Daily Office:
Monday, 22 November 2010
Matins¶ Harry Cutting’s “Ode to a Flat Place” is an amazingly well-packed trip to the high plains of Kansas. Lots of information, lots of atmosphere. And then, boom, a picture of two weatherbeaten men (father and son) all but waving good-bye. One farmer worries about the image that the rest of us have of today’s farmers. When we learn that today’s irrigation rig can be controlled by BlackBerry; it also sends all sorts of feedback to the farmer’s computer, we see his point.
Lauds¶ Morgan Meis’s writes drolly about the new must-have, The Classical Tradition, a guide for the perplexed. The comparison to Maimomides is just about the funniest thing in the in classical laughs. Far from being an encyclopedic introduction to Greece and Rome that’s aimed at people who can’t tell their Hera from their Juno, The Classical Tradition is designed to help sophisticates regain “the sense of wonder” that, we too often forget, was at least as salient in the ancient world as the passion for ration. (The Smart Set; via 3 Quarks Daily)
Prime¶ Repeat after us: “Sunk costs are lost costs. Sunk costs that aren’t lost are called “investments.” We like to keep things serious at our financial hour, but the story of Deutsche Bank’s “investment” in Las Vegas’s Cosmpolitan Hotel is too funny to pass over. If ever a hotel deserved to take its name from the great river of Egypt, this is it. Felix Salmon tells it well, but it wasn’t until we got to Bess Levin’s mention of the matter that we learned just how “cosmopolitan” the hotel was intended to be, with its “entry hall featuring 28-foot robots programmed to box, dance and play 12-foot Stratocaster guitars.”
Tierce¶ First, the good news: we’ve got thirteen million tons of the stuff! Bad news: start digging, yesterday. What are those rare earths, anyways (they’re the “lanthanides“), and who needs ’em (you do). Worse news: China has 97% of the earth’s rare-earth reserves. (New Scientist. )
Sext¶ The saga of Elif Batuman’s (Turkish?) towels, or How to Cut Through Red Tape in Istanbul. (My Life and Thoughts; via The Morning News)
Stepping back a moment from the scene, it occurred to me how remarkable it was that fate had brought me face to face in this way with the author of my bureaucratic troubles. All too often, such struggles just wind to an end without you ever finding out what the deal was, or what human interest was concealed in the heart of the machine.  And the nature of such ordeals is that, by the end, you don’t care anymore, anyway. What a rare treat then for me, as a writer, to actually meet my secret opponent, and to thereby be able to contextualize my own particular situation within the broader field of human activity—within, for example, the life-story of a purple-faced man whose mission was to shut down smugglers, and who believed that I was trying to sell my used towels to the Turkish people without paying import taxes.
Nones¶ Kenyan Mwangi Kimenyi lays out what an independent Southern Sudan is going to need in order to come into existence, with an accent on help from the West — and how important, especially for Kenya, it is that Juba gets what it needs. (LA Times; via Real Clear World)
Vespers¶ At The Millions, Colin Marshall bestows informally magisterial consideration upon the novels of Nicholson Baker, from The Mezzanine to The Anthologist — all of them intimate studies of consciousness, rendered palpable in keenly wrought prose. We’ve read almost anything, and what we hugely admire is Baker’s patient willingness to wait for his material to blossom; nothing is forced.
Compline¶ Our subtitle for a book called Manthropology would be quite different from the one that author Peter McAllister has given us; our view is that, the sooner people shut up about “masculinity” and “manliness,” the happier most men would be. But there’s no gainsaying that Mr McAllister has some sharp insights about a range of topics that stretches from the gene pool to sacrificial sports. (On second thought, that’s not much of a stretch, because almost everything tinctured with “masculinity” connects more or less directly with death.)(Salon; via 3 Quarks Daily)
¶ HTMLGiant’s Index. (After Harper’s)
¶ via Tyler Cowen: Your (lack of) rights as a cruise ship passenger.
¶ Important advice from Mark Lilla: “To understand someone like Beck, and the people who love him, you need to stay on the surface, not plumb the depths or peek behind the curtain.” (NYRB)