POP-MUSIC EDITION
GOOD WEEK/BAD WEEK
Adele
The songstress will reportedly provide the theme song for the next James Bond flick
Drake
The R&B singer was named the most pirated musician in America
ADVERTISING
Pop-aganda
After New York City barred restaurants from serving sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 oz., soda fans exploded. So Mountain Dew helped produce a series of snarky street posters that showcase a (fictional) 17-oz. can that riffs on Prohibition. Next up: Mountain Dew moonshine?
BELIEVE IT OR NOT
That horse-looking creature is Zeus the Great Dane, a 3-ft. 8-in. Michigan dog that's now officially the tallest canine in the world, according to the 2013 Guinness World Records. Other notable additions: most piercings on the face (280) and largest collection of shoes (15,665).
$7
Price a woman paid at a West Virginia yard sale for a box of trinkets; it contained a Renoir worth at least $75,000
TIMELINE
All About Emoticons
Can you believe it's been 30 years since Scott Fahlman, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon, suggested using:-) to denote online jokes? To mark the milestone, we're highlighting five of our favorite moments in emoticon history. Hope they make you go:-O.
1800s
1862
The New York Times prints;) in a Lincoln speech transcript. Typo? Who knows?
1900s
1971
Frank Loufrani creates a smiley-face icon; it's soon popular with youth
1982
Fahlman invents:-) to cue a virtual laugh
1997
Nicolas Loufrani (son of Frank) begins work on a dictionary of smileys
2000s
2008
iPhone keyboards allow emojis, including the all-important dancing cat
BACKLASH
The Vagina Dialogue
A book called Vagina: A New Biography was bound to raise eyebrows. But Naomi Wolf's latest release, which champions the ties between female genitalia and brains, has critics taking all kinds of shots
SNAPPY
'I read this book in utter bafflement.'
--Jenny Turner, the Guardian online
'One almost has to admire Wolf's ... imperviousness to mockery.'
--Michelle Goldberg, the Daily Beast
'Wolf literally does not understand the meaning of "literally."'
--Zoe Heller, the New York Review of Books
'My problem with Wolf is ... about how she thinks, or rather doesn't.'
--Suzanne Moore, the Guardian online
'It's lucky vaginas can't read, or mine would be cringing in embarrassment.'
--Katha Pollitt, the Nation
SCATHING
SUCH GREAT SIGHTS