I'm due for a break from the web for a week. Aides de blog Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner will keep the Dish al dente in my absence. I'm working on an essay for the magazine and catching up on some reading – things I cannot seem to get done when I'm blogging twelve hours a day. Atlantic Correspondents 
say, being laid off or losing a loved one." On her non-Atlantic blog, "No Map. No Guide. No Limits," she describes her transition into adventure writing thus: "Twenty years ago, I quit a safe and successful corporate career to become a pilot and an adventure writer. In the ensuing years, as if that original cliff leap wasn’t enough, my flying and story assignments have taken me across six continents, from 120 feet below sea level to 70,000 feet above the planet … and have landed me in more uncertain and uncomfortable situations than any truly sane person would choose or endure." Her free e-book can be downloaded here.
Richard Florida, booster of "the creative class," penned the much discussed Atlantic cover story from a few months ago, "How The Crash Will Reshape America." He's director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and author of Rise of the Creative Class. Florida is basically the Nate Silver of national demographics and future infrastructure. Here's an interview he did with the Atlantic that explains some of his thinking.
Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner are over-worked 20-something under-bloggers who are tasked with reading the entire internet everyday and delivering the choicest bits to yours truly. They will keep the Dish well-stocked, maintain the regular features, and make sure no online gem goes unblogged – or I will fire them. I might as well take this opportunity to reiterate how much I owe them, how proud I am that the Dish can now operate without me, and how much I enjoy hanging with them. Seriously, you don't get to work with people as fun and as dedicated as they are very often. You'll see again this week just how integral they are to this blog, its coverage of serious debate of serious topics and its delight in all that makes life worth laughing at as well.
Feel free to e-mail them dissents, insights, and links. Send them to my regular address, andrew@theatlantic.com.
Meanwhile, a genuine, heartfelt plug for the current issue of the magazine, whose new issue is a compulsive read. Ben Schwarz on recession fashion, Michael Hirschorn on the Economist, Josh Shenk's cover-story on the best longitudinal study of human beings ever conducted (JFK was in it), James Parker on SpongeBob, Megan on bankruptcy, and the inimitable Jeffrey Goldberg's advice on Facebook ultimatums: for Pete's sake, subscribe! Someone's got to pay these people, guys.
And see you in a week.
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