Before I saw the Styles “Skin Deep” story, I felt a somewhat embarrassing, hippocritical indignation toward the cosmetics companies. Indignation because it’s frivolous to spend gazillions on anti-aging science experiments, and hippocritical because I want the best sub-$30 eye cream too. Well, now I feel indignant that they don’t do all that experimenting! (I’ve no idea where that leaves my hypocrisy.) As Natasha Singer reports, my vision of lab-coated, science-dork sellouts doesn’t exist. And all that packaging scientese — “bio-stimulating technology” anyone? — is more marketing mumbo jumbo than even a product skeptic like me could imagine. Which just goes to show, if you can’t buy it at a drugstore and it doesn’t arrive in a swag bag, it’s a rip. Is that recession thinking, or what?

The Times has provided the ladies with the perfect excuse to remain blissfully ignorant of all the havoc the boys are wreaking on Wall Street. In an “effort to produce the paper more efficiently,” Business and Sports will be combined into one section Tuesday through Friday — as if it were just a matter of efficiency that the two sections that are thought to traditionally tilt male were the ones that were combined. I mean, just imagine the domestic drama if Sports were combined with Arts. Well, we couldn’t have any of that! So instead, the Sports section that your husband/boyfriend/butch girlfriend takes on the train — and good riddance to it! — will also contain the latest news about the biggest story of our time. Perhaps the paternalistic silver lining is that we’ll no longer need to see menu prices either.

You know what really sucks about the timing of the tanked economy? It’s happening right in the midst of prime shopping season. Admit it: Early fall is the time to stock up on snuggly sweaters, the new denim silhouette and a pair of killer stilettos. This year, however, shopping for anything other than groceries and a sugar daddy feels ridiculously out of touch, and far from fun. But! Here comes New York Magazine’s 40th Anniversary Issue to the rescue. For what could be a better way to get psyched for our current apocalyptic moment than a 308-page nostalgia-fest celebrating the city’s last apocalyptic moment?

I used to ghostwrite a column for this guy — fashion architect Peter Marino, shot here for T — and I think you can probably figure out why my friends always knew that when I talked about “The Diva,” I was talking about Marino.