HOME / other magazines: Summaries of what's in Time, Newsweek, etc.

A.I. ReduxThe emote-bot, coming soon to a theater near you.

By Josh LevinUpdated Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2003, at 7:09 PM ET

The New Yorker, Dec. 1
John Seabrook details the collaboration of F/X wizard Stan Winston (The Terminator, Jurassic Park) and M.I.T. artificial intelligence researchers on Leonardo, a yak-fur-covered robot who displays emotions and can maintain eye contact. While some in the AI field will never buy into artificial emotion—AI pioneer Marvin Minsky calls the bot's emotional vocabulary "just a trick"—Winston hopes that the rest of us will warm to the potential star of a "wonderful, folksy, Disneyesque" tale. ... Peter Hessler's profile of 7-foot-6-inch Yao Ming, similar to one in last Sunday's NYT Magazine, contrasts the hulking seriousness of Chinese ballplayers, anointed from childhood based on size, with the spunky individualism of normal-sized American stars like Allen Iverson. While the Times piece claims individualism and smallness are now part of the Chinese game—the streets are full of pick-up games, and there's hype surrounding a 14-year-old point guard—Hessler presents an unrealistically static picture, with Yao the sole protagonist in a country otherwise indifferent to basketball.

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Weekly Standard, Dec. 1
Maggie Gallagher says proponents of gay marriage, buoyed by the recent ruling in Massachusetts, focus on the "legal goodies" of a union rather than salutary effects on the family and millennia-old traditions. Gallagher argues that maintaining the definition of the word "marriage" as a bond between a man and a woman is of paramount importance. "Capturing the word," she writes, "is the key to deconstructing the institution." (In The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town," Malcolm Gladwell says invocation of the word "institution" is de rigueur because "nobody imagines that the court's decision will actually jeopardize the personal bond between any particular man and any particular woman.") ... Paul Marshall writes that the media's conflation of the words "Arab" and "Muslim" has obscured the fact that, of the seven Lebanese victims in a Nov. 8 bombing in Riyadh presumed to be the work of al-Qaida, six were Christian.

Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 1
Lord almighty: Newsweek's cover bursts with breathless anticipation for "the thrilling finale" of the Lord of the Rings. Like a recent business-focused NYT Magazine story, the piece notes the high risks involved in getting the trilogy off the ground, but then rarely loses focus on the screen and a movie that takes special effects and "makes them matter." Along with pointed barbs for the foundering Matrix and Star Wars franchises, there are some loving, and nerdy, nitpicks from sharp-eyed fans. When asked, for example, why pus disappears from Frodo's face during one scene, director Peter Jackson confesses that it grossed him out: "[W]e eased back on the pus."

Face the nation: A two-faced George W. Bush looks out quizzically from Time's cover, his right eye sullied by a crappily airbrushed black eye, his left cheek kissed by a crimson lip print. The nation's "Great Polarizer" is loved and hated; there are few in between, the mag opines, because of the preponderance of partisan "media shouters" like Ann Coulter and Al Franken.

Angio-gram: U.S. News has heart, a whole lot of heart. The cover package on cardiovascular health numbers ways to decrease your risk of heart disease, innovative new treatments, and the news that last month Japanese engineers announced the implantation of wireless artificial hearts in a few lucky cattle.

Michael Jackson action: Newsweek plays up the sniping in the accuser's family: His father is trying to regain custody of the 13-year-old boy and accuses his ex-wife of coaching their children to lie in a lawsuit against an unspecified chain store. Time's story gets all semiotic on the subject of Jackson's Neverland Ranch, which could be more appropriately described as "Pinocchio's Pleasure Island, where careless lads were transformed into slaves and donkeys."

New Republic, Dec. 1 and 8
The much-fussed-over Dick Cheney gets the cover treatment from Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman. Since the piece's thesis—Cheney distorts the truth by fixating on the intel he wants to believe—has been covered elsewhere, the story is most notable for its profligate anonymous source sniping and cursing: The Office of the Vice President thinks the CIA are "fuckers," the CIA hates "that fucking John Hannah" and "[t]hat fucking Bill Luti," and Cheney himself "would just bitch and moan about the CIA and various parts of the world that they didn't know shit [about]." … Joshua Hammer's Baghdad dispatch offers a fascinating portrait of the terrorist rumor and innuendo floating around the city, and the private security firms that are cleaning up on the fear. The colorful details in the short piece—machine-gun-wielding Nepalese Gurkhas stand sentry over Kellogg, Brown & Root employees—deserve a lengthier presentation.

Economist, Nov. 22
The cover story on President Bush's meeting with Tony Blair dares to defend "those oh so guilty men." Protesters who demonize the leaders for disavowing the United Nations are nostalgic for an international order that never existed, and those who knock over effigies of Bush in imitation of the felling of Saddam belittle the suffering of the Iraqi people. … As the shopping season approaches worldwide, the department store is at a crossroads. Facing increased competition from discounters and the Internet, the Macy's and Bloomingdale's of the world are trying new strategies: creating their own brands, streamlining inventory, selling milk and juice. Selfridges, a London store, demonstrates the "showcase model." The store's promotional gambits include an in-store performance art piece called Body Craze "in which 600 naked people rode up and down its escalators." Sales are up 10.6 percent this year.

New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine, Nov. 23
Jennifer Egan's cover story cannily bypasses the typical pitfalls in articles about online dating: No anecdotes about neighbors meeting serendipitously online, no teeth-gnashing about security, and best of all, no sociologists discussing what we've learned about the habits of the young people. The details Egan does include—her main subject is a raffish Brooklyn hipster who has lots of sex; worried-over profiles evoke "the velvety, dogeared texture of beloved children's books"—evince a knowingness about the sleazy sincerity of it all. … Matt Bai's backstage hangout with the John Edwards debate team reveals a dour candidate, depressed about the pointlessness and vacuity of the sound bite circuit. That is, until he gets a really good sound bite. When Edwards pounces on Howard Dean for his Confederate flag remarks, the candidate seems so guilelessly happy that he comes off less hypocritical than, well, cute.