¶ Matins: Now this is more like it: the Coffee Party. Kate Zernike’s account is almost too good to be true. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: Steve Smith writes, lucidly as always, about the Kronos Quartet. (We believe that everyone ought to have at least one album.) (NYT)

¶ Prime: At New York, Justin Davidson reports on proposals to make New York safe from rising sea levels precisely by opening up to them.

¶ Tierce: Melissa Healy confirms our suspicions: merely listening to music doesn’t build better brains. (LA Times; via Arts Journal)

¶ Sext: Dave Bry may be getting to the bottom of his barrel of sins, and, frankly, he doesn’t sound altogether penitential, but we found, after we read the story, that “No, you shut up” is a truly refreshing remark. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: We never did understand how “North Atlantic” comprised the Black Sea: at Real Clear World, Daniel McGroarty reports on Russia’s determination to restore its hegemony on the inland sea despite neighboring NATO alliances. (via The Morning News)

¶ Vespers: At The Rumpus, a long and occasionally bizarre interview with an interestingly strange lady, Paula Fox.

¶ Compline: “Weaponizing Mozart“: Haven’t the Brits read A Clockwork Orange? (reason.com; via MetaFilter)

¶ Matins: Peggy Nelson outlines the End of the Etiquette of the Individual in the Beginning of the Etiquette of the Flow. Or, in our view, the Apotheosis of ADD. (Hilobrow)

¶ Lauds: Yale Art Dean Robert Storr had a good time at the Kunsthaus Graz last year, but by and large he is horrified by “Death Star” contemporary art museums. (Frieze, via The Morning News)

¶ Prime: At FiveThirtyEight, Hale Stewart piles on a lot of numbers showing that the American economy has not given up manufacturing. The plethora of graphs is worth the wade. What we’re losing jobs to is not foreign factories but domestic productivity. (But maybe you knew that.) (via Abnormal Returns)

¶ Tierce: While readers are busy digesting Jonah Lehrer’s piece on depression in the Times Magazine — and his response to early criticism — we fastened on his contribution to a blog about insomnia, which ends with the following horrible conundrum, all too familiar to the Editor. (Frontal Cortex)

¶ Sext: How to grow a beard. At BYU, that is. (Cynical-C Blog; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Nones: Here’s hoping that a Tennessee’s judge’s grant of political asylum — to a German couple that want to home-school their children, illegal in their native Germany — is overturned by a higher court. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: John Self likes The Unnamed more than he thought he would. Somewhat maddeningly, Mr Self asks if anyone has read Alan Lightman’s The Diagnosis, a novel with a seemingly similar “story.” We just gave our copy away! (The Asylum)

¶ Compline: Graham Robb writes about the semiotics of gargoyles, or somesuch. (London Review of Books)

¶ Matins: “Can psychiatry be a science?” asks Louis Menand in the current New Yorker. The welter of conflicting conclusions that he proceeds to lay out for us seems to require, at a minimum, an answer of “Not yet!” By the end of the piece, however, Mr Menand is wondering if science can ever be enough for psychiatry.

¶ Lauds: If the American embassy proposed for Battersea has any friends, they’re keeping mum. (Evening Standard)

¶ Prime: At 24/7, Douglas McIntyre expresses boilerplate outrage at the fees charged by lawyers and others to wind up Lehman Brothers — $642 million — but counsels against claw-back. (via Felix Salmon)

¶ Tierce: s this the journalistic equivalent of coitus interruptus, or is there a really big story smouldering in Governor Paterson’s lap? A few weeks ago, the jungle drums promised a big Times story that might require the Mr Paterson to resign. ! Then, not so much. Now it’s hard to tell whose seat is hotter, the governor’s or the newspaper’s.

¶ Sext: Kevin Hartnett wonders how much longer young people will get to know their parents through old bookshelves. (The Millions)

¶ Nones: At The Economist, closing notes on a roundtable on the viability and desirability of a European Monetary Fund. By and large, the commenters don’t see the need for a new institution.

¶ Vespers: In an excellent piece on the faith of Flannery O’Connor, Terry Teachout illuminates the orienting role that O’Connor’s Catholicism played in her ongoing study of the Protestants all around her. (Commentary; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Compline: Ron Rosenbaum waxes rapturous about the — Dickensian? Dostoevskian? — moral tone of crime stories in the New York Post. (Slate; via Arts Journal)

¶ Matins: The exercise in “militainment” known as America’s Army may be the cheapest recruiting technique since the English kings fostered village archery.

The introduction of video gaming into military training is so hugely inevitable that there is no reason to have an opinion about it. We believe, however, that it portends a smarter and more effective military. Not to mention the opportunity to attain military glory in peacetime, through games that bring the honor described by Virgil in the Iliad. (Foreign Policy; via The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: David Cope, the creator of an AI program that composed plausible fakes of Bach and Mozart, is about to unveil its successor, Emily Howell. (Miller-McCune; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Prime: The author of Economists for Firing Larry Summers has a question for Fed Chief Bernanke: Remember? (How much easier it is to give advice when one doesn’t need any.)

¶ Tierce: Today’s truly with-it potager has to be a garden planted on a restaurants rooftop. As Jerry James Jones notes, hydroponics sidelines fertilizer production and runoff. (Treehugger; via Good)

¶ Sext: Cord Jefferson wonders if he ought to be dressing in “Old Money Green.” (The Awl)

¶ Nones: Not again! According to BBC News, the Argentians are calling the Falklands “Las Malvinas” again — at the United Nations.

¶ Vespers: Laura Miller proposes five rules for novelists who aspire to attract readers, but we think that her concluding paragraph could be repackaged as an all-important sixth, entitled, “If you have to try to be a genius, you’re not one; so give it up and get on.” (Salon; via Arts Journal)

¶ Compline: Jonathan Gourlay, who might be accused of having gone native, pretends to be an outsider, as he brings us up to speed on adultery in Pohnpei, which is much like adultery anywhere, only watch out for women wearing trousers. (The Bygone Bureau)

¶ Matins: At The Second Pass, Michael Rymer appraises David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, and although he finds the book to be “hobbled,” he reminds us that cracked explanations appeal by telling a good story.

¶ Lauds: In one interview, or perhaps two, Ewan McGregor talks to the Wall Street Journal and to its popular-scene blog, Speakeasy, about working with Roman Polanski and his “upcoming projects.”

¶ Prime: Few pundits share David Brooks’s gift for papering over surprising omissions with a patina of reasonable patter that sounds comprehensive. In a recent column, for example, Mr Brooks finds regrettable drawbacks in the “meritocratic” nature of the American elite. He attributes the fact that respect for “our institutions” has “plummeted” to all sorts of interesting slippages among the alleged holders of power, from rootlessness to insensitivity to “context.” One factor that goes unmentioned, however, is an income disparity that has left too many Americans without much of a reason to respect anything. Chris Lehman rebuts with the suggestion that nation may have become even less progressive than it was in the 1950s. (NYT, The Awl)

¶ Tierce: At The Infrastructurist, Yonah Freemark considers alternatives to concrete in the paving of sidewalks. Brick and stone are more attractive, but brick is fragile and stone is expensive, and both make for uneven surfaces. Who’d a thunk it: the bane of recycling may do the trick.

¶ Sext: Having thought the matter over, Mike Johnston decided that merely crediting the maker of a YouTube clip that he embedded at The Online Photographer. And he sent Harlan Ellison $25. And he got a thank-you note.

(Information may want to be free, but it doesn’t have to eat.)

¶ Nones: Sebnem Arsu’s report on the latest arrest of alleged military conspirators in Turkey clarifies some of the complexity in which national sovereignty is entangled, as newly empowered religious conservatives seek an alternative to the militant secularism of Turkey’s Twentieth-Century past. The alignment of values is altogether unlike what’s familiar in the Christian West. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Now that some time has passed by, and the brouhaha is all but forgotten, Maud Newton pauses over The Original of Laura and finds it to be a fitting finale to Vladimir Nabokov’s career.

¶ Compline: Why unignited natural gas stinks: the New London School Explosion of 1937. (via MetaFilter)

¶ Matins: Despite misgivings, we have set our fear of a Trojan Horse aside, and decided to take an essay from The American Conservative at face value: evidence of real discussion in the conservative community — no more. With fairly painstaking analysis of the numbers, Ron Unz dismantles “His-Panic.”

¶ Lauds: Jens Laurson packs a bundle of history into a brief account of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, not only one of the oldest and largest of its kind but certainly the the most prestigious. Contrary to unexamined opinion, orchestras don’t grow on trees. (Ionarts)

¶ Prime: The Epicurean Dealmaker professes to evince what’s wrong with Goldman Sachs from the behavior of its PR man, Lucas van Praag.

¶ Tierce: Although we are confident that Descartes’s “psychological” metaphors will one day be overturned, we must acknowledged that that day has not yet arrived. Jonah Lehrer, at The Frontal Cortex:

¶ Sext: We’re not making this up! There used to be an irrational exuberance for portraits of Alan Greenspan, and Erin Crowe was to the go-to Gainsborough. Times have changed. (WSJ, via Arts Journal)

¶ Nones: On the occasion of Dick Francis’s death, the London Review of Books reminds us of a very strong appreciation of his work by Wendy Doniger from 1998. 

¶ Vespers: On the occasion of Dick Francis’s death, the London Review of Books reminds us of a very strong appreciation of his work by Wendy Doniger from 1998. 

¶ Compline: We’ll let you work out the relationship between Common Sense and Conformity for yourself. (Hint: they have little in common!) First, William Polley on Common Sense. Second, at Psyblog, “Ten Timeless Influencers” of Conformity. Dissent is the second.

¶ Matins: Rochelle Gurstein has thought up a brilliant satire of John Rawls’s “original position” that, very much like Swift’s famous “Modest Proposal,” is intended to make people stop and think, after they’ve had their laugh. This stopping and thinking is an element that she finds from popular satire today. (The New Republic; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Lauds: Perhaps the most memorable celebration of Django Reinhardt’s centennial was Steve Jobs’s use of “Swing Guitars” to introduce the iPad. Will Friedwald celebrates the gypsy king at the Wall Street Journal.

¶ Prime: Tyler Cowen asks, “Is there a case for a VAT?” and outlines an argument that foresees the possibility of a credit collapse that would dwarf what’s happening in Greece. Mr Cowen also points to a lucid Op-Ed piece by Gregory Mankiw, “What’s Sustainable About This Budget?” (Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: In the guise of a “backward glance,” assessing our times from the vantage of 2210, Spencer Weart endeavors to put the climate fight in perspective. (NYT)

¶ Sext: Cathy Erway may live in the restaurant/take-out capital of the United States, but she foreswore eating out for not one but two years. She talks with Borborygmi about her reasons, which, while sound, implicitly make the case that the uneducated poor cannot follow in her footsteps. (Good)

¶ Nones: How was Hamas exponent Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killed? By a team of expert assassins? Or by a bunch of bumblers? We guess it depends on whom you read.

¶ Vespers:  The Daily Blague is committed to the idea that favorable reviews are invariably more useful and informative than unfavorable ones, but every now and then we get down off our high horse — or, rather, we let other people vent. At Open Letters Monthly, seven oxen, some of them quite well known, are gored with aplomb, under the rubric “Bad Books, Good Hooks.” Lisa Peet, for example, loves reading about “moral” dogs, but she excoriates David Wroblewski for the ending of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which she considers a betrayal of everything foregoing.

¶ Compline: Craig Risen critiques Joan Didion: “Hello to All That.” Da noive! What nails Mr Risen’s case is his concluding paragraph, which introduces Joseph Mitchell into the discussion. Now, there’s an interrogation! (The Morning News)

¶ Matins: The ACLU has brought suit on behalf of a student who was unreasonably detained by TSA operatives simply because he was carrying Arabic-language flash cards (“to smile,” “funny,” &c). This sort of thing makes us feel that we’re in a Laurel & Hardy sketch, but one in which the pratfalls really hurt, and may even be fatal. (Crooks And Liars; via MetaFilter)

¶ Lauds: We’ve all seen the tantrum scene from Der Untergang (Downfall) at least half a dozen times, each reiteration spliced to different, highly parodic subtitles. Linda Yablonsky is brave but correct to praise the latest entry, “Hitler Learns MOCA Job Goes to Jeffrey Deitch.” The clip is funny in a way that it wouldn’t be if, say, it were “Hitler Learns New Yorker job goes to William Shawn.” (T)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon slams the nonsense that is “market reporting.”

¶ Tierce: At The Infrastructurist, Yonah Freemark reports on the use of robots to clear the floor of the Baltic Sea of mines left over from World War II, in connection with the controversial laying of a natural gas pipeline.

¶ Sext: Maria Popova shares links to six on-line sources of inexpensive artwork.  We went right over to  Eye Buy Art and bought two photographs by Ryan Schude. (Brain Pickings)

¶ Nones: Slow boats to China are hot right now — and maybe forever. Elisabeth Rosenthal’s “Slow Trip Across Sea Aids Profit and Environment.” (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Garth Risk Hallberg nominates Dave Eggers as the next editor of The Paris Review, and follows it up with a persuasive discussion, placing both the periodical and the writer in a context that has them looking made for each other. (The Millions)

¶ Compline: We’ve been reading bits and pieces of Lawrence Lessig’s “How to Get Our Democracy Back” for so many days now that we didn’t think that it could be news (according to Christopher Shea at Brainiac) that the proposal is the “most trafficked” item at The Nation‘s site in the past six months. In fact, it is dated 3 February, so we have been reading it for ages. But it has begun to sound the ring of a classic declaration.

¶ Matins: We remind you that it is your civic responsibility to stay abreast of national affairs, even at the risk of being supremely depressed by Elizabeth Drew’s brief history of Congressional health care bills since the Massachusetts by-election. There don’t seem to be any good guys in this story, only less-bad ones. And it’s difficult to avoid holding the electorate itself responsible. Which, in a democracy, means that everything is just fine.  (NYRB)

¶ Lauds: Mary Louise Schumacher writes about the artist-in-residence program at Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel. The public is invited to vote for the finalists. (JSOnline; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Tara Siegel Bernard reports with a reasonable degree of lucidity (for the Times) on the push to impose fiduciary liability on stockbrokers and insurance agents.

¶ Tierce: On the unlikelihood of attaining warp speed anytime soon: Johns Hopkins researcher William Edelstein describes the obstacles to NewScientist.

¶ Sext: Jonathan Harris needs a diagnosis.

¶ Nones: Reading Edward Hugh’s detailed account of the troubled Greek economy, at A Fistful of Euros, we wonder if being better-informed wouldn’t intensify popular German opposition to Eurogroup bailouts. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: A long but rich interview at Prospect: Tom Chatfield talks to Martin Amis. Be the first on your block to read what Mr Amis thinks of J M Coetzee!

¶ Compline:  William Pannapacker, writing as “Thomas H Benton,” issues a warning, at Chron Higher Ed, reminiscent of Dante: Abandon all hope, ye who enter graduate school programs in the Humanities!

¶ Matins: Paul Krugman’s column on the “Euromess” is well-worth thinking about, especially if you’ve read Jane Jacobs’s Cities and the Wealth of Nations. The real thrust of the piece, however, is Mr Krugman’s warning against elitist prematurity.

 (It has never been satisfactorily explained to us why the Euro could not have been floated as a supplementary currency.)

Mr Krugman believes that Spain and Greece would be better off as states in a federal republic, but we don’t believe that arrangement is working so well on this side of the Atlantic as it is. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: At The Millions, Buzz Poole writes about a photography show in Milwaukee, Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940-1959, that marks the era in which we learned that the camera is not doomed to truth-telling.

¶ Prime: Was Ruth Simmons taking Felix Salmon’s advice when she resigned from the Goldman Sachs board? It would be very pretty to think so!

¶ Tierce: It was very pretty to think that Rom Houben, the “locked-in” accident victim, had been let out of his mental prison, but last fall’s announcement sparked some reservations that now turn out to have been justified. Andy Coghlan writes in Short Sharp Science.

¶ Sext: At Boston.com, Chris Clarke provides a universal template for writing incendiary blog posts.

¶ Nones: The attempt to divide the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, creating a new state called Telangana, continues to rouse partisan violence.

The Telangana partition ought to be of the first interest to all students of democracy. Authoritarian states can redraw administrative and political maps as needed (whether or not in self-interest), but democratic governments must pull off the trick of persuading interest groups who have no interest in being persuaded. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers:  Tom McCarthy discusses the post-nouveau aesthetic of Jean-Philippe Toussaint, a writer “bearing that quintessentially French distinction of being Belgian. (LRB)

¶ Compline: Writing about the rather unsurprising perils facing housemaids in early modern England, in History Today, R C Richardson discusses the amazing case of Anne Greene, whose vindication was thought to be nothing less than miraculous.

¶ Matins: Remember when we didn’t know much of anything about autism, not really? Now, it seems, we know less. Michelle Dawson shoots off ten “off the cuff thoughts” about the criteria for a diagnosis of autism prescribed by the DSM-V. (The Autism Crisis; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Lauds: The late-June date is set for the Sotheby’s auction of Polaroid’s corporate photography collection, which is expected to bring $9 million (plus or minus 2). Critics would prefer to keep the collection both intact and in the hands of a known entity. Few of the photographs were purchases; many were exchanged, for free cameras, with famous photographers. Ansel Adams was the original de facto curator. (NYT)

The liquidation of the collection is required by bankruptcy proceedings involving Polaroid’s corporate parent. (Bloomberg)

¶ Prime: If George Cloutier is right about how to run a business, then we might as well nuke the planet, because his outlook is so profoundly antisocial that no social benefit can compensate for its utter inhumanity. “Fire Your Relatives. Scare Your Employees. And Stop Whining.”

Our bet is that a businessman such as George Cloutier has only his unattractive personal difficulty to work with. (NYT)

¶ Tierce: Linda Geddes exploited her very own wedding as a science project: before and after the ceremony, blood was drawn from the the bride, the groom, and other members of the wedding party so that levels of oxytocin and several other hormones (including testosterone) could be measured. (New Scientist)

¶ Sext: George Snyder takes us on a visit to Warter Priory, a horrible old pile that, sadly nonetheless, was torn down nearly forty years ago. The tinted postcard is worthy of Edward Gorey. George’s dish is even tastier.

¶ Nones: Who’s going to succeed Lybian leader Moammar al-Gaddafi? As Hugh Miles notes, this is a question not only of who but of how as well, because the Colonel is not a conventional head of state. Rather, he is the revolutionary leader. His second son (a likely contender, according to Mr Miles) would like to come to power “under the provisions of a constitution.” (LRB)

¶ Vespers: At Survival of the Book, Brian writes about Scott Brown’s impending contribution to the shelf of “polibrity books.”

¶ Compline:  Compline: Lauro Martines reviews a book about the burgeoning field of public health, during an outbreak of plague in late-Sixteenth-Century Italy. We can only hope that Mr Martines will write his own book about these developments, even though (or precisely because) the 1570s are outside his established specialty, which is the Early Renaissance in Italy. (TimesOnline)

¶ Matins:  Where have all the busybodies gone? Whitney Carpenter, writing at The Bygone Bureau, suggests that you answer this question with a glance in the mirror.

Consider: the news about Niall; Pete Warden’s geographical analysis of Facebook networks; and the fact that the Paterson story has been denied by the Times, which was expected to drop a bombshell. Who would notice busybodies in this environment?

¶ Lauds: Dan Callahan writes about one of our favorite actresses, Mary Astor, at Bright Lights. His analysis of Astor’s performance in The Maltese Falcon — looking for the “real” Brigid O’Shaughnessy — is not to be missed.

¶ Prime: The idea of the celebrity director, invited to join a corporate board in order to confer cultural tone or, worse actually, diversity, gets sent to the cleaners by Felix Salmon.

¶ Tierce: Sharon Begley explains why so many affluent women of a certain age look like dolls: “Hello Botox, Bye-Bye Sadness — But Not for the Reasons You Think.” (Newsweek; via Arts Journal)

¶ Sext: We always knew that Joe Jervis was a prince; now he turns out to be a prince from Wales. A good friend is an avid genealogist.

¶ Nones: Greece has been hobbled by massive strikes and rallies, protesting austerity measures that the government must undertake in order to restore the nation’s credit-worthiness. Guess who helped Greece get into this pickle? Our friends at Goldman Sachs, of course! Beat Balzli reports in Spiegel Online. (via Felix Salmon)

¶ Vespers: Eric Puchner’s buzzed-up novel, Model Home, appears today. A brief but riveting bit of memoir at Speakeasy is said to overlap some of the novel’s material.

¶ Compline: Lisa Levy isn’t crazy about Brian Dillon’s The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives, but her discussion of hypochondria is engaging, and, like Whitney Carpenter’s discussion of busybodies, it suggests why a certain stock figure is on the wane. (The Second Pass)

¶ Matins:  Poverty comes to the suburbs, on the coattails of “the free market.” (Fast Company; via The Infrastructurist)

¶ Lauds: Here’s something for the cockles of everyone who believes that the world in general and Western Civilization is Going To Hell in a Handbasket: “Dante’s Inferno: Do Classic Poems Make Great Video Games.” We don’t mean just the concept; Jamin Brophy-Warren’s interview with game designer Jonathan Knight is a Must Read. Oh, yeah. (Speakeasy)

¶ Prime: Cringely plants his fist on exactly what is wrong with “productivity” in his column about the nation’s hunger for start-ups.

¶ Tierce: Were we wondering why we hadn’t given ChatRoulette a try? Not quite. But Jonah Lehrer has the answer: we can enjoy its attractions without enduring its drawbacks.

¶ Sext: The extremely touching story of Timothy McSweeney.

¶ Nones: Even as schools all over the country are abandoning foreign-language instruction overall, an interest in learning Mandarin seems to be picking up. Will it last? Probably not. We agree with Norman Matloff (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Maud Newton writes about being intimidated by other writers’ work, noting that Joan Didion had to stop reading Henry James because he was so overpowering. But we like Jack Pendarvis’s comment best.

¶ Compline: To while away the snow-bound after-dinner hours, follow Mike Deri Smith on an edifying tour of corruption around the world, from Russia to the Jersey Shore. Well, the conclusion is edifying, anyway. (The Morning News)

¶ Matins: “Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.” Paul Krugman in the Times.

¶ Lauds: Morgan Mies is inspired by the Bronzino exhibit at the Museum to ask what, if anything, was “lost” when the “Renaissance” shaded into “Mannerism.” (The Smart Set; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon considers a strange development: did the exemplum of Giacometti’s Walking Man break auction records because it’s not unique?

¶ Tierce: DIY sperm count tests: a good idea? A “lab-on-a-chip” has been developed that would permit men to diagnose themselves at home. But that’s just the problem: It’s one thing to know what the device finds. It’s quite another to provide the interpretation that’s implicit in a diagnosis.

¶ Sext: With contributions from Seth Colter Walls and the inimitable Mr Wrong, The Awl outdoes itself in Super Bowl disdain. Mr Colter; Joe MacLeod (Mr Wrong).

¶ Nones: And the pendulum swings back: Viktor Yanukovych, thrown out by voters in 2004, has had the pleasure of seeing his successor, Yulia Tymoshenko, given the same treatment. (BBC News)

Be sure to have a look at the bottom of the page. The pink and red parts, which voted for Ms Tymoshenko, constitute, roughly, Ukraine proper, so to speak. The blue portions are regions conquered by Russia in the Eighteenth Century. Does this bifurcated polity make sense?

¶ Vespers: A young person of the Gen M^2 persuasion finds that he can break his compulsive reading habit by hanging out the Harvard COOP. What, read books? We do not despair. Young people have always done odd things. (The Millions)

¶ Compline: Charles Petersen’s meditation on Facebook — a very well informed meditation, to be sure, but, still, meditation is what it is — must be read by anyone, anyone, who is reading this. The thrust of the carefully-wrought piece is not so much about how Facebook has changed the world as it is about what the world has learned from living with — and shaping — Facebook. The final paragraph ought to be memorized, if only because that’s the easiest way of lodging a solid understanding of what it has to say in the mind. (NYRB)

¶ Matins: Can we call this “gesture substitution”: Vijay Anand has discovered a way to fight corruption. Instead of resisting or cooperating with demands for bribes, people use his zero-rupee notes to “pay” crooked officials. (CommGAP; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Lauds: Here’s a good one: the directors of the art museums in the homes of the Super Bowl contenders have made a bet: either Turner’s The Fifth Plague of Egypt will go to New Orleans, or Claude Lorrain’s Ideal View of Tivoli will go to Indianapolis, depending upon whether the Saints or the Colts win the Super Bowl. (Speakeasy)

¶ Prime: We’re hoping to see some hard-ball analysis of AT&T’s quarterly earnings report, which claimed a boost of 26%. Here in New York City, where new iPhones are not being sold at the moment, because AT&T’s network is inadequate to existing demand, the company’s good news strikes a dissonant note.

One wonders where the nation’s anti-trust watchdogs have been. It would appear that we’ve seen a classic case of the disadvantages (to consumers) of monopolies. Free-marketeers might argue that it would be in Apple’s interest to force AT&T to make improvements, but accordingly to anecdotal evidence, nobody close to Steve Jobs cares very much what happens on the East Coast. (NYT)

¶ Tierce: Habitats by the (cubic) foot: Maria Popova writes about One Cubic Foot. (Brain Pickings)

¶ Sext: Choire Sicha explains “mansplainin,” with the help of a few good women. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: Ketuanan Melayu: The LRB’s Asia correspondent, Joshua Kurlantzick, suggests that the Malaysian government, in an attempt to win back the support of ethnic Malays, may be playing with matches.

¶ Vespers: Bookmark this: Timothy Egan’s provides a handy snap of the state of play in bookland at the dawn of the iPad, particularly with regard to two currently roiling issues: bookstores and royalties. Prognostications are widely avoided, and Mr Egan concludes on the wisest of notes. (NYT)

Whether books flourish the future, textbooks are probably doomed. (VentureBeat; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Compline: Louis Auchincloss’s death marks, as Henry James would say, an era; but Louis himself would be the first to pooh-pooh talk of nostalgic backward glances.

¶ Matins: We can’t decide if replacing “short-term” and “long-term” with “situational” and sustainable” is a substantial improvement, but we think that it’s worth floating for a while. Thomas Krugman recycles the counsels of ethcist Dov Seidman. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: We’re not quite sure that we understand the difference between form and content that Anne Midgette maintains in her complaint that classical-music lovers displace passionate response with too much information.

We think that the “content” of classical music here is what it means to you, the listener. Beyond “it’s pretty,” that is. We think. We’re interested, in any case. (Washington Post; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: As if on cue, Felix Salmon experiences cognitive dissonance at Davos. Also at Davos: Jonathan Harris.

¶ Tierce: The iPad is here, as expected, and — so what? How is there more to it than the next big whoop-di-doo? Well, if you follow the links in mpbx’s entry at MetaFilter, you may begin to get an idea of how.

Think: vook. It’s only a matter of time before the fun fumes burn off and the serious stuff begins to appear. So far as literature is concerned, we expect some exciting developments in graphic fiction (and graphic non-fiction as well) — and we don’t mean animation.

¶ Sext: Brooks Peters’s confessional entry at An Open Book is as compulsively readable as blogging gets.

¶ Nones: From the BBC News account, you might almost conclude that this is the end of the story for Manuel Zelaya’s truncated leadership in Honduras. But Radio France International’s report discloses the stinger that we knew had to be there somewhere.

¶ Vespers: Brooke Allen’s lively and penetrating review of Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness made its first appearance at Barnes and Noble Review.com. That site is not on our list — yet. Thanks to the NBCC’s Critical Mass, we didn’t miss it altogether. After Ms Allen’s engaging consideration of one story, “Some Women,” one doesn’t doubt the final paragraph in the slightest.

¶ Compline: Martin Amis likes nothing so much as a good poke at a hornet’s nest. Calling for public “euthenasia booths” where the decrepit can end their misery with an ice-cold (and lethal) martini. (Guardian; via Arts Journal)

¶ Matins: Despite our inclination to hold up to a bright light everything that David Brooks writes in the Times, searching for telltale signs of inauthenticity, we have to admit that his analysis of “The Populist Addiction” is spot on, and nowhere more so than in the following observation.

The idea that the American “élite” is an undivided bloc is nothing but lazy demagoguery. Look high enough, and you find a million “teams” of one. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: Cleveland Plain Dealer critic Steven Litt exhorts the local Museum of Art to do a better job of mounting touring exhibitions. (via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: The $5.4 billion sale of Stuyvesant Town and adjacent Peter Cooper Village to a a consortium of investors three years ago was both stupid and wrong. Stupid because what has happened since was obviously going to happen, and wrong because the transformation of a large middle-class enclave into Manhattan into more exclusive housing would be altogether indefensible; it’s bad enough that not much is being done to work transformations in the opposite direction. We can only rejoice at this news. And we can only hope that Mayor Bloomberg will regard this fiasco as his biggest fumble. (NYT)

¶ Tierce: Yikes! Donald MacKenzie reports, at Short Sharp Science: “Introducing Botox, bioweapon of mass destruction.”

¶ Sext: This time, Dave Bry’s Public Apology seems, innocently enough, to be directed more at himself than at the latest alleged victim of his general reprehensibleness. We’re not sure that poor old Tubby was taken in. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: George Packer writes stirringly of the dodginess of Dresden’s restoration, from firebombed ruin to “Baroque fantasia.” (The New Yorker)

¶ Vespers: The enthusiasm in Adam Gallari’s write-up of Albanian writer Ornela Vorpsi’s The Country Where No One Ever Died is extremely infectious. (The Rumpus)

¶ Compline: Felix Salmon is at Davos, where he despairs of hearing any long-overdo ‘splainin‘. (Not to worry: Davos is irrelevant to non-attendees.)

¶ Matins: Justin Fox kicks off his column at the Harvard Business Review blog by considering the very bad idea of treating business corporations as persons — something that we’ve been complaining about for a while, and that came to the fore with the rather unpopular (but wholly anticipated) Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. (via Felix Salmon)

(For some background on the foundational case on this issue, turn here.)

¶ Lauds: Molly Haskell’s short answer regarding Avatar: “No, you don’t have to see it.” An interesting comparison to Gone With the Wind does will probably not appeal to all readers. (Speakeasy)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon seems to be havng fun, thinking of Goldman’s London partners. Noting that Goldman Sachs isn’t going to share the pain of the British bonus tax, he reflects that a temporarily ill-compensated partner at that firm is still doing better than a richly-rewarded banker elsewhere.

¶ Tierce: Why the social isolation of the powerful is bad for any society, and particularly bad for a democratic society: it undermines the human inclination to benevolence. (The Frontal Cortex)

¶ Sext: Maybe you can help out an aspiring cosmetologist with better things to do than go to school. As a volunteer, of course! (You Suck at Craigslist) Maybe Ash wants to be a bedwarmer. (Marginal Revolution)

¶ Nones: In a further sign that Japan’s orientation is shifting toward China and away from the United States is manifest in Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s decision to “re-think” the presence of an American airbase on Okinawa. The trigger was a local election won by an ardent campaigner against the Futenma base, home to two thousand Marines. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers:  The always interesting John Self has read Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, admired it very much, and written about it, for all the world, as though he were unaware of Tom Ford’s movie. It’s clear from his précis that the book is rather more different from the film than one might have thought. (Asylum)

¶ Compline: How nice: on the eve of the Editor’s vacation in St Croix, we have to share this: “A Deadly Quake in a Seismic Hot Zone.” Fun! (NYT)

¶ Matins: Rebecca Solnit addresses media complicity in the property-rights racket of post-disaster “looting.” (Guernica; via The Rumpus)

¶ Lauds: London art critic Jonathan James asks: “Should critics point out how exhibitions could have been done differently?”

We think that Mr Jones is exactly wrong about a critic’s principal duty: motivating the public to see and hear things. There’s a place for considering the purposes of exhibitions and such, but it is not in the daily critic’s commentary. Mr Jones confuses stock and flow. (Guardian)

¶ Prime: Megan McArdle assesses yesterday’s White House banking proposals. In passing, she notes the witlessness of Big Banking’s business-as-usual behavior in 2009. (The Atlantic)

Ms McArdle’s expecatation that the legislation will hurt New York will probably be what ensures passage.

¶ Tierce: Terry Teachout still seems surprised by the popularity of Pops, his life of Louis Armstrong. It has kept him exhilaratingly yet worryingly busy. (About Last Night)

¶ Sext: Liz Colville treats us to a parody preview of Elizabeth Gilbert’s as-of-yet untitled next book. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: Here’s a headline: “Accord Reached to Let Honduran President Depart.” Only problem: Guess Who hasn’t signed on. Elisabeth Malkin reports. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Martin Schneider considers the possibility that the number of “game-changing” non-fiction books has been dwindling.

Don’t miss the list of important books from the period 1955-1975 — a lot of them still look important to us, especially that game-changiest of paradigm shifting books, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). It was a thrilling read five or six years later, when it figured in the Editor’s assigned reading at college. (Emdashes)

¶ Compline: “Thorstein Veblen” celebrates the first anniversary of Economists For Firing Larry Summers by renewing the appeal implicit in his Web log’s title.

¶ Matins: E A Hanks breaks up with The Left.

Regular readers know that we have been lamenting the continued existence of the Democratic Party for most of our online career. Mr Hanks, 27, can’t be expected to remember the Party’s good works (Medicare and Civil Rights) that seem to have precipitated its demise. It’s heartening to hear a call for a genuinely new progressivism that’s at least more amusing than ours.

¶ Lauds: According to a recent paper that Jonah Lehrer discusses, listening to music hones our predictive skills, in the short term at least — by flouting them. (The Frontal Cortex)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon responds to news of the proposed paywall at the New York Times with a lot of very good advice.

Two further updates from Mr Salmon: Here and here.

¶ Tierce: When he isn’t thinking about the Times lately, Felix Salmon is rooting for Tyler Cowen’s suggestions for Haiti relief.

¶ Sext: Wherever did Brooks Peters get the idea that he would enjoy walking in the countryside more than he did in Manhattan? (An Open Book)

¶ Nones: Interesting news from Chile: according to Times reporter Alexei Barronuevo, “The election of a billionaire from a right-wing party as Chile’s president on Sunday appears to be less a signal of a regional move to the right than that of a pragmatic convergence of left and right agendas.” (NYT)

¶ Vespers: In a touching, almost coltish confession, Lydia Kiesling admits to being moved, contrary to her expectations, by A House For Mr Biswas. (The Millions)

¶ Compline: The Epicurean Dealmaker patiently explains to us not only why we oughtn’t to expect much in the way of insight from the lords of Wall Street, but whose job it is oversee the markets. (via Felix Salmon)