Three Best Things 8/31/09 - 9/6/09: Atlanta, GA... Where Seth Godin flies for lunch.

• Phenomenal (and brief) must-read: Clive Thompson on the New Literacy. You know how certain elderly saints o’ the Lord hang on to the notion that all these fly-by-night SMS-chatblogging and social-textbooking fads are bad for the children’s writing skills? That these flash-in-the-pan wikitubers are robbing themselves of literacy with every single e-minute spent deleting spreadsheets willy-nilly on the Wii-game and the digi-puter? Because back in my day we learned how to write Honus Wagner’s name in cursive by torchlight, back when a person applied for a job at the Pony Express without needing an app forum 2.0 motherboard widget WIDGET, and now they’ve got these portable gang phones with the RAM modules and the CNN quiz shows by satellite!?

I’ve been saying it myself for years, but you’ll likely find a new Stanford study a little more convincing: turns out writing — even if it means Flickr-hacking out some status-cyberspams on the whoozy-Twitterzit while uploading entire iTunes to your buddy lists — is good for your writing. Embrace it: the internet is good for you, but even better for your kids.

• Kurt Vonnegut explains drama. I don’t need to say anything more here.
• Seth Godin on what you compare yourself to to what you compare yourself. The best restaurant in the Atlanta airport doesn’t strive to be a great airport restaurant; it strives to be a great restaurant. Otherwise, he hates Atlanta’s airport restaurant scene. “We don’t compare ourselves to other airport restaurants”

BONUS: The Godfather 3 Syndrome, finest of the many things written about Jay-Z and Raekwon this week.