If ever there was a grim picture of the current financial clusterfuck, it's the once artsy (Björk! sigur rós!), hip, and rich island nation wonderland of Iceland, which fell into cataclysmic economic failure earlier this month. And it happened pretty much overnight. Since the three major banks collapsed under crippling debt and a plummeting currency, job loss has been widespread—the architecture industry, for example, has seen some 75% of its work force laid off in the past few weeks. Now the seemingly peaceful population has devolved into an angry, violent mob, with a gay "troubadour" named Hordur Torfason leading the charge against the government.
Torfason, a playwright/actor/folk musician who was the first Icelander to publicly come out about thirty years ago, says of the wayward parliament: "They don't have our trust and they are no longer legitimate." That the singer of charming little ditties could become the face of a nation of newly desperate and (for now) hopeless anti-government rioters kind of scares the hell out of us, because if it could happen in that seemingly idyllic country, what surreal end-of-days scenarios await us? Will John Waters take up the reins of the new American hobo class, rioting against police until our government is overthrown?
As for Iceland's demise, unemployment is estimated to reach 10% by next year. It's a microcosm of a much bigger disaster, that could "put [the country] back 40 or 50 years," according to Sarah Lyall of the New York Times. There is a silver lining though! Reykjavik, with its loungey up-all-night bar scene, used to be one of Europe's most tantalizing but prohibitively expensive nightlife cities. Not anymore! These days we can go there cheap and dance in the ashes of their once gloriously idyllic Norse city, ably forgetting our looming penury back here Stateside.
Then we'll come home and leave them to their own devices. The long forever-night will set in, and there they'll stay.
A frozen reminder of a wintry paradise, lost.
Layoffs at newspapers tend to hit the less essential sections first. You're not going to see the sports page disappear, but you might no longer have a local science reporter. To fill in the blanks, editors use wire stories, and when it comes to science reporting, they'll apparently print anything they come across. Basing a story off whatever piece of research comes to light is the easiest way to write a science story, with "according to new research" the opening sentence of choice. Over the weekend, we learned that meat 
Amid all the 
With the full onset of consistently declining revenues and mass layoffs, newspapers have now finally accepted the depth of their plight. Now the war wages on as to how — and whether — print can become more commercially viable through innovation. In 
We know an insane man (Lee Abrams, right) who works for the Los Angeles Times who totally agrees with you, Ms. Rampell. Hell, the LAT is promoting today's edition 
Do you feel that tingly spark in the air today, especially as you near Times Square? It's because Total Request Live, MTV's long-running afterschool music video special is coming to an end after ten years, signing off on Sunday 
Britain's Guardian 
Writer John Leonard has died, according to 
After a long battle with cancer, science fiction's biggest crossover novelist Michael Crichton died today. Though the lanky Harvard graduate was most well known for his 1990 novel Jurassic Park, he leaves behind a sometimes controversial legacy of investigation into the most prominent scientific issues of our time. We review the highlights of his storied career:
There's so much bad news in the print media world these days that we just have to roll it all up for you in one convenient post that you can read here, on the internet, where we are responsible for killing print. Today in the Death Of Print Daily: Big 
Studs Terkel, Chicago's beloved author, interviewer, activist, radio host, and historian, died today at 96. Terkel's books Hard Times, Working, and The Good War are essential reading for students of American history in the first half of the 20th Century. He was a legendary storyteller and interviewer, and it's amazing to remember that not only did he publish his first book when he was already 55, but he then lived on to publish a dozen more, including one, P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening, set to be released next month. "Take it easy, but take it." [
Fred Baron, the attorney who rebuilt the Texas Democratic party and became famous, late in life, for his unfortunate help in covering up the extramarital affair of former Senator John Edwards, died Thursday of cancer. He was 61. Baron made a fortune in asbestos litigation, and used the funds to found the Texas Democratic Trust in 2005, among countless other philanthropic causes. In the Edwards affair, Baron was revealed as the source of the supposed "hush money" keeping mistress Rielle Hunter 
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Guillaume Depardieu, the estranged son of renowned actor Gérard, died today from complications relating to pneumonia at a hospital outside Paris. He was 37. An actor himself, Depardieu received acclaim early in his career for the 1995 film The Apprentices. He costarred with his father in several films, most notably Aime ton père (A Loving Father) in 2002. Though, dark clouds seemed to often occlude his successes. 
Joerg Haider, the extreme right wing Austrian politician who once said the Nazis had "an orderly employment policy" and referred to the concentration camps as "the punishment camps of National Socialism," died in a car crash last night. He was 58. "Haider was pronounced dead in a hospital shortly after his Volkswagen Phaeton veered off the road outside Klagenfurt in southern Austria and overturned several times after he successfully passed another car, police said. Authorities said an initial investigation showed no signs of foul play. At the time of his death, Haider was governor of the province of Carinthia and leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria—a party he formed after breaking away from the far right Freedom Party in 2005."
"The largest newspaper in New Jersey, The Star-Ledger, will not change hands or go out of business — at least not for a while — its owners said on Wednesday, after employees agreed to buyouts and concessions." [
Once upon a time, back in the days when H.L. Mencken was prowling the metaphorical streets of journalism, drinking bourbon for breakfast and smoking cigars in theaters and making women do laundry for weeks on end, a reporter could dream of nothing better than being assigned to cover the State Capitol. He'd go on up there and sit around drinking bourbon and smoking cigars and subjugating women and occasionally filing stories, after which he would go out and engage in scandalous behavior with the politicians he covered. Life was sweet. But now guess what: penniless newspapers 
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is in severe financial distress, of course, because it is a newspaper. It was sold (at a loss) by McClatchy in 2006 to a private equity firm, and has reliably lost value ever since. Though it still "makes money" in the strictest sense of the term! The paper has already laid off 100 newsroom people and put its headquarters 
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