Like most people, I was initially confused by EMI’s decision to release remastered versions of all 13 albums by the Liverpool pop group Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes. The entire proposition seems like a boondoggle. I mean, who is interested in old…

O n my 18th birthday, the marketing department of the Gillette Company sent me a surprise gift: a SensorExcel razor. Back then, in the mesozoic era of razor blade development (circa 1995), the SensorExcel was the latest in state-of-the-art swizziness, with its five "soft, flexible microfins" which…

30 Rock occupies an unusual place in the television landscape. It’s far from a hit—its ratings would have meant cancellation on just about any other network—but because of its leading lady, snarky sense of humor, and satirical digs at the network that airs both it and the show within its show, it’s…

GAME MAN Alex Rigopulos, a founder and the C.E.O. of Harmonix Music Systems. Big eyes(reflected from a photo in his Boston office) were watching. Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York Times GILES MARTIN WAS conjuring spirits, or perhaps summoning gods. The tools for this ritual included a pair of…

THE JUDGES Burger of the Month Club members decide where to place Zaitzeff, a financial district storefront, in their rankings. Benjamin Norman for The New York Times ONE by one they approached the counter at Zaitzeff, a storefront in New York’s financial district, and repeated the words like a…

On Those “Entitled” Twenty-Somethings Apparently people in their 20s are a bunch of entitled whiners . I also hear we’re afraid of hard work. I’m rather sick of hearing it. Of course we have a sense of entitlement–we had an understanding with the older generation. We followed through with our half…

Jon Hamm and January Jones, channeling their Mad Men characters. Photographed at the Lightbourne House, in Lyford Cay, Nassau, the Bahamas., styled by Michael Roberts. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz; Styled by Michael Roberts. The thumbnail history of Hollywood goes something like this: Once upon a…

Do you have a favorite drunkard? Some amazing man or woman, past or present, who stands colossus-like atop the Big Keg, the ground below littered with crushed empties and the blacked-out carcasses of lesser beings? A verging demigod, whose prowess with a bottle leaves you shaking your head in…

Liz Steyer after breakfast with three of her four children, ages 5 to 16. Laptops and cellphones are banned during meals. Jim Wilson/The New York Times Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast.…

THE simple hamburger isn’t so simple any more. Over the last decade or so, there has hardly been a serious chef in America who hasn’t taken a shot at reinventing or improving it. They have trained their skills on every element, from the precise grind of beef to the ketchup and pickles. Some have…

“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at…

Illustration by Bryan Christie Design This is a story not about Amtrak but about trains, and the problem with any story about trains in America is that you often find yourself thinking about Amtrak, and you often find yourself thinking about how nice it would be if you weren’t thinking about Amtrak.…

Conceptual Comedy Galifianakis at the Bamboozle music festival at the Meadowlands. Andreanna Seymore for The New York Times On a blustery Wednesday night this past December, the newly opened TriBeCa branch of New York’s 92nd Street Y was host to a stand-up comedy show, but you’d never have guessed…

After examining some 300,000 Twitter accounts, a Harvard Business School professor reported last week that 10 percent of the service's users account for more than 90 percent of tweets. The study dovetails with recent analysis by the media research firm Nielsen asserting that 60 percent of Twitter…

When your hobby is baiting 419 scammers (also known as Nigerian scammers or advance-fee fraudsters), a death threat isn't cause for concern—it's a trophy worth bragging about to your friends. Scam baiters are the vigilante enforcers who come together to waste hours, weeks, or months of 419 scammers'…

Mark Seliger WARNING : SPOILERS AHEAD!!! This essay ends with cheating. Specifically, my friend Greg and I, after playing a particular videogame for 11 hours straight, are stuck. We call a fellow gamer to learn what moves we need to make to get to the next level. With the new information in hand, we…

The four bare hooks on the Louvre wall that once held the Mona Lisa. From the Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works. Excerpted from The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection , by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, to be published this month by Little, Brown and Company; © 2009…

American excess: A Wall Street trader tells all American excess: A Wall Street trader tells all 1/3 EPA 2/3 Teri Pengilley 3/3 I’d been working for the bank for about five weeks when I woke up on the balcony of a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. It was midnight and I was drunk. One of my fellow…

YouTube's losses are unsustainable Everyone knows that print newspapers are our generation's horse-and-buggy; in the most wired cities, they've been pummeled by competition from the Web. But it might surprise you to learn that one of the largest and most-celebrated new -media ventures is burning…

Medics tend to the wounded in the wake of the massacre. Photograph: Rodolfo Gonzalez/Associated Press E xactly 10 years ago on Monday, the world woke up to learn that two more unhinged American teenage misfits had snapped after years of bullying at the hands of the "jocks", the sporting overlords of…

1/4 Getty 2/4 Getty 3/4 Getty 4/4 Getty The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has…