The New Yorker is brought to you by the phrase "sotto voce." At least last week's issue is.

First we enjoy the front of the book — July 23-24 at 8:30: DJ Spooky presents "Rebirth of a Nation," a multimedia remix of D.W. Griffith's 1915 silent film, "Birth of a Nation." — and we regret the day is already the 25th.

On the facing page, the "Pop Notes" column focuses on the Hives and their current flog, Tyrannosaurus Hives. What the review imparts more than anything else is the band's ability to title. Along with the album's name, mentioned and unmentioned go: Abra Cadaver, Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones, Walk Idiot Walk, No Pun Intended, A Little More for Little You, B is for Brutus, See Through Head, Diabolic Scheme, Missing Link, Love in Plaster, Dead Quote Olympics, and Antidote. Not included on the release is the song that recently disappointed Pitchfork, let down by the music's failure to live up to the title, Hives Are Law, You Are Crime.

The crime for me picks up on the next page, the third in a row to catch my attention, with pictures that show no law-breaking but inspire thoughts of much. Photo illustrations lay out two of the four new different plans for the High Line, the "1.45 miles of elevated railway that runs south from West Thirty-fourth Street … languishing in rusty disrepair since 1980." All four of the visions are available online, and all four make me miss Chicago. They also conjure up the chase scene from The French Connection, which was filmed elsewhere in New York but works for association's sake. The High Line, they plan to turn it into a park. A photo gallery shows the line now, on top more overgrown than rusty.

Also referencing, albeit weirdly, is the issue's first long piece. Eliza Griswold's "The Hiding Zone" (not online) begins as follows:

Khalid Wazir, who is thirty and wears his hair in a mini-pompadour, twirls the tip of his mustache when he's nervous. The habit was little in evidence when I first met him, two years ago, through his cousins, a family of generous Wazirs who had befriended me while I was reporting on the American military campaign in Afghanistan. In those days, Khalid occupied himself, when he felt like it, by selling satellite phones in the Pakistani frontier town of Peshawar, but he often spent his days stalking sandgrouse with his dogs Floppy and Scooby and complaining about the local Talibs, who refused to let women dance at family weddings.

Floppy and Scooby?

There's no explanation of the dogs' names, but who can blame the editors for enjoying their Coronas at mid-summer? If the cartoon editor wants to be blunt, weird and blunt, I say let the cartoon editor be.

One piece where the flip-flops do fit snuggly (no, not in the John Kerry profile) is "Nerd Camp," Burkhard Bilger's visit to Johns Hopkins' Center for Talent Youth summer program. After getting mailings about CTY as a kid, I'm now glad I never went. These kids talk about revising Freud's theories, and I still don't know bus hit me in NU's Intro to Psych. (Okay, so I do. An A-level class taught by a beautiful professor with a capacity for devious multiple choice equals trouble. But I digress.) Twelve-year-old Jesse Mirotznik does his best to explain the life to Bilger:

"I've tried to gear down my vocabulary," he said. "But I still get a hard time. Anti-intellectualism is really popular in Ameria." Before coming to the center, he'd spent two disastrous summers at a sports-oriented camp in Pennsylvania called Island Lake. "I hated it," he said. "It was not a stimulating environment. I took boxing, and I was very afraid." Back home, Mirotznik attends a private school that offers a strong academic program. I asked him what he would do if he had to go school with the kids from Island Lake. "I don't know," he said. "I would probably get more into sports and less into thinking." He paused. "Or maybe I would just be very, very unpopular."

Bilger's piece isn't online either, which maybe makes it unline; but the writer does sit for an interview with the site.

And then there's this, another cartoon that makes no sense to me. Ideas this time?

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