6 January 2009: Morning

Krugman: Banks aren't lending; businesses and consumers aren't spending. Let's not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.

Björk's fund will be called, er...Björk. Björk launches a green venture-capital mission to save Iceland.

The Edge's Annual Question: "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

Rwanda's gorilla infatuation struggles to balance tourist dollars, gorilla vets with locals' basic needs, doctors.

Though high-culture circles rarely consider videos games art, it's a rare popular medium where difficulty is a virtue.

Classic board games are fun because everyone knows them--and everyone knows them because they're fun.

Also: Matthew Baldwin's guide to the best board games of 2008.

Reviewing the past year of the New Yorker's fiction, story by story by story.

Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and other relationships between classic authors.

I take the train to New York City for a poetry reading in the East Village and notice immediately how pale everyone is. Daniel Nester tries on a fake tan.

Read more Nester in The Morning News Annual, our yearly edition of collected works and new pieces.

To me, books are the physical vessels that keep us linked to all the human times and places. "Valuable Artifacts" by Richard Bausch.

The year in water-related photos.