Around the Web

• “We are only 50 percent of the way to knowing what trees really do for us,” says botanist Lester Rowntree in Jill Jonnes' article about the role of trees in the life of the city
• "I've never had colleagues in the sense that I do here," says Jonathan Lethem who's headed for liberal arts college bliss at Pomona (I wondered if he planned write a book that doesn't take place in New York but, alas, this article says his next book is set in Queens)
• I've made my picks for Slate's Oscar Pool game
• "By the time I got around to Vampire’s Kiss and then Bad Lieutenant and now this movie, Drive Angry and then also Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, I had realized that I’d developed my own style and process and school of acting which is called Nouveau Shamanic. That’s the new style of acting and at some point I’ll have to write a book.” -Nicholas Cage (!), quoted by Movieline