If you think that Sims and FarmVille are evil tools to acclimate people into capitalist tedium and corporate consumption and a life of low expectations, then you'll love KidZania—"a multinational chain of family entertainment centers, where kids try out professions that have been downsized, simplified, and made fun." And it is dark! It's a nation-state of "trying on adult jobs" while consuming McNuggets and Chevrolets. "Children do not create their own stories at KidZania. The story that some children are tasked with writing for the journalism activity at many franchises is a report on the how great the police are. Meanwhile, in the painting activity at KidZania Dubai, [...]

Harper's has just posted-in what reads to me as a big extending of the middle finger to the New York Times, in light of this morning's Times piece on Harper's- Renata Adler's fantastic "A Court of No Appeal," from 2000, which addresses her interactions with the Times in specific and also the idea of a media contretemps in general. It is a must-read if you have never had the pleasure.

Oh, this is a wonderful account of the meeting held by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which is a governing body in a similar way that any burlap bag of drowning cats competing for air and light is as well. Anna Wintour would like America to overhaul a rather immense group of laws so that we might become France; Andre Leon Talley is lotioning up; and pretty much everyone else is out of ideas. Pretty much this is the greatest thing ever written, and we are sorry that the fashion industry is donezo.