The editors on cell phones, blogs, and email, Basharat Peer's memoir of Kashmir, Eli Evans on Milwaukee. Keith Gessen's "Torture and the Known Unknowns," a fable by Benjamin Kunkel, a report on flying cars. Plus fiction about nuclear proliferation
Ben Kunkel and co.'s venture to become the new Sontags and Didions looked promising, so I picked up issue five and gave it a try. There's an excellent, thought-provoking article by Joshua Glenn on the earnest foolishness of communes, which he says originates in our culture with Jason and the Argonauts. I didn't agree with any of his conclusions, but was happy for the brain food.
The editors' contributions, however, are quite terrible. Their transparent urge to make big, moment-defining statements (even in a 500 word essay) is evident in the parade of specious logic and leaps of rhetorical faith. Maybe if I was fifteen this stuff would be convincing. Now at least I know better.