• Slate V:

• Slate's Culture Gabfest for Nov. 19, 2008.
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 21 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

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• Abandoned Wal-Marts that become schools and churches.
Big-box buildings are the large, free-standing, warehouselike structures that have become dominant in the American landscape, constructed by one-stop-shopping retailers, grocers, and category-killers. Hundreds of new big-box buildings are built each year?and hundreds are vacated. In a healthy economy, retailers often leave behind one store to build an even bigger one nearby. In tough times, weaker chains are forced to close stores. Circuit City recently announced it will close 155 stores before the holiday season. What happens to big-box buildings when a retailer abandons them?

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• The case for immunizing everyone against the flu.
Problem: Influenza is a common viral disease. Because it's so common (in any one year, somewhere between 5 percent and 20 percent of Americans will get the flu) and because people tend to call any illness with fever, sore throat, vomiting, or diarrhea a "flu," it is often taken casually?more a fact of life than a cause for anxiety. Many of these misnamed infections are pretty minor, but true influenza is often quite a serious disease, leading to more than 200,000 annual hospitalizations in the United States and about 36,000 deaths every year. Unfortunately, catching the flu doesn't guarantee immunity?the virus's unstable genetic makeup changes frequently, and the immunity stimulated by an infection or a shot probably won't be helpful in the next year if even a minor change occurs and a new strain emerges. And sometimes those new strains are exceptionally dangerous. The "Spanish flu," the worst of these varieties, appeared in 1918 and is thought to have killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide?between 2.5 percent and 5 percent of the world's population?during a two-year period.

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• Sleater-Kinney's guitarist tries out Wii Music.
One summer, when I was elementary-school age, my neighbors and I built guitars and keyboards out of scrap wood, painted them in bright colors, and formed the cover band Lil' "D" Duran Duran. We didn't make our own noise or even pretend to play our fake instruments. We merely had props to stand in for the real thing; it gave us something to do with our arms. We made no effort to look like the members of Duran Duran or to emulate their glamorous pop-star world. Instead, with mutts and thumb-sucking siblings as our audience, we jumped and pranced around to their songs as they emanated from a boombox in the backyard.

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• Life classes on the Isle of Wight.
In Sandown, a working-class resort on the Isle of Wight with a wide, golden beach, the members of Martin Parr's photography class shoot a miniature golf course, a rinky-dink amusement park, and a cricket field. I notice that my vision has taken on a Parr-like cast. Looking over the railing of the elevated main street, I get an aerial view of a beachside cafe, where a family, their ample flesh roasted red, savors slick plates of sausage and beans. Meanwhile, Parr spies a "car boot sale"?a flea market where vendors sell goods from their car trunks and hatchbacks?and we follow him there. The merchandise forms a capsule history of 20th-century British culture: Rupert Bear books, Cliff Richard DVDs, the self-published first and second editions of The History of the Sandown Conservative Clubs.

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• Big Three break down in D.C.
A summary of what's in the major publications.

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• The Big Three ask for a bit of money but lawmakers are skeptical.
The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post lead with the chief executives of Detroit's Big Three begging lawmakers for taxpayer-funded aid to prevent a possible collapse. But senators were less than receptive to their plight and it looks increasingly unlikely that the automakers will get a bailout from Washington anytime soon. Even senators who are generally supportive of the industry weren't shy about criticizing the companies. "Their discomfort in coming to the Congress with hat in hand is only exceeded by the fact that they are seeking treatment for wounds that are to a large extent self-inflicted," Sen. Christoper Dodd said. "No one can say they didn't see this coming."

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• How did an iffy study on the neuroscience of bullies end up in a New York Tim...
A year ago this month, the New York Times published one of the most notorious pieces of neuromarketing propaganda ever to show up in a major daily. Two Novembers ago, the Times science pages hawked a witless brain-imaging study of speaking in tongues. (In that case, converging evidence from scientists and journalists revealed a useful fact: If you think you're babbling incoherently, then you probably are.)

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• Is a homeless felon really expected to pay $101 million?
A homeless man in California was sentenced Monday to four years in prison and ordered to pay $101 million for setting fires that burned down 160,000 acres of national forest. How's a guy who sleeps in a tent supposed to pay $101 million?

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• What's new in New York, the Weekly Standard, and TheNew Yorker.
Newsweek, Nov. 24Karl Rove offers a 10-point plan for the Republican Party, stressing the importance of adapting the GOP's core values for the new era. "The party should embrace both tradition and reform; grass-roots Republicans want to apply timeless conservative principles to the new circumstances facing America." The party must make inroads among young people by promoting a "green" agenda and should focus on retaking Congress in 2010. ? The cover story likens Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln, which the 44th president himself did in the pages of Time in 2005. Both men are known for their humility, strong rhetoric, and taking the helm during a pivotal historical moment. ? The lame-duck Bush administration is being flooded with pardon requests, but those hoping for one are likely to be disappointed as Bush has granted fewer pardons than any modern president.

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• The quotidian beauty of Law & Order.
Law & Order (NBC)?not to be confused with the grislier, kinkier Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, or the flashier, friskier Law & Order: Criminal Intent, but the durable old L&O?lugged itself back to the airwaves this month for a 19th season. Series creator Dick Wolf long ago made plain his ambition to see the show through a 20th, at which point scholars of pop and keepers of trivia will be obliged to place it next to Gunsmoke as TV's longest-running prime-time drama. It may get there yet: Though its recent ratings are, by any normal standard, mediocre, mediocrity goes a long way these days at subnormal NBC. And despite the show's excesses, its signs of deterioration and ossification, its laughable mannerisms, Law & Order still displays a singular feeling for pace. It's snappier than a procedural of its advanced age has any right to be.

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• Why is Barack Obama obsessed with reforming college football?
Barack Obama has revealed his first major policy initiative: college football reform. In Obama's first televised interview since winning the presidency, he explained what's wrong with the current system, in which computers help determine the two teams that play for the national championship. "I think any sensible person would say that if you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses?there's no clear decisive winner?that we should be creating a playoff system," Obama said. "I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I'm gonna throw my weight around a little bit. I think it's the right thing to do."

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• In Idaho's First District, they don't make right-wing nuts like they used to.
After a glorious, nearly uninterrupted three-decade run, Idaho's First Congressional District has lost its claim as the nuttiest House seat in the country. The state just elected a new congressman so normal, the nation won't have Idaho to kick around anymore.

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• Cubez: Google
A daily video from Slate V

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