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Issue 108

September 2006

Is This Your Customer?

  • The Agonies of Lewis Black

    Our customer-service curmudgeon suffers for all of us--but not in silence.

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  • Hospitality. Sweet. Hospitality. Sweet.

    The recipe for a sublime risotto? It's all about being nice.

  • Nano Is Nice

    Bruce Stewart is building a nanotech research conglomerate.

  • Self-Serving

    There are so many ways to provide good service, and just as many to fail. These blogs show you how to get it right.

  • We're With the Band

    The new cultural tastemakers: you--and everyone else.

  • When the Music's Over

    After-show media puts the concert in your pocket.

  • Good Vibrations

    Researchers harvest the energy from our steps.

  • A Mushroom in Your Tank?

    Taking stock of the latest in alternative-fuel strategies.

  • Cue the Computers

    How Star Circle Pictures is remaking moviemaking.

  • Miracle Microbes

    Innovation: Synthetic malaria cure

    Available: 2009

    In the labs of Amyris Biotechnologies, scientists are transferring genes from microbe to microbe. This molecular manipulation is the basis of synthetic biology, which the company hopes will yield cheap, effective malaria drugs for the world's neediest patients.

  • We Got the Beat

    Our distinctive typing patterns could prove the key to digital security.

  • Plastic Planet

    For Tupperware, all the world's a storage container.

  • Cement Bloc

    Builders recycle the stuff of Communist-era Berlin.

  • Slam Excerpt

    "To have hope without action is nothing." --Hannah Davis, 10

    "Giving up hope is...giving up." --Audrey Berdahl-Baldwin, 13

    "We can control [fear]. We just choose not to, because we accept it as an inevitability, as part of ourselves." --Daniel Smerz, 10

    From the Kids Philosophy Slam, a national quest for the "most philosophical students in America." These students, debating whether hope or fear is more powerful, spoke at the PUSH Conference in Minneapolis, June 12.

  • The Price of Disgust

    How much less will we pay for a shirt someone else has tried on?

  • Datebook

    Critical calendar listings for September 2006.

  • L.A.'s Online Safety Net

    Healthy City brings mapping technology to social services.

  • Mani Sivasubramanian: Spamming for Good

    Our distinctive typing patterns could prove the key to digital security.

  • Halcyon Hospitals

    The latest in a series of tales inspired by past visions of a perfect future.

Fast Talk

  • Fast Talk: Advertising Architects

    Buzz-worthy campaigns turn ad-agency creatives into the cool kids of the moment. But behind every copywriter-cum--rock star is a courageous client. Meet the people who had the guts to greenlight this past year's boldest advertising.

From the Editor

  • Letter From the Editor

    When I get letters or emails from readers complaining about, say, a problem ordering a gift subscription, I get right on the case. I get in touch with the right person in circulation; I respond to the unhappy reader to say we're working on the complaint; and I follow up to make sure the issue is resolved. So what's the big deal?