¶ Matins: Ryan Avent, at Portfolio, is “amazed”:

The truly amazing thing to me is that parental income isn’t just crucial in getting to college, and getting through college — its effects linger on, basically, in perpetuity. One of the most remarkable findings from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project is that a child from a family in the top income quintile who does not get a college degree is more likely to wind up in the top income quintile himself than a child from a family in the bottom income quintile who does get a college degree.

¶ Lauds: Krystian Zimerman read the riot act at Disney on Sunday night. In light of yesterday’s Lauds, you won’t be surprised to hear that I disapprove.

¶ Prime: At Sore Afraid, Eric undergoes laser eye  surgery; has “crispness” issues, but jogs in Central Park and tootles off to Washington just the same.

We had reservations for an activity at the International Spy Museum, but Asaph started feeling unwell, probably from dehydration, but things weren’t helped when he was bitten by a large fly. I tried to reassure him, but I am not so good at that.

¶ Tierce: An exciting, ultimately frustrating story about “cyberwarfare” in the Times  boils down to “be very afraid” boilerplate. The Economist, however, counsels a more cynically relaxed response.

¶ Sext: It’s a living — or is it? A pair of entrepreneurial Pakistani brothers may relocate to East Asia if their prosperous bondage-gear business gets too hot to handle in Karachi.

¶ Nones: Just in case you think that things are bad here in the USA, consider the Balkan States: Lithuania’s economy dropped by 12% from the same quarter last year. That’s an almost unimaginable contraction in terms of everyday business.

¶ Vespers: The return of the British thriller: the Curzon Group (currently comprising three crime writers) intends to restore the lustre of a genre that, in its eyes, has been tarnished by American “production line” methods. (via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind)

¶ Compline: Along with indoor plumbing, a hallmark of modern civilization at its most basic is street lighting: we take the safety that it provides for granted. But streetlights are in need of a rethink, not least because powering them comes to two percent of our total energy consumption.

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¶ Matins: Robert Pear’s story about the latest squabble in health care reform is well worth thinking about. “Doctor Shortage Proves Obstacle to Obama Goals” is the title of his story, but I’m afraid that the editor who came up with it was having a senior moment, even if he’s only twenty-six.

¶ Lauds: Norman Lebrecht inveighs against artists who collaborate with nasty regimes — creative types who go along to get along. I couldn’t disagree more with his conclusion, but I recognize that he has, by far, the easier argument.

¶ Prime: Manfred Ertel’s Spiegel story about the recknoning in Reykjavik will make deeply satisfying reading to anyone who, like me, believes that the past fifteen years’ free market follies betray a pre-adolescent want of perspicuity. Having the gals take over so that they can fix things seems only right. But what about the reaction?

¶ Tierce: For some reason, I thought that Texas could subdivide into six entities, not five — but I do remember (from my Houstonian captivity) that subdivision was a standard plank in gubernatorial platforms until 1920.  

¶ Sext: In his search for bizarre LP album covers, Muscato unearths the even more bizarre optimism of LP consumers back in the days when new technologies promised to deliver information not only more palatably but more effectively than conventional media (ie books).

¶ Nones: Two stories about Hungary at risk in the ongoing slump. First, and very predicatable, violence aimed at Roma (gypsies). Second, and more impressionistic, Budapest’s fragile prosperity, considered by someone just old enough to remember the city in 1989.

¶ Vespers: A faux-anxious story, nominally about Kazuo Ishiguro’s having only so many more book projects in his quiver, alerts us to the impending arrival (in the UK, anyway) of a new book — not a novel.

¶ Compline: Erik Hare’s essay on seizing opportunity, on being ready to take advantage of favorable winds when they blow — and on the tendency of liberals to dismiss such a skill as “opportunism” — makes for thought-provoking reading. “Eyes on the Prize,” at Barataria.

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¶ Matins: Your weekend piece: Franklin Foer on governance by nudges: leave the market alone, but manipulate participants’ incentives.

¶ Lauds: Which do you prefer? Richard Rogers’s modernist assemblage for the Chelsea Barracks site in London, or Quinlan Terry’s, which the Prince of Wales has explicitly preferred. (via  Things Magazine)

¶ Prime: Another weekend piece: David’s Smashing Telly! reflections on Susan Boyle, the Great Depression, “the illusion of the benign long tail,” and Sasha Baron Chomsky.

¶ Tierce: In record numbers, Americans are staying put. I’m not sure, though, that I agree with the drift of this headline: “Slump Creates Lack of Mobility for Americans.”

¶ Sext: As a well-known curmudgeon, I will surprise no one by calling for a ticker-tape parade in honor of Madlyn Primoff.

¶ Nones: Reading about the “existential” threat faced by Pakistan, as Taliban forces occupy ever more territory and eject the legitimate state apparatus, I hope that somebody somewhere is developing an efffective means of response. Conventional military reaction to the Taliban has never worked in the long run.

¶ Vespers: Garth Risk Hallberg, at The Millions, kicks off a series of pieces about “The Future of Book Coverage: R I P, N Y T?” He goes back two years, to the closing of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s book supplement — a “disaster” that now makes sense.

¶ Compline: Do you think that President Obama ought to meet with the Dalai Lama, considering how insulting that will be to the Chinese government?

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

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¶ Matins: In what is certainly the most important piece of intellectual psychology that I have seen this decade, Tom Jacobs writes up Jonathan Haidt’s research into moral psychology. A must-read, the article is compulsively readable.

¶ Lauds: Say “cheese!” Conceptual artist Filippo Panseca trowels on the fontina for his startlingly high-tack painting of — who? I don’t remember reading about this scene in Edith Hamilton. (Via  Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: There’s a great cartoon in this week’s New Yorker (okay, drawing). A financial adviser tells his clients that what they ought to do is use a time machine to travel back sixteen months and convert to cash. In case you’re going back further than that, this poster from Topatoco may come in handy.

¶ Tierce: The Rattner imbroglio will probably reprise the chorus of complaints about President Obama’s personnel picks for economic recovery: all too often, they look like the “wizards” behind last year’s financial meltdown. 

¶ Sext: Freshman Composition in the Age of Tweets: “I Can Haz Writin Skillz?” (via kottke.org)

¶ Nones: Christopher Hitchens fulminates about Turkey at Slate, and takes France’s diplomatic kick-turning rather too piously. “Ankara Shows Its Hand.”  (via  The Morning News)

¶ Vespers: Will somebody please tell me why Dwight Garner, and not Janet Maslin, reviewed the new book about (not by) Helen Gurley Brown? A man instead of a woman?

¶ Compline: Hats off to Ben Jervey, a committed environmentalist who hates Earth Day.

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¶ Matins: May I say that I support President Obama’s decision not to prosecute CIA agents for torture perpetrated in reliance upon Bush Administration legal advice.

¶ Lauds: What a nice year it would be if Susan Boyle turned out to  be the woman of it. The very president of it. For her, that is. For the rest of us, a bit of a lesson is in order, as Colette Douglas Home reminds us. (via A Commonplace Blog)

¶ Prime: A psychopathological breakdown of royals stalkers. (Not to be confused with “royal stalkers,” eg Jack the Ripper.) It made me wonder: how many of Trollope’s bad girls suffer from de Clérambault’s Syndrome? (via  The Morning News)

¶ Tierce: Here’s a little story that, properly followed, will chart the health/malaise of the Italian state — which seems to have less and less to do with “Italy”: “Italy fears mafia quake fund grab.” 

¶ Sext: A sizzling story from the Telegraph: “Separate bedrooms keeps the romance alive.” [sic]

¶ Nones: Spain leads the way in new high-speed rail transport. Not everybody’s pleased. (via  The Morning News)

¶ Vespers: Geoff Dyer discusses his new book(s), Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi, with Asylum’s John Self.

¶ Compline: On the occasion of QE2’s eighty-third birthday (the real one, not the “official” one in June), we turn to royal.gov.uk for instructions on writing a letter to Her Majesty.

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¶ Matins: In case you’re still opposed to Federal nationalization of troubled banks, let former IMF economist Simon Johnson explain the advice that his outfit would give.

¶ Lauds: It dates from March, but I just heard about it at Things Magazine: truly punchy graphic art commissioned by Swiss pharma giant Geigy (now part of Novartis).

¶ Prime: Jean Ruaud has retooled Mnémoglyphes — which has to be the most news-deprived statement that I can think of. Jean changes the look and feel of his sites all the time! This is more substantive, though: Mnémoglyphes has become a Daily Blogue.

¶ Tierce: David Carr considers the confected nature of last week’s “tea party” tax protests, which were not so much covered by the cable news networks as cultivated by them.

¶ Sext: Would you help out a robot? If you live in Greenwich Village, you might not give it a second thought: Of course you would help out a robot! (via  The Morning News)

¶ Nones: The Italian government has finally recognized its humanitarian responsibility and begun deboarding 140 migrants from a stranded tanker. To understand the kerfuffle with Malta, though, you may need to look at a map.

¶ Vespers: In the current Harper’s, Francine Prose reviews an odd but irresistible new book with a faux-catalogue title as long as your arm: the account of a fictional breakup as told in terms of pictures at an exhibition — pictures of lamps, postcards, and pictures.

¶ Compline: The post office as a profit center? What a concept! It works in Switzerland…

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¶ Matins: At the risk of sounding impetuous: my response to the Times‘s account of Archbishop Dolan’s first news conference is a happy smile. His way of reminding reporters that the Church’s position on same-sex marriage is “clear” suggests that he doesn’t care what it is.

¶ Lauds: Go ahead, it’s Thursday: kill the morning by feasting your eyes on jacket art at the Book Cover Archive. (via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: A touch of White Mischief for the weekend: Lady Idina Sackville, subject of a forthcoming biography by one of her great-granddaughters: The Bolter.

¶ Tierce: The nation’s second-largest mall operator, General Growth Properties, has filed for bankruptcy. As usual, the culprit was good-times leverage that opened up an abyss.

¶ Sext: Pesky rodents driving you crazy? Do what the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department plans to do: blow the varmints to kingdom come by igniting a “calibrated mixture of oxygen and propane” in their burrows. It’s “humane,” they say. Watch for yourself!

¶ Nones: It’s very difficult not to have problems with the religion called “Islam” after the remarks of a Shiite madrasa leader in Kabul, commenting on protests by Afghan women against a repressive new “home life” law.

¶ Vespers: Patrick Kurp reflects on the difference between a public library and a university library.

¶ Compline: How George Snyder, one of the most inquisitively literate men I know, manages to get from day to day on Planet Arrakis in Los Angeles is quite beyond me. But he does; and, as Irene Dunne put it, “he’s pretty cute about it, too.”

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

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¶ Matins: And here we thought that Janet Napolitano had effected a crackdown on smuggling American-bought guns into Mexico. Seems not. Loopholes!

¶ Lauds: Handel meant Handel! Okay, Händel meant business — when it came to business. Everyone knows that he lost his shirt as an opera impresario. It seems that he had another shirt! (Via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Margaret Drabble will write no more novels, claiming that she’s too old to remember what she’s already written. This can mean only one thing, and it does —

¶ Tierce: The number of days — as in “days are numbered” — for totally free Internet access to most print publications continues to drop. Journalism Online LLC plans to be operational “by the fall.”

¶ Sext: Interior designers with newly-rich clients have long had ways of dealing with the problem of stocking beautifully paneled libraries with bulk purchases of snazzily-spined volumes, but I was unaware of an online service until yesterday. (via Brainiac)

¶ Nones: Moldovans who want their country, the poorest in Europe, to merge with Romania ought to have a confab with some Flemish Belgians, or some Catalonians, before getting too worked up.

¶ Vespers: At Asylum, John Self writes about Every Man Dies Alone, the newly-translated novel that Hans Fallada (the pseudonym of Rudolf Ditzen, 1893-1947) wrote in a month, right before killing himself. (via The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: From Waking Up, an elegant rebuttal of Wingnut claims that gay marriage is inimical to religious freedom. Step by step, and perfectly lucid. (Via Joe.My.God) (more…)

¶ Matins: China’s purchase of American debt has slowed down, according to a recent report. As long as it doesn’t simply stop altogether (gulp)….

¶ Lauds: Green Porno, with Isabella Rosselini. These birds-‘n’-bees audio-visuals are almost okay for kids. Except of course for Ms Rosselini’s delicious naughtiness.

¶ Prime: Geoffrey Pullum, a professor of English and linguistics at Edinburgh, doesn’t think much of The Elements of Style, and will not be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. (via Arts Journal)

¶ Tierce: The Ford Foundation, our second largest, has streamlined its operations. This is not a cutback so much as a reconception of “lines of work” — an intellectual advance.

¶ Sext: Culinary professional Peter Hertzmann may convince you that you need an iPod Touch more than a new KitchenAid stand mixer. Wholly Apps!

¶ Nones: Jonathan Head’s BBC report, appraising the latest, and inevitable, wave of unrest in Thailand highlights the core problem for most sovereignties since 1789: nurturing an élite that has the common sense to avoid disenfranchising the lower strata of society.

¶ Vespers: What, exactly, is a novella? A short novel, or a long story? At hitheringandthithering waters, John Madera collects a number of reasonably learned opinions — or, at least (and what is better), reading lists. (via The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: Simon Blackburn argues (at some length, alas) that David Hume is very much the man for our times.

I suspect that many professional philosophers, including ones such as myself who have no religious beliefs at all, are slightly embarrassed, or even annoyed, by the voluble disputes between militant atheists and religious apologists. As Michael Frayn points out in his delightful book The Human Touch, the polite English are embarrassed when the subject of religion crops up at all. But we have more cause to be uncomfortable.

The annoyance comes partly because of the strong sense of deja vu. But it is not just that old tunes are being replayed, but that they are being replayed badly. The classic performance was given by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, written in the middle of the 18th century. Hume himself said that nothing could be more artful than the Dialogues, and it is the failure to appreciate that art that is annoying.

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¶ Matins: Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre take pictures of ruins. Remember when ruins were in Europe? No longer, mon cher. Below the fold, M&M’s photo of Detroit’s Central Station. “The Ruins of Detroit” — sans Beethoven. (via The Best Part)

¶ Lauds: Daniel Barenboim, one of the greatest musicians alive, seems determined to make a mark in a second career: normalizing Arab-Israeli relations. He’ll be conducting a concert in Cairo (Al Qahirah) next week. Bravo!

¶ Prime: Yesterday afternoon, I read at Facebook that my daughter “has gone mental for GoldFish.” I was pretty sure that she wasn’t talking Pepperidge Farm, but I pressed the proffered links anyway. Anybody remember “Captain of Her Heart,” by Blue? The lead has just about the same voice.

¶ Tierce: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, lists ten principles for a healthier economy. I hardly know which one I like best. (via  The Morning News)

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.

¶ Sext: Who is Susan Powter? The other day, Everything Is Terrible, a site that curates awful videos, spotted her “How to Shop at a Grocery Store.”

¶ Nones: With the viability of tax havens in doubt, Monaco upgrades its luxury haven operation.

¶ Vespers: Susan Sontag talks! “The elevator swished up like a gigolo’s hand on a silk stocking.” On her way, that is, to interview Philip Johnson, sometime back in the Sixties. (Via Tomorrow Museum)

¶ Compline: Richard Kalnins grew up in Connecticut, but he spent his childhood Saturdays in Yonkers — the whole day at Latvian school.

Inside, we were strictly forbidden to speak English. My classmates and I spent the day in small classrooms, decorated with framed portraits of presidents from the first Latvian republic, where we listened to white-haired octogenarians talk about their lives in Latvia before the war. We picked through the dense pages of nineteenth-century pastoral novels, recited the names of the country’s longest rivers and biggest lakes, chanted noun declensions in singular and plural, masculine and feminine, and sat on stiff metal chairs by the piano in the basement, crooning folk songs about mowing meadows of clover and watching the sun set into the sea. The rooms were stuffy and overheated and smelled of dusty radiators and chalky erasers. Across the street, old Puerto Rican men in shirtsleeves hung out the windows of what somebody’s brother called a welfare hotel. I couldn’t stand it. I hated Latvia.

Because of the holiday weekend, the next Daily Office will appear on Tuesday, 14 April. Bon weekend à tous!
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¶ Matins: Sometimes it seems that everything that has gone wrong in the United States since the first Reagan Administration can be described by the same sentence: “Let’s make conservatism sexy!” Consider this report about municipal bonds, which used to be safe as houses. (Little joke.)

¶ Lauds: Glenn Gould foresaw iPods, Audacity, Michael Hiltzik writes (so to speak) in the LA Times. The pianist was not, in other words, crazy when he stopped giving recitals.

This week marks 45 years since Glenn Gould made his last public performance. He preferred to offer recordings that someday, he wrote, could be altered by the listener in different ways.

¶ Prime: And now for something perfectly ridiculous: the PUMA, a joint project of General Motors (ha!) and Segway. (via  Good)

¶ Tierce: Tourists in Kyoto grab hair, pull sleeves, trip geisha. Also interfere with dialy fish auction. Walt Disney, what hast thou wrought?

¶ Sext: From the droll humor site, EnglishЯussia, a blast from the past: isn’t that Dave Thomas, of SCTV, hosting the spoof “What Fits Mother Russia?”

¶ Nones: The Grand Duke of Luxembourg may be reconstituted. New! With Fewer Absolute Powers!

¶ Vespers: Marina Warner writes about a new edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

¶ Compline: If you find yourself up late tonight with nothing that you’re in the mood, here’s just what you’re looking for: Jeremiah Kipp interviews film writer Glenn Kenny about working with David Foster Wallace.

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¶ Matins: Matt Richtel and Bob Tedeschi filed an interesting report at the Times on Sunday: people will pay for apps for their phone that they can download onto their computers for free. And guess what. The mobile services collect nickels and dimes without breaking a sweat. In other words: Micropayments are here.

¶ Lauds: Matt Trueman is looking for young critics — in the West End. Where are they?

Let us remember that Kenneth Tynan was 25 when he took up the post in 1952 that is to be vacated by de Jongh, before graduating to the Observer only two years later. And, it was a 26-year-old Michael Billington that first reviewed for the Times in 1965.

¶ Prime: “How Not to Photograph” — a series of drolly incisive blog entries by British photographer Colin Pantall. (via  kottke.org)

¶ Tierce: Did Giampaolo Giuliani, a technician at an Italian nuclear physics lab, predict the catastrophic quake at L’Aquila, or was his announcement just a fluke? (Remember radon?) (via  The Morning News)

¶ Sext: For a few years in the mid-Eighties, I worked in an office at 1 Broadway. For me, it was the acme of workplaces. Photos from Scouting NYC — not surprisingly, Scout sees things that I missed.

¶ Nones: A lucid analysis by journalist Asli Aydintasbas of the knack that American leaders, up to but not including President Obama, have had for getting Turkey wrong. (Hint: talk of “moderate Islam” irritates everybody.)

¶ Vespers: It used to be that publishers printed books. Ancient history — except at the most ancient continually-operating publisher in the world, the Cambridge University Press, founded by Henry VIII in 1534. The lithographic CUP is losing £2,000,000 a year.

¶ Compline: It’s a first, all right, and I hope that it lasts. I wish it were the last. The Vermont legislature has overridden a gubernatorial veto to enact same-sex marriage. No judicial activism required this time!

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¶ Matins: Frank Rich insists that singer John Rich is mistaken:  Detroit is no more “the real world” than Wall Street is.”

¶ Lauds: Rachel Morarjee conducts a Monocle tour of the “narcotecture” of Herat. For more than half of the clip’s five minutes, the richest city in Afghanistan looks like any old place after a scattershot disaster, but at the three-minute market, brace yourself for “wedding-cake monstrosities.” (via  Things Magazine)

¶ Prime: While critic Tom Service laments the decline in British music education, &c and so forth, Jeremy Denk illustrates what a top-drawer education can do for an artistically-inclined youth…

¶ Tierce: Here’s a surprise: “Wanted” posters put out by the Environmental Protection Agency. But why a surprise?

¶ Sext: Ian Frazier’s lampoon of the Rosetta Stone ads that have been running in the backs of brainy magazines —

He was a hardworking farm boy. She was an Italian supermodel. He knew he would have just one chance to impress her.

 — is a brilliant scream. Why didn’t I write it?

¶ Nones: Michael Tomasky’s appraisal of President Obama’s week in Europe, in the Guardian, is warmly favorable — its party-pooping title notwithstanding. “With a rocket, Obama’s hope is shot back down to earth.”

¶ Vespers: A O Scott considers the formerly unmarketable short story: will short fiction benefit from the collapse of publishing as we know it?

¶ Compline:  Jim Holt recommends memorizing poetry. All I want is the Table of Contents to Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, selected by Robert Pinsky.

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¶ Matins: There must have been other stories making the same point, but this is the one about libraries reminds me of what I know of the Depression.

¶ Lauds: At least it’s free. Download John Cage’s celebrated composition, 4’33 at iTunes, and you won’t be charged. That’s because, well, you know….

¶ Prime: Here’s a truly benighted project: “Make Your Own Morandi.”

¶ Tierce: In an admirable move, Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens — who would probably still be senator if it hadn’t been for his conviction of ethics violations. 

¶ Sext: Maira Kalman glosses Tocqueville; attends town meeting in Vermont, also elementary-school student council meeting; illustrates beautifully. (via  kottke.org)

¶ Nones: Just in time for the weekend, a palatial clip showing the meeting of two Anglophone heads of state in a remote corner of Mayfair (or is it Belgravia?).

¶ Vespers: Here’s a book that I would definitely read, if only I had time for such fun: Allegra Huston’s Love Child. Janet Maslin, mildly disapproving, makes it sound particularly delicious.

¶ Compline: Gmail turned 5 yesterday. Seems like just yesterday… and yet, how did we live without it? Just thinking about it is a sort of April Fool’s joke. Michael Calore sends an ecard from Wired. (Via Snarkmarket)

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¶ Matins: What’s next, starving quarterhorses? “Boats Too Costly to Keep Are Littering Coastlines.” And here you were worried about fossil fuel emissions.

¶ Lauds: In June of next year, the Toronto summer festival, Luminato, will mount the premiere of Rufus Wainwright’s opera, Prima Donna. The work was to have been created at the Metropolitan Opera, but the composer rejected Met director Peter Gelb’s demand that Prima Donna be translated from French into English.

¶ Prime: Whatever you think of HRH’s fire station at Poundbury — and I don’t think that it’s so bad; in fact, I rather like those black drainpipes — you have to love the no-less-traditional irreverent fun that Justin McGuirk has talking about the “daft mess.”

¶ Tierce: Sounds like a good idea: Cash for Clunkers. You bring in your old car — old car — and get a credit toward the purchase of a new one — a smallish, greenish one. The move is unlikely to provide help for Cerberus, though — the private equity firm that bought Chrysler a few years ago.

¶ Sext: It’s a great day for checking out Despair, Inc.

¶ Nones: While the Times thinks that Velupillai Prabhakaran is indispensable to the Tamil insurgency, the BBC expects that the rebels would be able to carry on without him.

¶ Vespers: Not only are they both cartoonists whose work is regularly published in The New Yorker, but their styles are not remarkably dissimilar. Liza Donnelly and Michael Maslin have even collaborated on a book, called My Funny Valentine. It’s about them: they are married to one another.

¶ Compline: Kathleen called in the middle of the afternoon to report that the people in London who had to sign off on a deal this afternoon couldn’t — they were without power. Here’s why.

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¶ Matins: Over the weekend, the Times published architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff’s summary of good ideas for urban infrastructure, “Reinventing America’s Cities: The Time Is Now.” Although Mr Ouroussoff never uses the term, one leitmotif of his essay is the importance of undoing the long modernist trend of treating cities as “factories for living.”

¶ Lauds: How about some eye candy? (via  kottke.org)

¶ Prime: Moscato goes shopping at the One Rial Store in Oman. I want a Mosque Shape Alarm Clock!

¶ Tierce: In this week’s New Yorker, James Surowiecki shares a misgiving that has been bothering me for more than a few years: what if the bank bailout works?

¶ Sext: Just what I needed: a “Variety Show” of Borden’s line of cheeses. (Remember Borden’s? Elsie the Cow?) And not only that, but a new-to-me “pop culture” site, Curly Wurly. Eight mouth-watering ways to “meet the royal family of Borden’s fine cheeses.

¶ Nones: Athens bombers said to be anarchists, not terrorists — well, that makes me feel better!

¶ Vespers: Maud Newton writes about Brad Gooch’s biography of Flannery O’Connor at NPR.org: “In its painstaking honesty, the book is both a great gift and a curse to O’Connor’s fans.” If you know anything about O’Connor, you know that Ms Newton is referring to the writer’s unconsidered racism.

¶ Compline: An appropriately colorful obituary for Sir Reresby Sitwell, Bt, of Renishaw Hall, in the Telegraph. It’s amazing how much family dysfunction can be fitted into a few paragraphs with hardly a mention of Auntie Edith.

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¶ Matins: Apprehensive about the future of newspapers? Hugging those quaint little object called “books”? Here’s a story to round out your apoplexy profile: “Stop Teaching Handwriting,” by Anne Trubeck.

¶ Lauds: First the good news; then the bad news. It’s the same story, really: Isabel Kershner’s report on a concert given by Palestinian youths for Holocaust survivors gets updated by Khaled Abu Aker, to take account of the fallout.

¶ Prime: If you are not in the mood for it to be Monday, Jonathan Soma’s interactive Singles in America map will make your day. Be sure to play with the slider at the top of the screen, and don’t overlook the cocktail party “feed” down below. (via  Things Magazine)

¶ Tierce: It’s not much of a story, really; and its topic — ostensibly the soon-to-end GM career of Rick Wagoner — is, when you get down to it, inertia. Because only inertia could explain “The Steadfast Optimist Who Oversaw GM’s Long Decline.” You have to wonder where anybody got the idea that corporate America is “dynamic.”

¶ Sext: Far and away my favorite New York City bridge, the Queensboro turns 100.

¶ Nones: If the Obama Administration is really unhappy about the Spanish prosecution of the Bush Torture Team (Gonzales, Addington, Feith &c), it can pre-empt the proceedings by seeking indictments here in the United States.

¶ Vespers: If you’re a mystery buff, you may well know about Sarah Weinman’s blog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: Crime fiction, and more. It looks to be a depot for all sorts of information about the more serious side of murder ink. (via The Morning News)

¶ Compline: From the Matter of Time Dept: “Hard-Pressed Colleges Accept More Applicants Who Can Pay Full Cost.” Depressing, but no surprise.

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¶ Matins: What if the Christianists had a book fair and nobody bought? That’s apparently what happened in Dallas last weekend. Marjorie Kehe reports, at the Christian Science Monitor.

¶ Lauds: Anne Wilkes Tucker, the Houston MFA curator who has bought a print of the Mannie Garcia image from which Shepard Fairey drew his iconic but controversial (because appropriated) poster of President Obama, gets near to the hearts of a couple of concepts about art and performance.

¶ Prime: A look at Esquire’s slideshow of “the 50 Most Stylish Men“ may explain why most American men have all the flair of navel lint.  

¶ Tierce: It’s crazy, I know, but as tent cities such as this one in Fresno pile up, I can’t help wishing that the National Guard could help.

¶ Sext: Now I get what ideography is all about. “The Little Red Riding Hood,” as informatively retold by Tomas Nilsson. (via  The Morning News)

¶ Nones: One thing that Imperial China and Party China share is an obsession with truth control. Example: “China fury at US military report.” 

¶ Vespers: I stoutly resist the temptation to observe that the world is obviously going to the dogs, &c; but when I read Mary McCarthy’s 1962 review of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, unearthed at The New Republic by  The Morning News, it’s hard not to fulminate a little around the edges.

¶ Compline: Sara Rimer advances a cause that has most of us old folks wondering why we weren’t taught about home-office management when we were kids. It’s hard to learn at sixty! (Not that Ms Rimer is anywhere near sixty!)

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¶ Matins: Regarding prisons in America: close ’em, but keep paying the guards and other workers as if the prison were operational. Count on attrition;  break the cycle of industrial corrections! (Oh, you’ve already started?)

¶ Lauds: Jaime Oliver has won a prize for inventing his Silent Drum — which is indeed silent itself but which triggers, if that’s the word, computer-generated sounds.

¶ Prime: Thought for the day: Why Twitter? I still haven’t a clue, but The Elegant Esthete thumbnails five attractors that, for many people, make Twitter irresistible. Only two of the five speak to me, so maybe that’s my answer.

¶ Tierce: Here’s hoping that a rather self-righteous AIGFG exec’s letter of resignation is duly scrutinized. Jake DeSantis claims that he had nothing to do with credit-default swaps. Is that possible?

¶ Sext: Kim Severson and Julia Moskin, colleagues at the Times’s Dining desk, find themselves thrown into competition*, to produce the better $50 dinner for six (wine not included). Ms Moskin’s entrée really appeals to me.

¶ Nones: The government of Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has fallen — not because of the economy, but because two members of the Chamber of Deputies defected from his coalition “for ideological or personal reasons.”

¶ Vespers: Vestal McIntyre’s novel, Lake Overturn, is about to appear. Pre-order it now!

¶ Compline: David Pescovitz writes about authenticity at Good: DIY funerals are better, and it helps if you make the coffin yourself (it’s easy!).

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¶ Matins: Matt Taibbi lays it all out for you, in no uncertain terms. “It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock…” (via Mike O’Neill)

¶ Lauds: Listen, it’s disgusting that female actors “age” so much faster than their male colleagues that they find themselves playing the mothers of characters played by men hardly any younger than themselves. But maybe there’s a good reason that has nothing whatever to do with crow’s feet.

¶ Prime: Confucius say, a picture is worth a thousand words. (Citation, anyone?) RJ say, a thousand words is not too many. This week’s Economist cover gets a handy explication at Strange Maps.

¶ Tierce: GM’s goal of recapturing 29% of the American auto market, set at the beginning of this decade, probably contributed to the company’s distress. (And it’s not the “29.”) (via Morning News)

¶ Sext: “You’d better take the highway, because my way is for me only”: memos from Edward Mike Davis, proprietor of the Tiger Oil family of companies, make hilarious reading now. (Via Things Magazine)

¶ Nones: It’s hard to read the BBC’s story about increased surveillance on the Mexican border without feeling that received morality makes people really, really stupid.

¶ Vespers: Is the recession/depression stomping out ambition? Choire Sicha thinks so, and he’s going to write a book about it.

¶ Compline: What impresses me about President Obama’s press conference this evening is his ability to address issues substantively but in terms that almost everyone can understand.

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