chicago Tribune, he blackmailed the magazine into...

Books for non readers.(Man at His Best: 1 THE CULTURE)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... (1) Unseen (TeNeues, $65): An eclectic collection from photo legend Elliott Erwitt, spanning 50 years, one Black and White Ball, and three gloriously naked day-hikers. (2) Global Faces (Glitterati, $40): An enthralling survey of portraits from...

The attack on marriage: if you oppose legalizing polygamy, well, you are a communist.(Relationships)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Polygamy--a topic you can't avoid these days (e.g., Warren Jeffs, Big Love, Mitt Romney)--is easy to disparage. But frankly the antipolygamy arguments just don't seem convincing. Let's run through them: ...

The 79 hardest-boiled words ever written.(Man at His Best: 1 THE CULTURE)(Excerpt)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... "There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a...

Badges?!(Man at His Best: 1 THE CULTURE)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... These are among 60 Pentagon classified mission badges assembled by Trevor Paglen for his book I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me. He gained access to the patches through FOIA requests. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

The corrections: why I've resolved to start punching jerks again.(Conflict)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This whole thing started--or maybe it ended--with these guys engaging in some ritualistic, Hare Krishna clapping shit. They were sitting at a table across the bar from my buddy Phil and me. We were trying to enjoy a...

The endorsement: brooding.(Man at His Best: 1 THE CULTURE)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I'D GIVE YOU a list of my troubles, but then you'd e-mail me solutions, and I hate that. See, I think about my troubles. I sit in the corner of a coffee shop and think as hard as I can. Sometimes I'll do it at my...

A history of breasts: the complete centerfolds is a 30-pound reminder that they don't make porn like they used to.(Women)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Culturally speaking, I hate the past. Nostalgia is the oxytocin of memory--making you lazy and overly happy about trivia. Throwback uniforms. Getting up to change the channel. The reemergence of the Mustang. Like...

Funny * story from a beautiful woman.(Man at His Best: 1 THE CULTURE)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... As told by SELITA EBANKS I WAS HAVING dinner with my former fiance [rapper and actor Nick Cannon], and he was chewing really loudly. Just smack, smack, smack, going crazy. So I looked over at him with a straight face and said, "How's the...

Merry Christmas. Here's your meat.(THE SECOND ANNUAL ALL-MEAT GIFT GUIDE)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lobel's of New York USDA Prime Cowboy Steak A hefty two-pound abundantly marbled USDA-prime rib steak complete with its own bone handle. The fifth-generation butchers guarantee that their corn-fed midwestern beef is...

December dilemma no. 2: accidentally inform a child that Santa doesn't exist.(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] {1} After determining he's not Jewish, backpedal: "Did I say Santa isn't real? I meant the Santa at the store isn't the real Santa. The Santa guys you see there and on TV are really his helpers." {2} ...

The fatal bowl.(DRINK)
December 1, 2007... The problem with that Dangerous Book for Boys thing is that it stopped before getting into the really risky stuff that gentlemen used to know. Things like how to live lavishly totally on credit, how to manage simultaneous affairs with a mother...

Vaguely emasculating cooking technique of the month.(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)(Recipe)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YOU WON'T FIND many kitchen tricks simpler or more useful than the Chinese practice called velveting. Originally a method of keeping thin-sliced meats tender despite the searing heat of a wok, it transfers well to...

+ Ask Dr. Oz: will an unhealthy past come back to haunt me?(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A little weed, too much time in the sun, a concussion playing high school football--youth is all fun and games until it catches up with you a few years down the line. What to fear, and what to be glad you got away...

The fusion chrome collection.(THIS MONTH IN SHAVING)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A NEW COLLABORATION between Gillette and the Art of Shaving, this polished-chrome razor set has done the unthinkable: It actually makes us care what our razor looks like. Before, so long as it didn't leave our faces...

A man's watch for a woman.(THE GIFT)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MANY BIRTHDAYS ago, a boyfriend handed me a jewelry box with a delicate silver bracelet inside. But I don't wear silver--especially if it's delicate. It wasn't his fault, really. He had no experience. The closest...

Smells like the truth.(FRAGRANCES FOR MEN)(Product/service evaluation)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... MOST COLOGNES COME WITH descriptions that sound better suited to a vegan menu--"top notes of creamy tonka bean," "enriched with sweet wood sap"--than a fragrance, all of which makes finding the right scent harder than finding something to eat...

December dilemma no. 3: suspect that you've got frostbite.(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... {1} If you feel some tingling or your skin feels hard and then soft underneath--kind of like a marshmallow with a crust--you may have frostbite. Some people talk about thawing out in front of an open fire or running it under hot water or...

Answer Fella: mushrooms, fugu & chef sweat.(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ESQUIRE'S ANSWER FELLA believes that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people who don't ask questions, fearing they'll look stupid. So ask Answer Fella anything. If he doesn't know the answer, he'll find out...

Sex: I'm a woman, and I think I might taste bad. Could it be something I'm eating?(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)
December 1, 2007... What do you mean you "think"? I suppose some girls are not as limber as others. Whatever, let's assume you do taste bad (and it is bad, not badly, but I'll leave that grammatical stew to simmer, because if I have to go into a parts-of-speech...

December dilemma no. 4: need to build a fire.(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] {1} Roll single sheets of newspaper into loose balls and cluster them together. Lay small pieces of dried wood in an X pattern on top of the paper, Add a layer of dryer lint over the tiny pieces. Then add larger...

Gifts we won't be giving this holiday season.(Man at His Best 2: THE INSTRUCTIONS)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Designer Ileana Makri's new necklace for men: a white-gold chain with a miniature--and fully iced--hand-grenade charm. Toilet Tattoos, a decorative electrostatic vinyl-film coating for your toilet. The Backpack Shield, a lightweight bulletproof...

The selfish man's guide to the holidays.(Man at His Best 3: STYLE)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] GIVING IS GOOD AND GIVING IS EASY, and any man with a high enough credit limit and a little imagination can put Oprah to shame. Receiving gifts, however, can be tricky, and unless you know what you want up front and...

Style gift category A: stuff for work.(THE SELFISH MAN'S GIFT GUIDE)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A BRAND-NEW SUIT Everyone should buy one new suit a year, and if someone's willing to buy that suit for you, all the better. The simpler the design, the more often you can wear it, and when it's as inexpensive as...

The white dress shirt every day.(The Suggestion)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... NO ONE NOTICES what you're wearing. That's not to say that people don't form an impression of you based on the clothes you put on. It's just that people are light on the specifics of your style choices. With at least one exception. ...

December dilemma no. 4: spilled red wine on your pants at dinner.(Man at His Best 3: STYLE)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... By the editors of Esquire [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] {1} Using a dry white napkin, soak up as much liquid as possible from the surface before it's absorbed. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] {2} Dab on cold water so the stain stays...

Style gift category B: stuff for the weekend.(THE SELFISH MAN'S GIFT GUIDE)(Buyers guide)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MOLESKIN TROUSERS If it's possible for trousers to go unsung, then moleskin pants could lay claim to being the least sung-about pants in history. The durable cotton cloth, so named because of its ineffable softness,...

Style gift category C: stuff for traveling.([*] THE SELFISH MAN'S GIFT GUIDE)(Buyers guide)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BLACK FLEECE TRENCH COAT Say what you will about the short pants and capes that constitute the better part of Thorn Browne's new Black Fleece collection for Brooks Brothers, but the man knows his trench coats. With...

The $5,000 wardrobe: part 10 (of 10). Suit.([*] THE SELFISH MAN'S GIFT GUIDE)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... FINALLY. Nine months since setting out for the perfect $5,000 wardrobe, we've come to the one item, the final item, that gives shape and meaning to all the rest: a two-piece suit, preferably an all-purpose option in dark blue or gray. Keep in...

Me, on shuffle: true or false: the music a person listens to reveals many truths about that person.(Chuck Klosterman's: AMERICA)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I SPEND A LOT OF MY LIFE attempting to avoid situations where people make small talk. As a rule, I generally don't enjoy conversing with anyone I haven't already spoken with on at least 120 previous occasions, which...

Method writing.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... LAST NIGHT, I READ A BOOK titled Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga, which I highly recommend to Van Halen completists. Oddly, the "hook" for this book seems to be its introduction: For reasons that are never completely c ear, the author,...

10 things you don't know about women.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 1. We think that a man who even considers waxing his chest should go skin a rabbit or make a fire from two sticks. 2. The same goes for waxing your eyebrows. Unless you are a drag queen or a transsexual, in which...

The tin can, part I: I do not have a death wish: but I am building a boat in my backyard. With tools from Home Depot and used sails. I'm going to sail around the world. Alone. My naval architect quit because he thinks I'll die. I'm not going to die. I'm going to come back and tell the story.(QUEST)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "I REMEMBER HOW I SUFFERED when I was reading your book," my naval architect Paolo Bisol wrote to me this summer. He was French but had somehow run across my memoir, A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career...

From: Santa's little helper.(THE DIGITAL MAN: GIFT GUIDE)(Product/service evaluation)
December 1, 2007... CHRISTMAS is practically here, and I've been too busy directing to sit on the toilet and read Christmas catalogs. This makes it hard on Sweetie (the wife). Normally I have plenty of time to test the gadgets that she'd surely want to buy me....

Promise breaker.(Esquire FICTION)(Fictional work)
December 1, 2007... My father and I stand in the kitchen, staring at the toaster and waiting for the waffles. Since my son became ill, we have been taking turns with the meals, so he handles breakfast and I do lunch and then we both take care of dinner. We have a...

The sexiest woman alive 2008.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... WHO IS SHE? Honestly, we have no idea. Not yet. That's why we need your help. Should the 2008 SWA be one of the well-known beauties we've totally overlooked? Sway us at sexiest@esquire.com. (a) JESSICA ALBA [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

Actors of the year: the six best performances of 2007.
December 1, 2007... denzel washington "AMERICAN GANGSTER" It's hard to recall now that Denzel Washington began his movie career firmly in the Poitier mold, playing saintly, noble victims in message films like Cry Freedom and Glory. But it's when he taps...

Best and brightest 2007.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... * In these pages, you will find thirty-six revolutionaries. They are curing cancer with math and curing our schools with advertising. Creating synthetic life from our DNA and remaking music one color at a time. They probe the depths of our...

The exterminators: tuberculosis is a superbug that won't die. That's why Andrew Speaker, the Atlanta lawyer who carried it onto a transatlantic flight last May, was so scary. And it's why Bill Jacobs and other pioneering microbiologists are working feverishly on new tools to eradicate it.(science)
December 1, 2007... hIS EYES ARE THESE ruddy slits. All he can see is a tiny circle of light directly in front of his face, and the rest is haze. If you walk with Bill Jacobs, you have to stick by his side, track his steps exactly, or else you'll force one of our...

Breaking down the firewall.(Ideas That Will Change the World)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... * INTERNET CENSORSHIP IS the book burning of the modern age, denying as much as a third of the world's population access to news and information. But a new brand of activists--or "hacktivists"--are using their computer expertise to help...

Miru Kim takes pictures: it started in a cavernous basement in Berlin. Miru Kim loves abandoned, forbidding, frightening places. She was shooting, but something was missing. "I wanted to put something else in there. A living thing.".(culture)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SHE'S SMALL AND NAKED and human, and all around her is hard, cold, sharp, and dirty, and everything is in ruins. We're in some dark tunnel somewhere under New York City when we suddenly hear it coming from around...

Shauna Robertson: behind every successful male-dominated slacker-with-a-soul comedy, there is a woman. This woman.(culture)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SHAUNA ROBERTSON has a problem with the joint sizzle. Seated in an editing suite on the Sony lot in Culver City, California, Robertson is being shown a fifteen-minute sequence from Pineapple Express, a raunchy...

Electronic skin.(Ideas That Will Change the World)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AS FAST AND SMALL as our electronics and computers are today, there is one major drawback. They are hard and rigid and fragile. Completely the opposite of what Stephanie Lacour is making: bendable, stretchable...

The Isaac Newton of biology: Franziska Michor will object to that characterization, but history may not.(science)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CANCER IS PRETTY SMART. You'd think it wouldn't be--you'd think, really, it should be pretty dumb, given that it originates in a single cell that behaves like a single cell, that behaves primitively, in comparison...

The artificial-drunkenness pill.(science at work)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I always thought if I could take a pill to start over--a lousy day, an evening tinged by tragedy--I would dry swallow that without a moment's hesitation. But I draw the line when scientists start messing around with...

Composing a revolution: Ricardo Romaneiro is reinventing classical music, one color at a time.(culture)
December 1, 2007... It starts with a sound. Buzzing. A buzzing cricket. That is the sound. The beginning of the song. It gets an electronic note. And then another. And another. Until there is a literal cacophony of electronic crickets. These are given a color, a...

"Lighthouse," from Esquire afterhours.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] 1 "Every composition begins on a computer program called Sibelius, in which each note is written just as it would be on paper. One great thing about composing on a computer is that I can play back the notes as...

No one wants to live forever: but we would like to be young for as long as we live. Andy Dillin and his team at the Salk Institute are making that dream come true.(science)
December 1, 2007... ANDY DILLIN IS A YOUNG MAN. He is thirty-six years old, and he is just getting started. He works as a molecular biologist and geneticist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. Over the past year, he has published three papers that...

The pollution magnet.(Ideas That Will Change the World)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] EIGHTY-TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE die from cancer in Bangladesh every year, many due to arsenic poisoning. But building upon her discovery of a way to get rust nanoparticles to bind to arsenic, Vicki Colvin has invented a...

The rescuers: Fahrenheit 212 is a consultancy, a product lab, and an ad agency And if you're a huge corporation in creative trouble, this tiny firm can help.
December 1, 2007... FROM THE OUTSIDE, the epicenter of innovation doesn't look particularly innovative. Especially on a humid Tuesday morning when the skies over downtown Manhattan are far from blue and the Broadway traffic creeps by at an unenlightened,...

John Robb: a thinker on future conflicts whose vision can't be ignored.(society)
December 1, 2007... JOHN ROBB'S "GLOBAL GUERRILLAS" of the twenty-first century don't aspire to defeat our militaries nor topple our governments, but merely to bankrupt both, hollowing out the West's Institutions to the point where Osama bin Laden's vision of the...

It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your network president is? Ben Silverman, the brash, hard-partying new head of NBC Entertainment, says and . does me things a TV executive isn't supposed to say and do--and that may be just what it takes to resurrect his last-place network.(B(+)B 07)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE FIRE MARSHAL has seen enough. It's only 9:00 P.M., but he's instituted a strict one-in, one-out policy as the annual NBC pre-Emmy party at Spago in Beverly Hills devolves into a chaotic mess. Overbooked by at...

Wounded battalion: Tim Maxwell did six combat tours over the years before he lost some of his brain in Iraq. He couldn't command warriors anymore, so he created something new, a barracks, which became a regiment, of wounded marines like himself.(society)(Biography)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] RINGO AND WILDMAN are kickin' it with Jo Jo, Hazy, Sergeant D, and the rest of the Devil Dogs in the rec room at Maxwell Hall when who should come through the hatch but the old man himself, Lieutenant Colonel Tim...

The next plastic.(Ideas That Will Change the World)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] PLASTIC HAS CHANGED little since its heyday in the 1960s. It's still ubiquitous, oil based, and dirty as hell for the environment. Makes you wonder what we've been doing all these years. For one thing, not...

Chris Adrian: a young doctor who writes stories about the redemption of suffering.(culture)(Biography)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN THE TWO PLANES bound for California hit the towers, California was sleeping. The lights were off at the Magic Kingdom. At Universal Studios, Bruce the animatronic shark was humming its electronic dreams. And not...

Rock the Vote 2.0: note to D.C.: stop pandering to the geezers and stop ignoring young voters. Because next year we will vote in numbers you've never seen before.(society)(Table)
December 1, 2007... THE CONVENTIONAL wisdom in Washington is that young people don't vote. Eighteen-year-olds won the right to vote in 1971, and in 1972--their first presidential election--they voted in pretty significant numbers. But for about thirty years after...

Machines that fix themselves.(Ideas That Will Change the World)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... THERE WILL COME A TIME when computers and robots don't need humans to program them. For mechanical engineer Hod Lipson, that time Is now. And It all starts with his four-legged starfish robot. Beginning with no idea of what It looks like,...

The next big idea: can advertising save our schools? A radical question and the high-stakes competition to answer it.(society)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WE FIRST MET Harvard economist Roland Fryer two years ago, when we showcased his provocative work on race in our Best and Brightest issue ("Roland Fryer's Big Ideas," December 2005). Earlier this year, Fryer had...

How to make life: Drew Endy and a few other pioneers of synthetic biology are starting to intervene in evolution and put it to work for us.(science)
December 1, 2007... IT'S A GOLDEN FALL DAY on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the water from Boston, and there are sailboats on the river, and white birds and falling leaves are riding the same breeze--a beautiful, optimistic morning, so sunny...

Deborah Kenny: a sudden widow with three kids decided to re-create urban education in New York City. And hundreds of lives have changed.(society)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SPEND TIME with Deborah Kenny and you walk away knowing that one day her name will be engraved in bronze. As we climb the stairs to the fourth floor of PS 194 in Harlem, she points out where she and President Bush...

Healthier bacon.(science at work)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Bacon. Say it with me. Bacon. Are you breathing heavily? Bacon. Fumbling vaguely with your genitals? Bacon! l could roll around on a maple-smoked slab all night long. Mi amor. And so to you, my pork-loving...

Occam's Oilman: four ways to solve the energy crisis. Four reasons why Gal Luft is the most hated man in Riyadh, Detroit, and Des Moines.(society)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YOU HEAR IT ALL THE TIME: We've got to reduce our dependence on foreign oil; it's a matter of homeland security. Fine. Nobody's arguing. But the solutions that get offered--drilling in ANWR, mandating better...

Graffiti research lab: they build tools of subversion and mass dissent. Like a giant graffiti laser. And throwable lights. It's street art gone high tech. And the start of a whole new movement.(culture)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB'S goal is to get the tools of provocation and media subversion into as many hands as possible. To do this, founders James Powderly and Evan Roth have combined their backgrounds in robotics...

Scenes from the microbiome: in the old way of thinking, the body was a pristine homeland we had to defend from attack by bad germs. In this revolution in medicine, it is the germs that will save us.(science)
December 1, 2007... IN THE EARLY 1980s, a bird virus swept through India and killed hundreds of thousands of chickens, and a veterinarian named Sharad Ajinkya noticed that the virus also seemed to make the chickens fat, which was odd--if the virus was killing...

Burying our C[O.sub.2].(Ideas That Will Change the World)
December 1, 2007... KURT ZENZ HOUSE ISN'T the first scientist to suggest sequestering carbon dioxide in the ocean. But he Is the first to come up with a solution that might actually work. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The key is depth. Whereas other plans to...