What the world is reading

Ahead of the release of The Social Network,a movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg,the magazine pulled out from their archives a story written by Claire Hoffman that first revealed the bitter battle for Facebook. Zuckerberg likes to present himself as an altruistic,harmless computer geek who invented a widget that will make the world a better place. Im just like a little kid, he told the Crimson. I get bored easily and computers excite me. Those are the two driving factors here. But unlike most nerds,Zuckerberg possesses gifts beyond the narrow realm of programming,the monomaniacal processing of ones and zeroes. Even his fiercest critics concede that he is more Donald Trump than slacker dork,someone with an almost ruthless taste for battle8230; Hoffman writes about Zuckerbergs broken relationshipsa track record that raises questions about his ability to manage the company he founded.

Vanity Fair

Unanswerable prayers

Reacting to an online post by a faithful who says Christopher Hitchenss cancer in the esophagus was Gods revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him8230;and THEN comes the real fun,when hes sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire,the avowed atheist says he has some obvious objections to this kind of gloating. First,which mere primate is so damn sure that he can know the mind of god? Second,would this anonymous author want his views to be read by my unoffending children,who are also being given a hard time in their way,and by the same god? Third,why not a thunderbolt for yours truly,or something similarly awe-inspiring? The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former lifestyle would suggest that I got. Fourth,why cancer at all? Almost all men get cancer of the prostate if they live long enough: its an undignified thing but quite evenly distributed among saints and sinners,believers and unbelievers. If you maintain that god awards the appropriate cancers,you must also account for the numbers of infants who contract leukemia.

The New Zealand Herald

Games and bloody good fun

Dylan Cleaver bats for the much maligned CWG that India is hosting and says,It cant be great walking into a room to find a dog has vacated its bowels in the corner,to see wiring protruding from sockets and rusty nails and construction detritus left in piles. But to suggest those nails should be used to bang the lid shut on the Commonwealth Games coffin is a collapsed bridge too far.

The Commonwealth Games,he says,have a history and tradition of their own that has outlived the imperial age. For two weeks every four years,a bunch of disparate nations that speak the same language and once had a monarch in common get together to hurl stones,shoot targets,run around a track and generally have a whale of a time8230;Even if were not entirely sure what were joining together for.