LATEST ADDITIONS

Learn the Northern Jersey dialect of Italian. Think <I>The Sopranos</I>. Racy language alert&mdash;or is that redundant after mentioning Tony's gang?

RadioShack, the second-rate phone store that used to sell electronics, just fired 400 employees by email. Classy, no? But here's my question: Considering that the last five times I tried to buy basic computer supplies at RadioShack (yes, I'm a slow learner, but it <I>is</I> just around the corner), the employees treated me as if I were asking for unobtainium, are the 400 people who've been let go capable of accessing an email account to find out they've been made redundant?

Don't laugh until you see the pictures.

You can make an omelet out of an egg, but you can't make an egg out of an omelet. Sean Carroll finds this almost strange, because "the fundamental laws of physics themselves are symmetric and don't seem to discriminate between the past and future."

The brouhaha over Bob Dylan's recent <I>Rolling Stone</I> interview surprised me. Dylan cryptic, caustic, and cranky? What a shock. Has he ever held a straightforward interview where he kept on topic? Louis Menand reviews <I>Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews</I>.

Sorry about that. Kelli and I flew off to Maine. We spent most of our time on Mt. Desert Island. "Desert," in this case, is pronounced "dessert" (with a French accent, if you like). It was good and quiet. We drove along the coast in our pathetic PT Cruiser (Touring Edition), from Portland to Bar Harbor, listening to the new <a href="http://www.tvontheradio.com/">TV on the Radio</a>. It starts off like a Sonic Youth song, but the drums change it all. And then the vocals change it more. Of the words I could make out: Hey hey, my baby / Won't you lay your hands on me / Mirror my malady / Transfer my tragedy. We decided that he really does sound like Peter Gabriel.

No, wait&mdash;what I meant to say was, nowadays everybody <I>thinks</I> they're speaker designers.