Media

Much ado has been made in the last few years about how print media is dying. It is pretty obvious why this is case. Practically everyone my age -- and a good amount of people older than I am -- want to get their news, analysis, gossip and so forth online. I'm probably the only one of my peers who gets home delivery of the print edition of the New York Times, and I will be the first admit that it's more about the chic than because that's how I legitimately prefer to read it. So let's assume that everyone will be phasing out print over the next decade or so. What then?

I just finished reading Michael Chabon's excellent The Yiddish Policeman's Union (for which there are total spoilers below the fold, by the way). A very interesting read, having just visited Israel recently. For those who are not familiar, the novel deals with an alternate timeline in which the United States offered a large tract of land in Alaska as a safe haven for European Jews fleeing the Holocaust (a plan that was proposed in real life, but killed in committee in the Senate. In the book, the main detractor of the plan is killed in a car accident). Incidentally, or perhaps because there were not enough refugees to populate the then-fledging State of Israel, the independence war of 1948 is lost to the Arabs (in real life, it was won) and Israel collapses. Only a few die-hards remain in Jerusalem, which is otherwise entirely under Arab control.