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Barbie looks pretty good, for a woman of a certain age. The ever-lithe dame with missile breasts turns 50 next year, and she still turns heads: every second at least three of these dolls are sold, bringing in $3.6 billion annually in retail sales. To wit: 

No doll outshines Barbie’s celebrity. If all the Barbies and her family members—Skipper, Francie and the rest—sold since 1959 were placed head to toe, they would circle the Earth more than seven times.

Perhaps the allure is in her personality?

Barbie's body has come under criticism for offering girls unrealistic expectations of womanhood, and even for inspiring eating disorders and related pathologies. Her measurements--at 36-18-38--if rendered in the flesh, would notoriously make it impossible for her to stand, or even live (despite evidence to the contrary).

Yet there's also plenty of evidence that Barbie is a modern have-it-all woman, with an array of powerful careers, a closet full of couture, a doting metrosexual boyfriend and very little pressure to marry and procreate (though she can always choose the domestic route, complete with apple-cheeked baby and a "dream house" kitted out in Pepto Bismol-pink accessories). So why isn't she considered more empowering? Why is Barbie such a lightening rod for feminist scorn?  read more »

Isaiah Berlin would be turning 100 next year. Even people unfamiliar with his work as a public intellectual and historian know enough to speak of him with reverence. As The Economist wrote in an obituary  in 1997:

As in real showbiz, his reputation spread in ever widening circles from an admiring centre. He had 23 honorary doctorates from eminent universities, possibly a record, and many academic awards. As well as being knighted, he received a rarer honour, the Order of Merit, which is limited to 24 people. A writer on western philosophy noted that a cousin of Sir Isaiah was the leader of a Jewish sect, and proclaimed by thousands of his followers to be the Messiah. Sir Isaiah did not match that but, in Oxford terms, he may have come close.

So what made him so special? Robert Cottrell, editor of thebrowser.com, says Berlin was "probably the past century’s greatest historian of ideas". Cottrell does a fine job of explaining Berlin's enduring appeal in this audio interview for The Economist: "He was capable of popularising ideas without vulgarising them."

Listen to the full exchange: