¶ Matins: Mark Peters suggests a useful new word (over ten years old, actually, and born, like so many fashions, in the sporting world): “Nontroversy.” (Good)

¶ Lauds: Today, it’s the Video Game Music Club. Tomorrow, it will be an academic specialty at Berklee College of Music and elsewhere: Interactive Audio. (Boston Globe; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon takes apart a wishy-washy column by Andrew Ross Sorkin in order to make a definitive case against financial institutions so large that they pose a systemic risk to the stability of financial markets — the TBTFs. Here is Mr Salmon’s reply to Mr Sorkin’s belief that huge corporations need huge banks.

¶ Tierce: Robin Sloan applies the economic terms, stock and flow, to activities that we might as well call “creative.” (Snarkmarket)

¶ Sext: Minneapolitan Lily Coyle thanks Pat Robertson for his thoughtful explanation of the earthquake in Haiti — in the voice of Satan. (StarTribune; via The Rumpus)

¶ Nones: Japan Airlines seeks bankruptcy protection. Not at all the same thing as going out of business! (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Amy Halloran writes a nice appreciation of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s Scary Fairy Tales, at The Millions.

¶ Compline: Maria Popova addresses the importance of “data viz,” or what Edward Tufte calls The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Don’t miss the clip of Alex Lundry’s short talk on the subject — and steer clear of pie charts! (Brain Pickings)

¶ Matins: David Brooks’s Op-Ed piece on Haiti ignites a blowtorch of fury from Matt Taibbi. (True Slant; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Lauds: Vampire Weekend, a band that, like Talking Heads thirty years ago, emerged from an institution of higher learning wearing very neat clothing, gets an intriguing review in the Times.

¶ Prime: Used equipment! Bob Cringely wonders why anybody does business with IBM, which increasingly operates like a bad auto dealership.

¶ Tierce: Jonah Lehrer explains why “Charity Is Social.” We think that there’s an explanation of the power of organized crime lurking in the vicinity of this study, but since we don’t know what we’re talking about, we’ll keep it to ourselves. (The Frontal Cortex)

¶ Sext: Just what we need: the SarcMarc. (via The Morning News)

¶ Nones: Honor among thieves: Somali pirates squabble over dividing $5.5 million ransom. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Peter Coates makes a case for James Branch Cabell (rhymes with “rabble”), at The Second Pass. A Southern Edith Wharton, maybe?

¶ Compline: Tyler Cowen on Barack Obama: “The Haiti President.” (Marginal Revolution)

¶ Matins: The Awl‘s Abe Sauer is in touch with some medical people who are running out of supplies in a town ten miles west of Port-au-Prince. A helicopter would be helpful.

¶ Lauds: The Online Photographer’s Michael Johnston is far too nice a guy to lay down the law about building a collection of pictures, but, with a little help from his commentariat, he’s taking a stab or two at it. Here, at least, is what a collection is not:

¶ Prime: Well, that didn’t take long: Felix Salmon contests Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion that John Paulson’s investment strategy was risk-averse.

¶ Tierce: A cognitive psychology study of flattery: if it makes you feel good about yourself, no matter how resistant you think you are to its explicit claims, it will work. (Scientific American; via Arts Journal)

¶ Sext: Edan Lepucki, of The Millions, purges her library.

¶ Nones: In case you thought that bananas are an innocent pleasure, think again: Rebecca Cohen, at Science Creative Quarterly, lays out the very high costs of making bananas cheap. (via The Morning News)

¶ Vespers: In the course of a tagging match last night, we encountered a dandy Web log: Latin Poetry Podcast. Christopher Francese, an associate professor at Dickinson, talks about his selection, sketches a translation, and then reads aloud. We haven’t looked into where he got his accent, but it sounds weirdly right, and quite unlike the Oxford-don recordings that used to come out on Caedmon LPs.

¶ Compline: Even Justin Smith has made a donation to Yéle Haiti. So have we! So ought you! And, in the end, you have to love Pat Roberton, doncha?

¶ Matins: Malcolm Gladwell drops another one of his buzz-bombs on conventional wisdom in this week’s New Yorker. In “The Sure Thing,” he argues that successful entrepreneurs are extremely risk-averse; like predators, they don’t waste their time and energy unless they feel certain about prevailing. (They do A LOT of homework.)

One of Mr Gladwell’s subjects is John Paulson, the hedge fund manager who make a killing betting against the sub-prime boom; the meatiest part of the essay, for us, anyway, is the light that Mr Paulson’s success casts on current thinking about compensation for investment bankers.

¶ Lauds: What was the Philharmonic spokesperson thinking when refusing to name Burt Hara, the guest clarinetist (and apparent auditioner for the principal’s chair), when the Times asked who it was who had played Rachmaninoff so beautifully?

¶ Prime: Farming in Detroit? According to David Whitford, at Fortune, the population of Detroit (once the nation’s fourth-largest city) is expected to drop to 700,000. What to do with all that empty space? (via The Infrastructurist)

¶ Tierce: Anyone who read John Cassidy’s excellent New Yorker piece about the Chicago School of economists will have been struck by Eugene Fama’s somewhat demented-sounding pronouncements (“I don’t even know what a bubble means.”) Jonah Lehrer ponders his stubbornness at The Frontal Cortex, and proceeds to critique the very usefulness of “the School of X.”

¶ Sext: The fantastic Sam Sifton makes us dream about lunch at the Breslin Bar. Can it possibly be as good as his writing about it? (NYT)

¶ Nones: That entrepreneurial opera, Google in China, has come to the end of the first act. Hats off to Miguel Helft, at the Times, for putting it nicely and simply. (NYT)

Only those who are ignorant of Chinese history can imagine that any outsider is going to “help” in any significant way. They’ll be imitated and driven out, just as Google has been.

¶ Vespers: At Survival of the Book, Brian notes the passing of B Dalton — ubiquitous, but not very good.

¶ Compline: We’re of one mind with Jeffrey Pfeffer on the topic of Tiger Woods’s future. He ought to get back in the game, pronto. We also agree that Mr Woods doesn’t owe anyone any explanations. We feel quite fervent about that, in fact: we’d rather not know what goes on his, or anyone else’s, bedroom. (The Corner Office)

¶ Matins: Steve Coll on the terrorism learning curve, at The New Yorker. We think that the piece is better-written than most political speeches.

¶ Lauds: What a concept: “Sometimes you have to trust the musc.” Anne Midgette (quoting WNO artistic director Christina Scheppelman there) reminds us that lean economic times can inspire truly great opera.

What opera really needs is a fresh crop of audiences: “But opera audiences are far more likely to erupt with excitement at conventions they would find unremarkable or cliched in other mediums, such as a live horse crossing the stage.” If only Ms Midgette would come out and confess that for many “fans,” opera is really a circus, with the singers as high-wire daredevils. (Washington Post; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: What happens when the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe cannot service the debt on Foxwoods? Interesting times, according to Peter Applebome. Foreclosure is not an option; as Felix Salmon points out, the Pequots (or some other tribe) are the only possible owners. Foxwoods debt is sovereign debt. On the bright side, at least one Foxwoods visitor smells the problem with casinos. (NYT)

¶ Tierce: When did Cotton become King? Robert Behre rips through the history of Southern agriculture in five very readable pages. The brisk pace makes it easy to see that, as frontier settlements gave way to plantations, slaves, originally extended-family members, were commoditized to suit crops. (HistoryNet; via The Morning News)

¶ Sext: Let’s hear it for Roxxxy. Didn’t Grant Fjermedal predict this, in The Tomorrow Makers? It must be Today! (HiloBrow)

¶ Nones: The news from Venezuela couldn’t be drearier. As the Chávez regime effectively nationalizes consumer businesses, the oldest duel in South America (between oligarchs and populists) is restaged for the umpteenth time. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Without using the word, everyone is talking about the caesura in Joshua Ferris’s new novel, The Unnamed: after two hundred pages of “longueurs” (The New Yorker), the story picks up. (The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: “File Under ‘better late than never’,” says Dan Hill of his tardy write-up of a talk delivered at Postopolis! LA last April. Better late than never indeed, to hear LAPD counter-terrorism chief Michael Downing answer questions linking police work (especially regarding gangs and/or terrorists) and urban design.

As Mr Hill concludes, “Downing had the wit to explore it in accessible and meaningful fashion – even if his talk left as many questions hanging in the air over downtown LA as there were helicopters circling overhead.” It’s a start. (City of Sound)

¶ Matins: The Senate, a contra-democratic institution to begin with, operates according to rules of its own devising that, according to Thomas Geoghegan, are contra-Constitutional. Particularly the rule about filibusters (unlimited debates).  (NYT)

¶ Lauds: We weren’t following The Online Photographer back in 2007, but Mike Johnston’s entry for 28 January of that year, “How to Read a Photographic Book,” deserves the attention of anyone who owns more than a few books of photographs. 

¶ Prime: Is there a housing bubble in China? Or just a severe shortage?  Steven Mufson’s report, at the Washington Post, considers the alternative views. We’re not sure that the distinction is important: in China, instability tends to cascade.(via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: Jonah Lehrer’s WSJ report on will power dates from the end of last month, but we don’t want you to miss it, especially if you’re looking to build up the muscles in your mind. (via The Frontal Cortex)

¶ Sext: Dave Bry is appalled by the Masons’ decision to induct a new Right Worshipful Grand Master not only in public, but at a convention center. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: This week in the Guardian, a series of articles about powerful international corporations. First up: Gazprom, the world’s largest producer of natural gas.

¶ Vespers: Two classic books about Higher Learning at Cambridge have been republished by Oleander Press. It’s a wonder that you can’t read Cat Burglary. (LRB)

¶ Compline: Further evidence that the Cold War is much missed: “Eurabian” apocalyptics. Justin Vaïsse looks into the clichés of European Islamicization, at Foreign Policy. Mr Vaïsse points out that, outside a few cities, the Moslem population of Europe is unlikely to exceed ten percent. (via The Morning News) 

¶ Matins: Are plastic highways — roads paved of recycled rubbish — a good idea? Saritha Rai seems to think so. But we agree with the commenter who worries about the pollution of groundwater. (GlobalPost; via The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: Colm Tóibín buys a minimalist painting — a pair, actually — only to discover their baggage of invisible meaning when he unpacks them in his Dublin flat. (LRB)

¶ Prime: While Felix Salmon scratches his head over the to-him mystifying refusal of incoming Cravath, Swain associates to take the firm’s offer to stay home for a year at a salary of $80,000, a handful of sharp law students attempt to illuminate the high-end legal profession for our British visitor. This one is for the comments.

¶ Tierce: Peter Reynolds leads off an intriguing discussion (entry and comments) on autism and the neurological basis of the sense of self, which seems to be lacking or underdeveloped in ASD patients. (Short Sharp Science)

¶ Sext: Here’s the piece that got the Editor wound up about MP3s last night. Jeremy Eichler feeds his CDs into his computer, packs them away, and muses on the death of the personal music library. (Boston Globe; via Arts Journal)

¶ Nones: You have to love the new Russia — which is really just the old, old Russia, Mother Russia. And you have to love the fact that the Cold War is over. Try to imagine, if you will, the response of any American administration from Eisenhower to Reagan to the purchase of the world’s smallest republic’s recognition of the breakaway, pro-Moscow territory of an American ally. Try to imagine how different the Russian response would be. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Joan Acocella isn’t crazy about Peter Ackroyd’s “retelling” of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but at least the book occasions a jolly essay on our tongue’s first major poet (and major writer, for the matter of that). (The New Yorker)

¶ Compline: Jonah Lehrer responds to James Surowiecki’s New Yorker column about Tiger Woods and the branders with an interesting discussion of Fundamental Attribution Error, something that we’re far more prone to than we like to think. From the TV fans to the brass at Accenture, everyone was mistaken in attributing the golfer’s formidable self-control to his character overall — they were mistaken to make the attribution, and now we know that they were mistaken.

See also Mr Surowiecki’s blogged follow-up to his column.

¶ Matins: John Swansburg, culture editor at Slate, used to follow sports zealously. It seems to have become something of a diet of desserts, because he’s feeling much better now that he does other things instead.

His explanation reminds us, we don’t know why, a little bit of War Games. (Slate; via Brainiac)

¶ Lauds: Ripley, meet Shipley. Oh! You know one another already! James Cameron talks to Speakeasy about Avatar, which has received four Golden Globe nominations even though it hasn’t opened (officially).

¶ Prime: This isn’t how it was supposed to work: microfinance, in rural India at least, seems to be giving traditional moneylending (which it was expected to replace) a real boost. Microlenders see things differently;  As always, life is a lot more complicated than theory predicts. What continues to be interesting about microfinance is its strong bond to groups of women. (WSJ; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: Evan Maloney finds speed-reading to be a waste of time. We knew that, but we still wish that we could get through books faster. Are books themselves the problem? (Guardian; via Arts Journal)

¶ Sext: The mercury ball stage! If you’re enough of a cook to stock All-Clad skillets and sauté pans, you will definitely want to see a hugely useful video from rouxbe.com — a site that we had not heard of. Nor had we heard of Houseboat Eats, which ran the clip. Don’t say we never taught you anything! (via The Morning News) 

¶ Nones: As the prospect of Turkish membership in the European Union recedes to the vanishing point, silver linings glimmer ever more promisingly. Closer ties between Turkey and Syria, which Robert Worth writes about in the Times, are good for everybody (except, possibly, for Iran).

¶ Vespers: At The Millions — actually, in Tübingen — Daniel Silliman asks Jonathan Franzen to reconcile his dislike of “experimentalism” in fiction and his admiration for (and friendship with) David Foster Wallace. The answer is not theoretical.

¶ Compline: Ed Kilgore looks into “The Ungreening of America,” and finds that two out of three likely explanations trace back to GOP ranting. (TNR)

¶ Matins: Frank Rich congratulates the makers of Up in the Air for showing us how broken our economy is.

If there was ever a market that won’t fix itself, it’s our job market. Good folk are being thrown out of work by heedless millionaires. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: We’ll be celebrating the bicentennial of Frédéric Chopin next year. This composer of so much dreamy music wasn’t, himself, very dreamy at all. Come to think of it, his music isn’t, either. Jessica Duchen, in the Independent, conjures a portrait of the composer as Hugh Grant, way back in 1991, in James Lapine’s Impromptu. (via MetaFilter)

¶ Prime: Chris Lehmann at The Awl and Felix Salmon agree: the financial press were perhaps the last people in the world entitled to attack Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone piece on Goldman Sachs & al. Indeed, we are tempted to conclude that the Megan McArdles and the Heidi Moore’s were more or less obliged to attack Mr Taibbi, simply in order to protect their Rolodexes.

¶ Tierce: Jim Dwyer observes that our health- and environmental-conscious mayor does not practice what he preaches.

We would never scold anyone for flying on a private plane. Only a martyr would fly commercial if offered the choice. The better alternative is not to fly at all. A man as wealthy as Michael Bloomberg does not have to be anywhere in a hurry. He can sail. (NYT)

¶ Sext: We didn’t know who James Chartrand was, but now we wonder what to call her. (Copyblogger; via The AwlJ

¶ Nones: Juan Cole connects a few dots, between Iraqi oil, the Shi’ite control of Baghdad, and Teheran. Throw in Lebanon while you’re at it! (via LRB)

(While we’re mentioning LRB in passing, we want to note that we disagree with John Perry about Washington’s response to the Honduran coup. We sincerely doubt that any informed Latin Americans want the United States to restore Manuel Zelaya, whether by force or diplomatic blackmail.)

¶ Vespers: Richard Crary has been writing up a storm at The Existence Machine, about feminism, socialism, and, here, a long post about Flannery O’Connor, whom he has just gotten round to reading.

¶ Compline: Scott Sayare’s piece on the unpopularity of the Internet among French politicos makes for a fun read. As Tocqueville pointed out a while back, the French Revolution left a number of institutions intact. (NYT)

¶ Matins: “Is this just the beginning of a depression?” asks Felix Salmon, in response to the very bearish forecast of Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg. “I’m not optimistic.” (But keep reading, at Portico)

¶ Lauds: A self-portrait by Antony van Dyck, one of the deluxiest Old Masters, sold at auction for a record-breaking price. The auction overall, however, was hardly a success. (Bloomberg; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Jeffrey Pfeffer attributes the “too big to fail” phenomenon to lax enforcement of antitrust laws.

The Editor reminds us that, of all the subjects that he studied in law school, antitrust was the most slippery, its principles easily bent to reach whatever outcome the government or the courts desired. We subscribe to Mr Pfeffer’s dislike of very large business entities (we don’t even like merely big ones), but we don’t look to antitrust law for a solution. (The Corner Office)

¶ Tierce: New! A revised deluge hypothesis has been posited for the natural history of the Mediterranean Sea: Why, only 5.6 million years ago… Why is it that the fun stuff like dinosaurs and such happened long before we were around to take notes? Is it a mad desire to participate in geo-catastrophic events that draws us to the deluge hypothesis of Black Sea flooding? (New Scientist)

¶ Sext: At McSweeney’s, “A Former Investment Banker Analyst Falls Back on Plan B,” by Helen Coster. Hint: that would be law school. (via Felix Salmon)

¶ Nones: Responding to violent protests, India will divide the state of Andhra Pradesh in two, creating the new state of Telangana. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh’s capital, will probably go Telangana. The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder notes concern that the creation of Telangana will open a Pandora’s box of clamoring for further subdivisions within India. In 2000, however, three new states were carved from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: More from Christopher Tayler, this time from a perch at LRB: a reconsideration of Paul Auster. It’s the autobiographical material that’s winning. A guest room in some vaguely hostile household would definitely be the ideal environment for appreciating early Auster.

¶ Compline: The Awl‘s Abe Sauer went out to visit gay activist Zack P— in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and discovered that Zack is not having an easy time being out there. Overwhelmed by the unfairness of life, Mr Sauer thought of Levi Johnston with outrage.

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

¶ Matins: In his review of Tyler Cowen’s Create Your Own Economy, Austin Frakt touches on what makes our working day possible. (Incidental Economist; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Lauds: How Terry Gilliam completed The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus after Heath Ledger’s death. It wasn’t just technical. (Speakeasy)

¶ Prime: David Segal’s update on the failure to reform the ratings-agency biz in any meaningful way suggests that the conflict has little to do with lobbying (for once) but reveals a clash of visions, between bold (reckless) and cautious (ineffective). (NYT)

¶ Tierce: Bad as “fast food” is, it may be safer than the stuff that the government provides to school cafeterias. (Good)

¶ Sext: Does Mo’Nique really want that Best-Supporting-Actress Oscar? She sure sounds new to the Industry. (And the Winner Is…; via Arts Journal)

¶ Nones: The opera buffa in Honduras too a turn for the seriously dramatic on Tuesday, with the assassination General Julian Aristides Gonzalez, the Honduran drug czar. The crime opens a window on our view of the local economy. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Christopher Tayler (of the Guardian) visits Sir Frank Kermode on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. (via The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: They all laughed… but everybody’s looking at Roadtown now. (treehugger; via Good)

¶ Matins: At the Guardian, Ian Buruma considers the Swiss ban on minarets. Like Tyler Cowen, he disapproves of referenda. (So do we.) Beyond that, he finds an interesting, if unexpected, resentment. 

Do we really live in a world where those who do not feel that they belong to the elite have a compensating need for something to die for? (via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Lauds: Film historian David Thomson hears the penny drop: Method Acting is over. Forget “truth”; let’s pretend! Haven’t the English been pooh-poohing Method all along? (Wall Street Journal; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Not for the first time, Felix Salmon asks, “Why are bankers so — ” Ahem. How Banks Fail at Foreclosure Auctions.

¶ Tierce: Natalie Angier muses on Kandinsky’s circles and the physics of spheres. One thing we don’t know: why are eyeballs spherical? (NYT)

¶ Sext: Amy McDaniel presents David Foster Wallace’s quick grammar-and-usage test. (htmlgiant; via The Morning News)

¶ Nones: The European Union’s foreign ministers have called for a sort of partition of Jerusalem, allowing to serve as a dual capital of Israel and Palestine. (Most foreign embassies have remained in Tel Aviv.) Jerusalem Post columnist Gershon Baskin is all for it. (via BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Now that we no longer have Susan Sontag to tell us which novels (a) in foreign languages that (b) we’ve never heard of we ought to read, Quarterly Conversation is there to inspire translations.

¶ Compline: We like to suggest that everyone ought to be upper class — we don’t really mean it as a joke. Now Adam Waytz explains why this is so. It isn’t poverty that makes people touchy. It’s disrespect. But then, didn’t we know that? (Mind Matters; via The Frontal Cortex)

¶ Matins: Just what we all need: China produces and sells more than 12,000,000 cars in a single year.

In a sidebar, Jorn Madslien reports that Shanghai Automotive Industries owns a majority share of Shanghai General Motors’s venture in India, leaving (American) General Motors to take “a back seat.” (BBC News)

¶ Lauds: A very interesting comment from Felix Salmon, writing about productivity/price differentials between the fine-arts and photography markets. The former has split in two, with mass-marketed items buoying a “an elite circle of valuable works.” The dynamic hasn’t been tried in photography.

¶ Prime: Alex Tabarrok writes about Project Cybersyn, an economic regulator waaaaay ahead of its time. (Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: How to account for same-sex liaisons in terms of natural selection? The investigation promises to be complex and counterintuitive. Also: resistant to cross-species generalizations!

Gore Vidal has always insisted that there is really no such thing as homosexuality; perhaps he’s right after all. (New Scientist)

¶ Sext: What you need to know in order to navigate the tricky holiday shopping season: it will cost $395. (The Onion; via The Morning News)

¶ Nones: New, and with more than T-shirts: Ottomaniacs!  One thing seems clear: Turkey is finally emerging from Atatürk’s secular tutelage, a nation with imperial memories. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: At HuffPo, Alexander Nazaryan proposes Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland as the American novel of the passing decade. We heartily concur, and we nominate Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End as runner-up.  

¶ Compline: Witold Rybczynski reports that academic architects still don’t like Christopher Alexander’s patterns. (Slate; via Arts Journal)

¶ Matins: In an extremely thoughtful piece that may alter the grain of your thought — or, as it our case, highlight the way in which you’re already inclined to think — Tony Judt asks us to consider why it is that, in the Anglophone world, we reduce all political questions to economic equations. He proposes a very persuasive, historically-bound answer to the question. Don’t miss it. (NYRB)

¶ Lauds: Judith Jamison is looking to trade in “artistic director” for, perhaps, “Queen.” Those of us who were lucky enough to see her dance Revelations know just how aptly that very popular ballet is titled. (New York; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: As the giving season is upon us, Tim Ogden plans a series of blog entries about the dangers of evaluating charities by overhead alone. (Philanthropy Action; via Felix Salmon)

¶ Tierce: Melissa Lafsky urges us to stop trying to get more women to ride bicycles in urban areas, and focus instead upon making biking a lot safer than it is. (The Infrastructurist)

¶ Sext: The things that Choire Sicha digs up on the Internets! From a blog called firmuhment, a thoroughly wicked “imagineering” of Zac Efron’s newfound, post-Orson intellectual sophistication. (via The Awl)

¶ Nones: More Honduran predictability: the Congress declined, by a very large margin, to re-instate Manuel Zelaya in office for the weeks that remain to his term. The voting, 111-14 against Mr Zelaya, suggests that the ousted president is not a character worth fighting for. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: In a backlist assessment that has the whole town talking, Natalia Antonova convinces us that she loves Vladimir Nabokov’s best-known book not in spite of her history as the victim of abuse but because of it. (The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: Because it’s the weekend, we offer Ron Rosenbaum’s long and “Mysterian” query about consciousness and other unsolved mysteries as a way of killing time in the event of any dominical longueurs. Although we agree with his assessment of the the “facts” (ie questions), we do not, so to speak, share his affect.

While we recognize — insist! — that the universe remains profoundly mysterious, it doesn’t bother us in the least, because, really, it’s much too interesting to live with the mysteries that aren’t so profound. The profundity that Mr Rosenbaum highlights for us is the connection between adolescence and all forms of metaphysics. (Slate; via Arts Journal)

¶ Bon weekend à tous!

¶ Matins: Andrew Sullivan, still a loyal Tory, abandons the GOP. The list of his objections to right-wing outlook, concludes with denunciations of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and a rejection of sole-superpower militarism.

As thinking people abandon the Republican Party to virtual fascists, the need for a Center Party intensifies. There must be a viable political alternative to leftism, if only for the sake of the latter’s health. (Daily Dish)

¶ Lauds: Ingrid Rowland writes richly (if with a rambling touch) about an important new book about Andrea Palladio, Francesco Borromini, and a modern Roman who has studied them both, Paolo Portoghesi. Ms Rowland also laments “the contemporary state of things” called Italietta. (NYRB)

¶ Prime: Thanks to Tyler Cowen, we’ve discovered a blog that looks to be congenial: Economists For Firing Larry Summers. We like the subtitle very much: “This blog is devoted to seeing to it that Larry Summers gets to spend more time with his family.” As Mr Cowen notes, however, the pseudonymous author has turned his attention to Ben Bernanke. (via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: Geoffrey Fowler, writing at the Wall Street Journal, joins the still-hushed chorus of e-reader skeptics: “Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment.” (via Arts Journal)

¶ Sext: Eric Patton concludes his account of a recent trip to Rome and to Sicily with a characteristical hopeful melancholy. (SORE AFRAID)

¶ Nones: South Africa rejoins the communion of the sensible with a reality-based anti-AIDS program, thus overturning the notorious misrule of former leader Thabo Mbeki on this point. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: By placing a disk over the crime itself, Brooks Peters reveals the richly-detailed corolla that emanates from the so-called “crime of the century” — the Leopold-Loeb case — which Mr Peters rightly labels “an inept fiasco.” Who knew, though, that Leopold was eventually released on parole, and thanks to the efforts of none other than Perry Mason’s creator? And that Erle Stanley Gardner left behind a correspondence with the murderer that our Mr Peters may have been the first to remark upon? (An Open Book)

¶ Compline: Tony Horwitz traces fascinating parallels between 12/1/59 and 9/11/01. On the earlier date, abolitionist and insurrectionist John Brown was hanged.  (NYT)

¶ Matins: At New Geography, Aaron Renn looks at the outmigration of the middle class from “cool” cities, and attributes it, persuasively, to the failure of civic responsibility among “global” elites.

Clearly, the current models for organizing metropolitan areas are wholly inadequate. In our view, layers of government (state, country, local, school district) ought to be replaced by types of government: highly coordinated networking authorities (transit, power, hospitals) coexisting with highly localized service providers (schools, clinics, and parks). (via The Morning News)

¶ Lauds: Cityscape critic Blair Kamin is surprised to be supporting the destruction of a shed designed by Mies van der Rohe. The accompanying photograph is a bit of a tease: the shed hides behind a fence. (Chicago Tribune; via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian finds in the Dubai debt standstill “a reminder to all: last year’s financial crisis was a consequential phenomenon whose lagged impact is yet to play out fully in the economic, financial, institutional and political arenas.” We knew this, but it’s great to hear it from an eminent fund manager.

In our own front yard, Wall Street’s influence inside the White House needs to be muzzled, if not baffled. (Telegraph; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: Michael Bond briefly but lucidly reviews Eli Berman’s Radical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism, a new sociological study that, notwithstanding its title, sees beyond the religious angle. (New Scientist)

¶ Sext: Nico Muhly, writing from Amsterdam, finds “a sort of childlike pornography” in Nederlands orthography. (This vanishes when you learn how to pronounce things.) He is also “obsessed” by the common digraph, ij. (via Snarkmarket)

¶ Nones: Predictably, Sunday’s election in Honduras settled almost nothing, even though Porfirio Lobo appears to have won more or less fairly. The Honduran Congress will vote today on whether Mel Zelaya will finish out his term in office. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: n case the popularity of a current blockbuster has you wondering if you’d like to read the book, Jenny Turner not only reconsiders her review in the London Review of Books but also supplies a list of blogs that offer highly entertaining spoilers about the later novels in this peculiar series.

¶ Compline: Having got wind of special treatment for denizens of the eastern-most block of West 61st Street on Thanksgiving Day, Clyde Haberman investigated in person. His worst fears are confirmed. (NYT)

¶ Matins: Tyler Cowen’s thoughts about Swiss minarets are appropriately complex. Referendums are deplorable, because they open the door as nothing else does to prejudice. “…knowing how and when to defuse an issue is one very large part of political wisdom.  The Swiss usually pass this test but this time they failed it.” (Marginal Revolution)

¶ Lauds: The painter Francis Bacon could write well enough, but, John Richardson informs us, he could not draw. (NYRB; via 3 Quarks Daily)

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon, with the help of a commenter called Dan, advances a new theory of investing — one that is market- (and liquidity- !) shy.

¶ Tierce: 350 years of important publications by the Royal Society, celebrated at a new site, Trailblazing. (MetaFilter)

¶ Sext: In the rarefied world of dissertation-land, is one woman’s prudence another man’s paranoia? (Chron Higher Ed; via The Morning News)

¶ Nones: The Vatican continues to regard its affairs as lying beyond the writ and ken of civil authorities. “The Vatican should apologise for failing to co-operate with an inquiry into sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland, a Dublin bishop has said.” (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: The Clutter murder, 50 years on. (Ed Pilkington at the Guardian)

¶ Compline: Shock and Awl: Choire and Balk both driven batty by current events. Choire returns from Thanksgiving weekend viscerally alert to the Idiocracy afoot in the land. “Craziness: it’s not just for wingnuts anymore.” Meanwhile, Alex has Lady Gaga issues.

Although both pieces are nicely funny, the two pieces are salt and pepper as to coherence. Choire, slightly hysterical perhaps, nevertheless sticks to his topic. Balk, in contrast, is almost grotesquely inconsequent. But that’s why we love him!

¶ Matins: On the banks of a faraway sea, Muscato connects.

¶ Lauds: Terry Teachout really likes The Starry Messenger, Kenneth Lonergan’s new play. As the author of a hit book at the moment, Mr Teachout is probably going to garnish somewhat more attention than he might otherwise do. Bravo!

¶ Prime: Felix Salmon finds a great chart illustrating the debt of Dubai.

¶ Tierce: Why the United States is even more medieval than the Holy Roman Empire, and has been, since FDR at least. (Letters of Note).

¶ Sext:  If there was ever proof that this is not one country indivisible under God, it’s in the food. (NYT)

¶ Nones: We thought that the Irish priest problem was dealt with ages ago. Apparently not. My good Catholic wife is mad as hell at Benedict XVI, and contrapuntally so. First, of course, this ought to have never happened. Second, what a distraction it all is from caring for the poor and hungry.

¶ Vespers:  Christopher Tayler says that Stefanie Marsh’s interview with James Ellroy “is a minor classic of the genre” — doubtless because Ellroy himself will never be major. (TimesOnline; via LRB).

¶ Compline: New cases of AIDS are down this year by 17%. With all the other stuff going on in the world, let’s not forget the pain and strife. It’s still a terrible shock. (Short Sharp Science)

Bon weekend à tous!

¶ Matins: Kenneth Davis writes about the first Thanksgiving to be given on land that would one day be part of the United States — by Huguenots in Florida. Their base, Fort Caroline (named after Charles IX), did not last very long; nor did they: the Spanish eradicated everything in 1565.

Mr Davis’s litany of religious persecutions in America exhorts us to regard Thanksgiving not as the commemoration of a hallowed past but as a celebration of how far we have come from our dark origins — and a reminder of how far we have yet to go. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: Charis Wilson, Edward Weston’s most notable muse (and his only “art wife”), died last Friday in Santa Cruz, aged 95. (Los Angeles Times; via Arts Journal)

As it happens, we’ve been reading about Charis Wilson in Francine Prose’s The Lives of the Muses. Great reading!

¶ Prime: We’re not terribly interested in the recent privatization of Chicago’s parking meters — or, rather, we weren’t until Felix Salmon decided to look into the matter. His conclusion: the city didn’t do too badly, and the contractors are idiots. The detail worth noting is that what Chicago’s alderman wanted, of course, was to raise parking meter prices without being accountable.

¶ Tierce: The Aesthete unearths the strange figure of George Sebastian, an adventurer who married American money and used it to builid Dar Sebastian, still a breathtaking edifice in Hammamet, Tunisia. (An Aesthete’s Lament)

¶ Sext: We love a good prank as much as anybody — probably more, as long as we’re not the victim — and so we’re rejoicing at the news that The Awl now has a whole department devoted to reviewing “pranks and their aftermaths.” Okay, they have Juli Weiner, who we hope is still enrolled in a good college.

¶ Nones: William Finnegan’s New Yorker excellent report on the situation in Honduras is not, sadly, online, although an abstract is available. For regular readers who have been following the matter here, there is little substantially new in the piece, and in fact we were gratified to read that coup leader Roberto Michelletti, in television appearances, “tends to glower, and speak from the side of his mouth, like Dick Cheney.” However, we hadn’t encountered anything like Mr Finnegan’s thumbnail of the constitution that ousted president “Mel” Zelaya wants to replace.

¶ Vespers: We’ve read Lauren Elkin’s review of Jeremy Davies’s Rose Alley several times now, and while we’re not certain that we want to read the novel, we’re intrigued by Ms Elkin’s account of it. (The Second Pass)

¶ Compline: Maria Popova (of Brain Pickings) takes “a look at what the Intenet is doing for learning, curiosity, and creativity outside the classroom.” There’s a lot about TED, which appears to be better understood in Europe than it is here. (Good)

To see how traditional education appears on the Internet, have a look at the Syllabus of Dr E L Skip Knox’s fully online course, sponsored by Boise State University, in HIST101 — The History of Western Civilization. (via MetaFilter)

¶ Matins: We stand at the dawn of the Age of Chrome, and  Bob Cringely advises us to expect something of a tussle between Palo Alto and Redmond. (I, Cringely)

¶ Lauds: The bad news — brain damage — once again yields good news about how the brain works. Jonah Lehrer discusses the artistry of confabulation; doctors call it “lying.” (Frontal Cortex)

¶ Prime: Rumors of the demise of Borders, long burbled, have intensified with the news that Borders UK’s Web site is no longer accepting orders. (Guardian; via Arts Journal)

¶ Tierce: What could be more curious than learning that American Ivy League styles took root in Japan among gangs? (Ivy Style)

¶ Sext: Could you do worse than give the Awl diet a try? As long as you’re up, Fernet Branca and stir-fried Romaine sounds great to us.

¶ Nones: We’re rather tired of cataloguing what’s wrong with the United States, but Ahmed Rashid makes things easy: it’s basically everything.

OMG! We meant “Pakistan”! (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: Gordon Wood hopes that historians will wake up and tell stories. (Washington Post)

¶ Compline: Some things are forever, more or less. Complaints written and sent to the Mayor of New York of the moment, at Letters of Note.