5 August 2009: Morning By The Morning News — 05 Aug 2009 For the first time in "about 15 years," Russian subs patrol the U.S. coast. Today's long read: How the military went out of style. There's an even weirder possibility, that the Kim we're seeing is a body double. Photos from Bill Clinton's North Korea trip show a healthy Dear Leader. The Smoking Gun unmasks the leader of Pranknet, which carries out cruel telephone hoaxes that have resulted in a variety of felonies and misdemeanors. Animal-rights activists may be behind arson at Novartis chairman's house--the group also stole the urn containing the chairman's mother's ashes. A similarly wasted Dennis Hopper sitting in on backup vocals didn't help matters. Bob Dylan's best onstage meltdowns. Michael Idov recounts how he turned his failed Lower East Side café into a novel. More Idov: The New York cafés laptopping authors should frequent for guiltless writing. In her piece on metapoetry, Katha Pollitt drops "back in the day"--which should please Robert Birnbaum. Updike, who was not an inexplicable genius like, say, Haruki Murakami, but rather an entirely explicable one, always seems to get the little things right. A new project looks at what architects read and what their libraries reveal about them. A visit to a Netflix warehouse reveals how your movies get to you: It takes 42 people with blinding efficiency. Video: You'll feel much better after 15 minutes of Alain de Botton's explanation of success.
