In May, 2005, The Believer launched Sedaratives, an advice column helmed by Amy Sedaris that soon featured a cast of guest advisers—writers, producers, actors, and comedians—who, every month, were given a selection of questions that ranged from the poignant to the, well, not: My mother says that nobody has good manners anymore. This coming from […]
Author Archives: Sally
Lucy Worsley and the History of the British Home
In the November 21, 2011, issue of the magazine, Lauren Collins wrote about Lucy Worsley, the chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, which runs the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, Kew Palace, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall. “In a land of ponderous dons who go by their initials, Dr. Lucy, a […]
Dear Sugar = Cheryl Strayed
On March 11, 2010, an anonymous writer introduced herself as the new voice of “Dear Sugar,” an advice column on the Web site the Rumpus. Sugar claimed she would offer a combination of “the by-the-book common sense of Dear Abby and the earnest spiritual cheesiness of Cary Tennis and the butt-pluggy irreverence of Dan Savage […]
Olive Oil’s Dark Side
In the August 13, 2007, issue of the magazine, Tom Mueller wrote about corruption in the olive-oil trade. By the late nineteen-nineties, olive oil—often cut with cheaper oils, such as hazelnut and sunflower seed—was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union. The E.U.’s anti-fraud office established an olive-oil task force, “yet fraud remains […]
Brooklyn’s Finest
If a seventy-fifth anniversary is honored with diamonds, how to mark the hundred and fiftieth? The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s answer: with a blog celebrating the ways in which the institution has shaped the art scene in Brooklyn and beyond since it was founded, in 1861. The blog, which has been in beta until this […]
Pintsize Presidential
At the Political Scene, The New Yorker’s new hub for campaign coverage, the magazine’s staff writers follow the day-to-day drama of the 2012 Presidential election. It’s educational, to be sure, but budding political junkies might want to start with a new app from Encyclopedia Britannica: “Britannica Kids: U.S. Presidents” nicely fills the knowledge void for […]
The Write Stuff
Digital devices are usually used for consuming information, not creating it. But as apps evolve, that dynamic is shifting, and Phraseology, which was released for the iPad in late December, is one such example. The app bills itself as “part text editor, part word processor,” which means that the documents you type also are supported […]
At Your Service
The British hit series “Downton Abbey,” as Nancy Franklin wrote in the April 18, 2011, issue, “is set in an enormous English country house, combines romance, suspense, and comedy, and has sumptuous production values and several juicy performances…. [It’s] a savory Sunday dinner of a series, an Anglophilic roast in a sea of Austenish manners-and-mores […]
Resolved
This year was a rough one. Morale went missing somewhere between the U.S. government’s near-default and Europe’s near-collapse, and, as 2011 comes to a close, the usual New Year’s resolutions seem a little frivolous. What’s needed is planning, action, and maybe even some austerity measures—which is why the Unstuck iPad app, offered for free, is […]
Dream On
Last year, Adam Gopnik wrote about Vincent van Gogh and the mythology surrounding his severed ear, including the claim that it was Gauguin, not van Gogh, who made the infamous cut. This October, a book titled “Van Gogh: The Life,” by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, challenged the idea that van Gogh took his […]