There's this take, which strips away any subtext -- just two friends on a couch watching "Seinfeld":

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The criticism of Silicon Valley is long overdue and some of the critiques are both thoughtful and scathing. The New Yorker, for example, has explored how start-ups are undermining the purpose of education at Stanford University, addressed the Valley’s messianic delusions and political meddling, and considered Apple’s massive tax avoidance.

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Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that it will publish a book by Lehrer with the working title "The Book of Love." No publication date has been set.

Lehrer, 31, had written three previous books for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, but one of them, "Imagine," was withdrawn last year after he acknowledged inventing and distorting Bob Dylan quotes. Houghton later announced it would no longer sell "How We Decide," citing "significant" problems.

Lehrer, who also resigned from The New Yorker last year, had been a popular writer and speaker specializing in the life of the mind and the interplay between science and the arts. Before leaving The New Yorker, Lehrer had been reprimanded by the magazine for recycling material he wrote for other publications.

Simon & Schuster publisher and president Jonathan Karp said Thursday that Lehrer's new book would be a "meditation on and exploration of love through different prisms — psychological, scientific, historical, literary. "

"We acquired it because we believe Jonah Lehrer is an unusually talented writer with a distinctive approach to a subject with enormous appeal," Karp said. "In fact, it's arguably the subject with the greatest appeal in history."

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When New Yorker editor William Shawn (neatly portrayed by British actor Nicholas Woodeson) assigned Arendt to cover the Jerusalem trial of accused Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, he clearly knew he wasn’t going to get straightforward news reporting. A former prize pupil (and lover) of legendary philosopher and one-time Nazi Martin Heidegger, Arendt was already famous in academic circles for her books “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “The Human Condition,” both of which remain influential works of 20th-century political thought. She was also a Jew who had fled Germany after the rise of Hitler and briefly been interned in a French detention camp before escaping to the United States.

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It was the right moment then, for the New Yorker to launch Strongbox, an open-source drop box for leaked documents, co-created by late technologist and open-data activist Aaron Swartz with Wired editor Kevin Poulsen.

"With the risks now so high – not just from the U.S. government but also the Chinese government that is hacking newsrooms in the West – it's crucial that news outlets find a secure route for sources to come to them," said Poulsen on Thursday.

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"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have," she says in the spot. "We haven't had a very collective notion of, these are our children. We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the household's, we start making better investments."

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But Anna Wintour has landed on her feet.

The editor of Vogue has just been named the "artistic director of Condé Nast," the company that publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Glamour, among other publications. Wintour described her position as "almost like being a one-person consulting firm," running through ideas with editors at the publication and recruiting new talent.

Wintour has been extraordinarily effective in recent years at waving the flag for her publication, with a (now-ended) Fashion's Night Out event, appearances in multiple documentaries (most notably "The September Issue"), and a sort of good-humored series of public appearances after the release of "The Devil Wears Prada," a film about an icy, imperious fashion magazine editor. It's hard to imagine predecessors of hers at Vogue getting invited on David Letterman's talk show -- much less saying yes, then joking with him about how "you could buy lipstick" for $20 and her "ice queen ... dominatrix" reputation.

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Lehrer addressed the Knight Foundation's 2013 "Media Learning Seminar" in Miami (and was paid $20,000 for the speech); Poynter recorded the most interesting and provocative of his comments throughout.

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Over and over, when imagining a childhood source for an individual's problems, Hubbard spins tales of unfaithful wives and husbands who beat and verbally abuse them, sometimes kicking their pregnant bellies. Perhaps we can attribute some of this to a preoccupation with prenatal trauma; "Dianetics" insists that fetuses can understand damaging statements made to the women carrying them. Nevertheless, to me, the most striking thing about the book -- besides Hubbard's belief that it is "not uncommon" for women to make "twenty or thirty" attempts at a self-induced abortion with orange sticks and other implements -- is its author's assumption that such beatings are a commonplace aspect of most people's home lives.

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Erika Christensen, an actress on NBC's "Parenthood," appeared on her costar Joy Bryant's Web talk show "Across the Board" (where the guests stand-up paddleboard while talking), and is immediately hit with a question about the biggest misconceptions about Scientology.

"Probably number one, that we're some kind of closed group," said Christensen, "that it's the 'Hollywood religion' ... and, we worship rabbits. I don't actually know how many people think that!"

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The prize, worth approximately $80,000, goes to the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.  Mantel became the first woman to win the prize twice.

Watch a video of a May interview the author gave to the BBC:

Earlier this month the New Yorker published a profile of the author, "The Dead Are Real."

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Time and again, he and his men were sent through what he called “a minefield on a daily basis.” His comrades were being blown apart – at least one amputee a day, he said, “Because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives.”

Morale was low; the men struggled to remain alert. Sitton said he asked his officers to give them a break but was told to stop complaining.

“I am all for getting on the ground and fighting for my country when there is a desired endstate and we have clear guidance of what needs to be done,” he wrote. “But [being] told basically to just walk around for a certain amount of time is not sitting well with me.”

At home in Florida, Matt Sitton had attended a Christian school run by the Baptist church attended by Congressman Bill Young. He wrote Congressman Young and told him what was happening. “I’m concerned about the well-being of my soldiers,” he said. “… I just want to return my guys home to their families healthy.” He ended: “If anything, please pray for us over here. God bless.”

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We met over drinks before his lecture to discuss the challenges of writing about the history that we are in the midst of making, the burdens of memory and the appeal of forgetting, the dangers of narrative simplification, the limits of humanitarianism, and the messiness of politics.

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The week before last, someone posted on my timeline this Open Letter from Philip Roth explaining that my dad was not the inspiration for Coleman Silk, the "passing" professor, in the Human Stain. I considered responding publicly with my own open letter but have decided not to. I'm trying more and more to find that balance between serenity and engagement in my life, and picking a public fight with Phillip Roth didn't seem like it would further either goal in a meaningful way. But neither does it feel completely right to sit quietly on the sidelines. SO FBFs, in case you care, I did have a few thoughts I wanted to share:

1. There was a legitimate reason that many reviewers of the book and movie drew the comparison to my dad's life. Not only are there many similarities between Silk and my father's basic biographies, but many of these details Roth could have known (despite his protests otherwise) by glancing through my father's two memoirs, Intoxicated by My Illness and (especially) Kafka Was the Rage, or Henry Louis Gates’ very long and often-commented-upon piece about my father’s racial identity in The New Yorker, all of which were published in the years prior or during when Roth claims to have started work on the Human Stain. Roth could have also learned them from my dad himself, since their time together was more substantial than Roth describes, including a long walk in Central Park in the 1980s.

2. I think it's completely reasonable that Roth should be allowed to have the last word on who inspires his characters and even obfuscate about the sources if he wants to... BUT I don't think it's reasonable that Roth gets to dictate what conclusions other people draw about his characters, which is effectively what he was trying to do with his objection to Wikipedia's description of the book as "allegedly" having been inspired by my dad. Many many reviewers did make this allegation... Very often if I describe my book about my dad to a new acquaintance, he or she will comment, "Oh, it's just like that novel by Philip Roth..."

3. Roth was in fact “in the company” of a “single member of Broyard’s family”-- at least once. It was November 23rd, 1988, at James Atlas’s annual party on the eve of the Macy’s Day Parade. I was 22, it was my first and last literary party with my dad, and I was terrified. But I have a very clear memory of him pulling me across the room to meet Roth. “Bliss,” my father said, rather pompously, “this is one of our most important American novelists. “ He turned to regard me. “So lithe and pale,” he pronounced. “Like a ghost.” It was a brief encounter--one I'm not surprised that he might have forgotten--but I am sure you all can understand why I haven't.

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Now we can imagine a similar scene wherein the aircraft themselves are “unmanned” or piloted by remote control. They might be drones. “Unmanned aerial vehicles” represent an increasingly contested nexus for public and secret discussions about airspace, privacy, police jurisdiction, and remote military targets. And they’re bleeding into everyday life.

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I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”

It seems that Wikipedia's open-source policy lands on the reader's side of the age-old English classroom debate: How much control should an author have over intepretations of his own work?

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