Hanksy is a street artist who puts Tom Hanks’ face on copies of Banksy’s art. His first show, which just closed at the Krause Gallery on the Lower East Side, and where the menu offered boxes of chocolates and Dr. Pepper, nearly sold out completely, according to the dealer. “I think what made it such a success is the genuine honesty in it,” gallery owner Ben Krause told me. “Hanksy really is a huge Tom Hanks fan and a huge Banksy fan.”

Images of Hanksy’s pieces, pasted and sprayed over walls in both New York and Chicago, gained momentum over corners of the internet, not just those [...]

Misha Angrist, otherwise known as member four of the Personal Genome Project, has—along with Stephen Pinker and some other science-world luminaries—given permission for his entire genome to be published online. As a trained geneticist, he's more equipped to predict the direction and effects of DNA research than the rest of us. His new book, Here is a Human Being, ponders the implications of this kind of bioforensics for our culture at large, and also for those of us, like me, who've already opened this Pandora's box by subscribing to 23andme or one of the other personal genomics outlets. Will our information be kept private? [...]

For almost a decade straight, Kerry Burke has been reporting on crime for the New York Daily News, primarily homicides—or "murder and mayhem," as he tends to call it. Burke was one of the reporters featured in Bravo's short-lived 2006 reality series "Tabloid Wars," which documented how writers and editors at the Daily News manage to put a great deal of the day's activities into a newspaper that's ready for sale the next morning. It got him a good bit of attention back then; now it's 2012, and he's still at it, contributing stories from all over the city, from waiting for Beyoncé to Occupy Wall Street [...]

Tonight, at PowerHouse Arena, it is the Brooklyn Launch Party for Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You, a nonfiction chronicle of what Beijing has so recently become. As China is now (well, as usual) so much in the news, we asked him some questions!

Choire Sicha: Tom Scocca, as you have written a book called Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, which is brand new and good and also a book I have read, you are the only expert on China.* (*That I personally know.) Is this a great week for China or what?

Tom Scocca: If you set aside the fact that all [...]