¶ Matins: It’s hard to cry real tears over the bankruptcy filing of Tribune Corp, the media empire that, among other things, has imperilled the integrity of the Los Angeles Times.

¶ Prime: At kottke.org yesterday, Jason Kottke took a look at his own early stabs at Web sites. I hope that someone will undertake a comprehensive overview of Web design history, because I’m sure that the lessons taught by evolution would be useful to know. 

¶ Tierce: What’s this? Riots in Greece? Sparked by the police shooting of a fifteen year-old boy? Okaaay… But wait. Why did you say they are rioting in Greece?

¶ Sext: Timely advice from Debrett’s/Telegraph on how to behave at the office Christmas Party. Nothing you didn’t know — which is why you ought to write it out on the palm of your hand.

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¶ Matins: We hear a lot of oppositional talk about capitalism versus socialism these days, but as a rule it’s utterly misinformed. There is no conflict, for example, between capitalist markets and socialist redistributions of wealth (ie, taxes).

Here’s one to puzzle out: the Tulfan Terrace development in Riverdale. Neighbors objected when developers wanted to put up a high-rise. The developers made promises out the proverbial wazoo that, had the building been completed, city government problem would probably have held them to. But they went broke — leaving the shell of a building. What now?

¶ Prime: Reading David Carr’s “Media Equation” column this morning, “Stoking Fear Everywhere You Look,” inspired an impish thought: what if the privileging of “diversity” has undermined genuine diversity? Consider:

Every modern recession includes a media séance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in. The same digital dynamics that drove the irrational exuberance — and marketed the loans to help it happen — are now driving the downside in unprecedented ways.

The recession was actually not officially declared until last week, but the psychology that drives it had already been e-mailed, blogged and broadcast for months. I used to worry that my TiVo thought I was gay — doesn’t everyone enjoy a little “Project Runway” at the end of a long, hard week? Now I worry that my browser knows I am about to lose my job.

¶ Compline: Here’s a book that I don’t think I’ll be reading: Mrs Astor Regrets. I’m still digesting the revelations of The Last Mrs Astor. Frances Kiernan’s book used up all of my Schadenfreude. Rich, dysfunctional families are always interesting, because the dysfunction usually stems from inattentiveness, and people do overlook the most obvious things. But it was unpleasant to see the nimbus of grande-damitude tarnish. (more…)

¶ Matins: Now that, for the first time, Thai King Bhumibol is unable to make an important regular appearance, the uncertainty of his country’s future greatly intensifies, over and above the chaos caused by last week’s occupation, by the pro-royalist (and thuggishly anti-democratic) PAD, of the major airports. The king is widely regarded as standing above the fray, and always inclining his support toward the cause of democracy. The Economist, long opposed to Thailand’s stringent lèse-majesté laws, challenges this “fairy-tale” view.

¶ Nones: And in Turkey, Leyla Zana, Kurdish politician and winner of the 1995 Sakharov human rights award, has been sentenced to ten (more) years in prison, for terrorist speech.

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¶ Matins: Musing on the Times’ ten best books of 2008 — of which I’ve read only one.

¶ Sext: Lance Arthur has decided to come out of the closet — as an atheist. This means more than just writing about his lack of faith in his (latest) blog, Just Write.

 ¶ Nones: And we thought it was just us… Every now and then, somebody writes about the fact that almost all advertised watches are set at (roughly) 10:10. The other day, it was Andrew Adam Newman, at the Times. (For Timex, it’s 10:09:36; at Rolex, it’s 10:10:31.) Now Kathleen and I scan the ads for watches that are set at odd times. (via kottke.org)

 ¶ Vespers: Two new biographies of Samuel Johnson occasion one of Adam Gopnik’s invaluable essays.

The worst of literary faults for him is, exactly, tediousness. “We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and over-burdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master and seek for companions.” (His firmest statement on art was that it should be “harmless pleasure.” He knew it would shock in its Philistinism, but he stood by it.) Johnson was certainly “serious” about literature, but he thought that writing was serious as conversation is serious, an occasion for wit and argument, not as sex and sermons are serious, a repository of fears and hungers.

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¶ Matins: Roger Ebert’s complaint about the “CelebCult” — the news about “divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals” that is killing contemporary journalism at the speed of liver cancer — is remarkable for the quality of comments that it has attracted, most of which are (dauntingly!) worth reading, especially the ones that Mr Ebert has answered.

But when I read Jason Kottke’s entry about the post — Mr Kottke shares Mr Ebert’s dismay — I thought: all very well, but what are we to do? This led me to wonder if a misguided interest in gossip is really the problem.

¶ Tierce: This morning’s Times brings a nice column by David Leonhardt, “Budgets Behaving Badly,” that extends the hope that Barack Obama will staff his administration with behavioral economists. He has already nominated one, Peter Orszag, for budget director.

¶ Compline: Now that the Episcopal Church is finally splitting, with the conservatives abandoning the mother ship for their shriveled-up future, one can only wonder how long it will take American Catholics of conscience to break with Rome in the name of true Christian values.

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¶ Matins: Aren’t economists great? Now they tell us: “Recession Began Last December, Economists Say.”

¶ Tierce: Pankaj Mishra’s Op-Ed piece, “Fresh Blood From an Old Wound,” throws another log on the fire for resolving territorial disputes, some of which are older than most people alive today. Tibet, Palestine, Kashmir — these vexing contests between arrogant sovereignties and fierce patriots clearly require a unified focus. In their details, these problems differ greatly, but their consequences in the greater world are dismayingly similar. We need a permanent UN Commission to deal with territorial disputes (perhaps there already is one!), or at least to provide a forum for discussing them.

¶ Vespers: George was there: on the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk, George Snyder sat in a theatre in the Castro and watched Sean Penn impersonate the slain civil rights leader.

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¶ Matins: The story of McGeorge Bundy’s career as a presidential adviser, told now by Gordon M Goldstein (who worked with Bundy during the last year of his life on a collaborative project that had to be shelved when Bundy’s widow withdrew her support), promises to be a powerful cautionary tale about the limits of early brilliance. Dean of faculty at Harvard at the age of 34, Bundy was all but doomed by his precocity (and his impeccably WASP bloodlines) to trust his innate intelligence more than anyone else’s experience. That such a man counseled two presidents to forge ahead violently in Vietnam would hardly be more horrifying if we learned that Bundy was in fact a vampire who fed on soldiers’ blood.

Richard Holbrooke, who was in the room at the height of Bundy’s influence, reviews Mr Goldstein’s book, saying, “On the long shelf of Vietnam books, I know of nothing quite like it.”

¶ Prime: Who’d a thunk it? According to Brian Stelter’s story, “A Generation of Local TV Anchors Is Signing Off,” just over half of Americans watch local TV news regularly, compared to the 34% who read newspapers and the (only!) 29% who watch network news.

¶ Tierce: Thanks to kottke.org, I’ve just discovered a very promising blog: A Historian’s Craft, kept by “fledgling historian” Rachel Leow. In “Only Collect,” she observes that the only way to become a good hunter of information is to begin voraciously and indiscriminately.

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¶ Matins: So often, reading stories in the business section is like watching fish dart in a rolling stream. Glints of brilliant suggestion disappear almost immediately. What does the following passage, taken from Michael de la Merced’s lengthy story about the bailout to date, actually mean?

“What hasn’t improved is the psychology,” said Max Bublitz, chief strategist at SCM Advisors, an investment firm based in San Francisco. “This thing has morphed from a credit market issue into a banking crisis into an economic crisis.”

¶ Sext: Michael Kinsley writes about a new state of mind: not wanting to buy something cool.

But ultimately even the bargain didn’t seduce me. My mind followed an unfamiliar path. I thought of all the coffee makers we already have, and how each of them had let us down. I thought about another clock to reset twice a year or face its accusatory blinking in the kitchen dark. I asked myself whether attempting to master another set of instructions written in English as a Second Language was really the best use of a month of my time.

For possibly the first time ever, I considered the question of getting the thing home (the issue: juggle coffee maker and fare card on the Metro, or eat up my bargain with a $20 cab ride) before I owned it rather than after. I even remembered — as I had vowed to do the last time my consumer confidence boiled over like this — the trauma of disposing the corrugated cardboard box and all those infuriating blocks of Styrofoam. I went home empty-handed, and my consumer confidence was shot.

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¶ Matins: I have not had the pleasure of meeting Andy Towle in person, but I understand that he is not a tall man. It now appears that everybody understands that he is not a tall man. So well that the little surprise at the end of this clip of Rick and Steve needs no explanation. If I were Andy, I’d slap me silly for laughing so hard. As I said in a recent entry, I’m pretty mixed up these days, but that’s no excuse. (Thanks, Joe.)

¶ Tierce: Something in Brent Bowers’s story about executive coaching, small businesses, and overcoming understandable anxiety caught my eye. It has to do with a state-change that, inevitably it seems, faces entrepreneurs as their enterprises grow.

¶ Nones: The brains of bullies appear to be wired differently, according to fMRI studies. Tara Parker-Pope reports.

While the study is small, the striking differences shown in the brain scans suggests that bullies may have major differences in how their brains process information compared to non-bullies. Dr. Decety said the aggressive adolescents showed a strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum, areas of the brain that respond to feeling rewarded. The finding “suggested that they enjoyed watching pain,” he said. Notably, the control group of youths who weren’t prone to aggressive behavior showed a response in the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction, areas of the brain involved in self regulation.

This comes as no surprise, and yet it seems to add some urgency to the question of how we deal with such information.

¶ Vespers: Amazingly, this doesn’t happen more often: “American Idol reject found dead near Paula Abdul’s home.” Although I would not outlaw it, I can’t see reality television as anything but debased, debasing, and utterly inhumane.

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¶ Matins: How quickly swings swing! Just the other day, we were America the Ugly; benighted, shortsighted, and all but indicted. Now, we’re the progressives, because we have the kind of president that Europeans, who have, er, racist problems of their own, know they could never elect.

¶ Lauds: Greetings from the East Side.

¶ Tierce: I’ll admit that my “solution” to the Detroit problem (dissolve the companies and pension off the workers) is drastic in every way. At least it has the advantage of making Thomas Friedman’s proposal look doable.

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¶ Matins: Lord, how long: “Border Inspector Accused of Allowing 3,000 Pounds of Cocaine Into U.S. Over 5 Years.”

¶ Prime: Eric Patton posts an entry at Sore Afraid about once a week, and he makes that restraint work to his advantage — or at least to the advantage of the things that are on his mind, which tumble out in the most interesting ways. This week’s amble takes him from spirituality to narcissism — two sides of the same coin in more ways than one, if I may pile up the clichés. And there is usually a very funny cut-up segue.

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¶ Matins: David Carr writes about a momentous meeting, a little over eighteen months ago, between Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen and a

junior member of a large and powerful organization with a thin, but impressive, résumé, he was about to take on far more powerful forces in a battle for leadership.

Guess who the other guy was.

¶ Tierce: Ailing GM can’t cut off its union workers — not quite yet — but white collar retirees can kiss their “gold-plated” health care goodbye. Nick Bunkley reports.

¶ Sext: Eric Pfanner’s somewhat breathless account of the state of play between Google and book publishers nonetheless conveys a good idea of where books are going. And it does indeed look like a good idea.

¶ Vespers: It’s not the potato-stuck-up-the-bum that’s funny. It’s the idea that anybody would believe the story of how it got there.

The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table.

He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game.

(Thanks, Joe.)

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¶ Matins: Timothy Egan puts his finger on exactly what’s been bothering me since Barack Obama’s victory — bothering me like an itch, not like a problem.

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice on the question of what to do when your dreams come true: don’t tell anyone.

Conversely, what do we do when our darkest fears, our hardened conventional wisdom and our historic homilies are all found to be hooey? Shout it from the rooftops.

I can’t believe that I can really shout good news from the rooftops.

¶ Lauds: A European friend of mine decided to spend his vacation in Chicago. Boy, did he choose wisely. Before the election, he visited the Art Institute and took this picture, which we’ve all seen so many times that we can’t remember or even imagine not knowing it.

¶ Tierce: Aaron Ross of Bergenfield, in a Letter to the Editor, claims,

“Equality’s Winding Path” (editorial, Nov. 6) reveals the true rift over the divisive issue of gay-marriage bans.

You refer to the “ugly outcomes” of the votes, the “defeat for fairness” and “unfair treatment” of “vulnerable groups” — all terms indicative of the fact that you see this issue as one of rights.

The fact that 30 states have now passed similar bans on same-sex marriage should perhaps alert you to the fact that not everyone has accepted that version of the issue, and that many Americans have chosen to define gay marriage not as an issue of rights but as one of morality.

As a country, we are still firmly rooted in a Judeo-Christian ethic that leaves certain unions outside of the pale of acceptability.

This language, although calm enough is startlingly reminiscent of the outraged opposition to granting full civil rights to Black Americans fifty years ago.
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¶ Matins: Perhaps, with the White House out of wingnut hands at last, humanists of all stripes, religious and not, will be able more effectively to confront the fringe of christianists who abuse everything about their ostensible faith in order to sustain a doddering status quo. Consider what they’re doing to my good friend Joe. This, from the spokesman for a law firm called the “Liberty Counsel”:

“Gays” Call for Violence Against Christian Supporters of Prop 8…

Meanwhile, over at JoeMyGod.blogspot.com, “World O Jeff,” said, “Burn their f–ing churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers.” While, “Tread,” wrote, “I hope the No on 8 people have a long list and long knives.” “Joe,” stated, “I swear, I’d murder people with my bare hands this morning.”

Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Alliance Action and Liberty Counsel, said, “This is not just a matter of some people blowing off steam because they’re not happy with a political outcome. This is criminal activity. The homosexual lobby is always calling for ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’ and playing the role of victim. They claim to deplore violence and ‘hate.’ Here we have homosexuals inciting, and directly threatening, violence against Christians. This is not free speech; these are ‘hate crimes’ under the existing definition. Imagine if Christian Web sites were advocating such violence against homosexuals. There’d be outrage, and rightfully so. It’d be national front-page news. Federal authorities should immediately investigate these threats and prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law. I also call on the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and other leaders within the homosexual lobby to immediately call for an end to these homosexual threats of violence against Christians.”

Anyone who hasn’t paid attention to the Prop 8 fight in California just might think that Mr Barber has a point, but nobody else will.

¶ Tierce: Nicholas Kulish writes about the resurgent popularity of the legendary Baltic pirate, Klaus Störtebeker. Störtebeker, beheaded in 1401, stole from the rich (Hanse merchants) and gave to the poor — or at least divvied up the loot with his mates. What with the rising income inequality that’s bothering more people everywhere, Germans are dusting off a legend that hasn’t, in fact, gathered much dust: Störtebeker was a hit with the Nazis and also with the East Germans, at least in the early days of the DDR. One hitch:

¶ Sext: From Taipei, Edward Hong reports on a rare, high-level, but calm and dipomatic meeting of officials from the Republic of China and from the People’s Republic of China.

¶ Compline: In the midst of all this suffocating seriousness, there’s a new magazine of fresh air: Dowager Quarterly. This month’s tattle-tale story: “Wild Nights at Frogmore: the Victoria I Knew.”

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¶ Matins: Kathleen and I watched Senator McCain’s very gracious, very statesmanlike concession speech. We hugged. But we did not jump for joy. We are not breaking out the champagne. We ought to be very happy. Instead we feel deeply abused around the edges. By Reagan and the Bushes and the people who put them in the White House. That’s not going to change overnight.

Barack Obama’s victory is a great thing, and I shall never forget “November 4, 2008.” Kathleen and I are deeply thrilled that he and the Democratic Congress will fill impending Supreme Court vacancies with jurists capable of neutralizing Antonin Scalia. The great slogging job of repairing the Federal judiciary and the Civil Service can begin. The ideologues have been sent packing, and thinking may come back into fashion in our political discourse.

Imagine that!

¶ Tierce: The view from là-bas.

¶ Nones: Certainly no American president has looked as right for the part as Barack Obama, seen up close at The Big Picture. He makes JFK look rather like Bill Clinton — or perhaps that’s the benefit of hindsight, knowing what we know about what went on in Camelot’s swimming pool.

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¶ Prime: I’ve just heard from a neighbor — all right, Joe — that it took almost two hours to vote this morning. The line stretched so far around the block that it almost met itself.

In this morning’s Times, Adam Nagourney writes about how different this campaign has been, especially with regard to the Internet. We’ll find out later today what kind of a difference it made in the outcome.

¶ Sext: Here’s something that I just got wind of: a PBS Poll asking listeners to vote on Sarah Palin’s qualifications. It appears that convervatives had advance notice of this poll, and have been flooding the site with “Yes” votes. The result will be that PBS listeners think that Ms Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President — unless you do your part!

¶ Vespers: With less than an hour to go before the first polls close, I’m keeping busy with other things but keeping this page at the ready, to follow the states turning red and blue.

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¶ Matins: As we pray our way through this Good Monday of the most desperately-needed resurrection in the history of secular affairs, it is necessarily with some bitterness that we remember, at the newspaper’s own invitation, that the Times thought that Richard Press’s Op-Ed art was funny enough in 2000 to be funny now. I am still crying alongside this man.

¶ Tierce: Doing the math:

The canal still remains the most fuel-efficient way to ship goods between the East Coast and the upper Midwest. One gallon of diesel pulls one ton of cargo 59 miles by truck, 202 miles by train and 514 miles by canal barge, Ms. Mantello said. A single barge can carry 3,000 tons, enough to replace 100 trucks.

Yes! The Erie Canal still works. And as for the mode of transportation that sent the canals into decline…

¶ Sext: Here’s a study to file away, along with Judith Harris’s findings generally: college students, who are, for the most part adolescents, take their political cues (as well as most other ones) from their peers, not their professors. Patricia Cohen reports.

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¶ Lauds: Michael Jackson’s Thriller is being reissued — not something that you would expect to read about here. But LXIV sent me the link to a story from Soul Tracks that’s full of interesting numbers. In 1984, Thriller sold 27 million “units” (LPs, tapes, and perhaps even a few CDs). The most recent big-seller sold only 4. The pop market has fractured into splinters.  

What this means for classical music recordings…

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¶ Matins: You know the drill: first you read the hard stuff, and, then, if you’re really good, there’s a fun picture below the jump. Let me thank, preliminarily, JMG and Wonkette — but don’t touch those links! First, the hard part. First, you must know that

In early August in her prayer time Cindy heard the Lord say, “There will be no more business as usual.”

No, I didn’t know who Cindy Jacobs was, either. It turns out that she’s one of those astute Jahwists who don’t know dingo about Scripture. (Now you may jump.)

¶ Tierce: Howard Schultz and Arthur Rubinfeld, two men who thought that they had retired from the ardors of selling that old black magic at Starbucks, are back at work, hoping to save the baby. (Actually, Mr Schultz has been back since January. Here is Mr Rubinfeld’s rejuvenation plan in one sentence.

Now that he is again leading Starbucks’s real estate team, Mr. Rubinfeld says he will focus on adding stores to urban areas — where there is already a near-saturation of the coffee market, but also a preponderance of affluent young professionals who subsist on fancy coffee drinks.

I hate to say it, but this sounds like Richard Fuld’s insistence that all was well at Lehman Bros. All those affluent young professionals have turned into Ugly Bettys.

¶ Vespers: There’s a career here for me — or there would be if I were a twentysomething: “Does This Song Match My Sofa?” I would specialize in classy sounds for the classically unsure.

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¶ Matins: As everybody knows, the Dow took flight yesterday. I wouldn’t be mentioning it if it weren’t for a call that I got from Kathleen at about twenty to four. “I’m going to ring the closing bell,” she said. “On CNBC.” Then she had to go.

¶ Tierce: If you were to ask me why I’m going to vote for Barack Obama, I’d answer with Charles Savage’s appraisal of the Federal judiciary, which the Bush Administration has pushed in a patriarchal direction that can only bring obloquy on our system of justice in the long run.

But the fact that you were asking would send me to another piece in today’s Times: “Report on Iraq Lists 610 Contractors,” James Glanz’s report on the Wild-West irregulation that a plethora of privatized goon squads has introduced into Iraqi affairs — all as the result of the wingnut ideology that has poisoned the Republican Party.

¶ Nones: I knew there was a silver lining: “Plastic Surgeons, Not Immune From the Economic Slump, Report a Decline in Cosmetic Procedures.” Natasha Singer reports.

¶ Compline: In a tough decision, Britain’s High Court decided against Debbie Purdy, who was diagnosed with MS in 1995 and who sought a clear position on assisted suicide from the Director of Public Prosecutions. Peter Walker reports.

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