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There's one more piece in the July 26 New Yorker that's kind of interesting, and that's Jonathan Franzen's "Emptying the Skies," about songbird hunting in Europe. Of course, it's behind the pay wall, but it makes an interesting pair with Elizabeth Kolbert's briefer article about overfishing, in the following issue. If Franzen had focused more on the overhunting aspect and less on the "aren't songbirds wonderful" aspect, I might have been a bigger fan of his piece. As is, he makes lots of good points, but you kind of have to like birds to get totally on board, especially as he makes an effort to eat ambelopoulia and ends up burying most of his dinner outside the restaurant. I mean, I am not entirely un-tender-hearted, but it strikes me that he is moving toward vegetarianism, and that's fine, but that's not exactly what one signs up for in reading the article. Kolbert's piece, on the other hand, is equally focused on the devastation humans do to the planet, but she doesn't think bluefin tuna are adorable. The problem is not that we eat them but that we eat too many of them.

Also, Kelefa Sanneh's piece on Brad Paisley is wonderful. And super smart.

Its sensibility ["He Didn't Have to Be"] was not rural but suburban, and in that sense it symbolizes much of what drives some listeners nuts about modern country.

The genre--so goes the argument--was once ruled by stoic, screwed-up old troubadours . . . . Now it's ruled by sensitive guys like Paisley, who sing about marital bliss and sit on their luxury tour buses, watching iPhone videos of their children.

. . . This is bad history--country music has always been, proudly, a form of show business, and not for nothing is its top prize called "entertainer of the year"--but it's a seductive narrative, and Paisley understands why some disenchanted fans miss the mythical good old days. . . . But he also recognizes that, in the post-Garth era, the music has thrived partly because of its willingness to chronicle domestic bliss in plainspoken language. This is a big and lucrative niche--and, by definition, an unhip one, because it suggests that respectable suburban family life can be pretty good. "That's where country music has found its place in modern society," he says--the genre tells stories that other genres won't or can't.

There's a lot more of this kind of insight.

Also, read Atul Gawande's piece on hospice care. It's important.