Assisterati, umami, e altro

Assisterati: For six weeks, at a cost of $7,000, Columbia University offers recent college graduates forgettable workshops, fleeting encounters with important editors and access to the best unlisted job openings in book publishing and magazines. After swift job placement, these hyper-literate 20-somethings occupy a peculiar professional class: the Assisterati. Their institutional affiliations lend them a sense that they are the caretakers, soon to be inheritors, of a sublime patrimony. Their proximity to literary creation - via email, telephone or fax - suggests they possess a cultural credibility they couldn't acquire in, say, Chicago, or on Wall Street. Underpaid but brimming with hope, they, like the people they assist, will one day run this town and steer the course of American literature. That is, if they stick around with their egos intact. nyobserver.

Umami: è uno dei cinque gusti percepiti, secondo wikipedia. Qui ci serve per introdurre un libro carino, The Flavour Thesaurus, di Niki Segnit (Bloomsbury), "The book lists 99 flavors and common flavor pairings for home cooks, say, combining celery and horseradish or melding tomato and anchovy. Each of the 900 pairings (out of a possible 4,851!) comes with a short digression." goodfood.

You and I: in un articolo molto interessante Robert Lane Greene analizza il significato di questi due pronomi nel mondo dei nuovi media: perché iPad, e YouTube? intelligentlife.