Brain Twister answer: Derrière (dairy heir)THE BIG PROFILE: SNOOKI
By Dave Itzkoff
The first priority for Nicole Polizzi, better known as Snooki, the diminutive star of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” and its coming spinoff, “Snooki and JWoww,” is the safe delivery of her first child, a boy, due in September. Then she’ll start planning her dream wedding to her baby-daddy, Jionni LaValle. “I want it to be very traditional, and I’m going to take it very seriously,” Snooki says. “But in fantasyland, I would definitely wear a leopard-print dress. And maybe the bridesmaids can wear leopard-print bridesmaids dresses.”
HONEY, WHERE ARE THE CAR KEYS?
By Tom Vanderbilt
We often try to encode things to memory by thinking about remembering them. But what if you can’t remember something — like where you put your keys — in the first place? Research by Gary Lupyan and Daniel Swingley suggests that verbalizing what you’re looking for can “modulate visual processes.” I always ask my wife where I left my keys. I should ask myself.
ASK JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN
By John Hodgman
FAITH WRITES: My husband was lent the DVDs of a highly recommended TV show. We had them for one year, but he refused to watch. He feels a popular show is beneath him. Can you change his mind?
We all know you’re talking about “The Wire.” Once something becomes required reading, people will skip class and just watch “House Hunters International.”(Guilty). But the kids who are too cool for school end up out on the corner. Omar comin’!
Submit questions for adjudication to www.maximumfun.org/jjho
THE MEH LIST
By Greg Veis
Dystopian novels
Sno Cones
Rick Reilly
The new Garbage album
Obama’s college transcript
Jumping rope
Crocheted swim suit cover-ups
Additional reporting by Samantha Henig
By Maud Newton
God created the earth, the saying goes, but the Dutch created Holland, where an elaborate system of dikes has held back the North Sea for 800 years. The country has extended its creative remapping to Google Earth, where sensitive sites, like some in The Hague, have been pixilated out with bold polygons that, as Mishka Henner notes in Granta, somehow resembles the engineered landscape.
SHE LIKES ME NOT
By Rachel Bertsche
According to a new study in The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, failure to follow the unwritten “Facebook friendship rules” causes immediate, real-life defriending. Sherry Turkle, author of the renowned digital-age book “Alone Together,” says that this has turned friendship into work. “It’s exhausting,” she says.
SUMMER FICTION SERIES: THE LEMON
By Curtis Sittenfeld
I was known as the mean one. All these years have passed since “Septuplets!” went off the air — my brothers and sisters and I are nearing 40, I became estranged from them, then reconciled with our mother before her death — yet a day doesn’t pass without a stranger approaching me to ask, “Why did you tie Frankie to that chair and make him eat a worm?”
BRAIN TWISTER
By Will Shortz
The name for part of the body, in eight letters, sounds like a two-word phrase meaning “a person receiving a milk farm from the estate of a late relative.” What is it?
Hint: Kelis’s “Milkshake” brought boys to the yard, not a dairy estate. For answer, scroll to the bottom.
THAT SHOULD BE A WORD: SHAMBULATE
By Lizzie Skurnick
(SHAM-BEW-LATE), V.
1. To pretend-jog across a crosswalk as the light changes. “Karl gunned his Porsche at a straggler with the gall to shambulate instead of hurry.” See also: Rundition (jogging in place at the corner); Dartisan (makes own path through stopped traffic).
A ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEW
By Tyler Cowen
Breakout Nations, by Ruchir Sharma: Why more and more countries will turn things around, even as China fails.
HOW TO DEAL WITH DEPRESSION
By Shawn Colvin
It always lapses and wanes. Now that I’ve really had a lot of experience with it over the years, I can tell myself that, and it helps me hang on. As told to Spencer Bailey
DANCING WITH HORSES
By Jessica Gross
This month marks the third annual Fête Impériale, a Viennese ball that benefits the Lipizzaner, a pure white, centuries-old breed of dwindling numbers. The gala, with its yellow-and-violet theme, is the social event of the season — particularly for Mitteleuropean equiphiles with a fondness for the famed Spanish Riding School, where it’s held. “If you want to get a yellow evening dress in Vienna, it’s impossible; they’re sold out,” a spokeswoman, Gertraud Auinger-Oberzaucher, says. But does the smell bother anyone? “Some people do not like it that much,” she admits, “but it’s part of the game.”