Daily Office: Tuesday
¶ Matins: Ryan Avent, at Portfolio, is “amazed”:
The truly amazing thing to me is that parental income isn’t just crucial in getting to college, and getting through college — its effects linger on, basically, in perpetuity. One of the most remarkable findings from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project is that a child from a family in the top income quintile who does not get a college degree is more likely to wind up in the top income quintile himself than a child from a family in the bottom income quintile who does get a college degree.
¶ Lauds: Krystian Zimerman read the riot act at Disney on Sunday night. In light of yesterday’s Lauds, you won’t be surprised to hear that I disapprove.
¶ Prime: At Sore Afraid, Eric undergoes laser eye  surgery; has “crispness” issues, but jogs in Central Park and tootles off to Washington just the same.
We had reservations for an activity at the International Spy Museum, but Asaph started feeling unwell, probably from dehydration, but things weren’t helped when he was bitten by a large fly. I tried to reassure him, but I am not so good at that.
¶ Tierce: An exciting, ultimately frustrating story about “cyberwarfare” in the Times  boils down to “be very afraid” boilerplate. The Economist, however, counsels a more cynically relaxed response.
¶ Sext: It’s a living — or is it? A pair of entrepreneurial Pakistani brothers may relocate to East Asia if their prosperous bondage-gear business gets too hot to handle in Karachi.
¶ Nones: Just in case you think that things are bad here in the USA, consider the Balkan States: Lithuania’s economy dropped by 12% from the same quarter last year. That’s an almost unimaginable contraction in terms of everyday business.
¶ Vespers: The return of the British thriller: the Curzon Group (currently comprising three crime writers) intends to restore the lustre of a genre that, in its eyes, has been tarnished by American “production line” methods. (via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind)
¶ Compline: Along with indoor plumbing, a hallmark of modern civilization at its most basic is street lighting: we take the safety that it provides for granted. But streetlights are in need of a rethink, not least because powering them comes to two percent of our total energy consumption.
Oremus…
§ Matins. Stories like this are usually written to highlight the inequity of a society in which dumb rich kids do better than smart poor kids. But what stories like this are really about is the sheer and absolute undesirableness of being poor — anybody’s.
Maybe it’s time to back-pedal our reliance on education alone as a route out of relative poverty. Unfortunately, poverty creates its own culture, with all the bonds that any culture has. But what’s far worse is the persistent denial of the incomparable role that good luck plays in wealth creation.
§ Lauds. While I share some of the Polish pianist’s sentiments, and cannot object to his boycott, I believe that a solo recital was very much the wrong venue in which to announce a rejection of US bookings as a way of protesting our military policies.
Mr Zimerman’s TSA nightmare, however, is cause for shame and dread.
Zimerman has had problems in the United States in recent years. He travels with his own Steinway piano, which he has altered himself. But shortly after 9/11, the instrument was confiscated at JFK Airport when he landed in New York to give a recital at Carnegie Hall. Thinking the glue smelled funny, the TSA decided to take no chances and destroyed the instrument. Since then he has shipped his pianos in parts, which he reassembles by hand after he lands. He also drives the truck himself when he carries his instrument from city to city over land, as he did after playing a recital in Berkeley on Friday.
The idea that our security has been entrusted to dimmish big guys turns my stomach.
§ Prime. Sadly, Eric’s post reminded me that I never got round to ordering Blue Hill Troupe tickets. I’ve only seen The Sorcerer once, and that was way back in the Sixties, when the American Savoyards performed in the basement at Jan Hus, accompanied by piano and harmonium. I was madly in love with a contralto called Arden — I think she played Iolanthe.
§ Tierce. The Adminstration’s review of “cyberdefenses,” which will eventually allocate agency funding, has spawned a very traditional turf war.
In February Barack Obama launched a review of America’s cyber-security efforts. The findings are expected to influence how funds are allocated and the relative balance of power between the various agencies. Frantic jockeying for position may explain the recent scare stories, and their curious lack of detail.
The Times story really ought to have pinned someone’s name on the following bit of moronitude:
Because “cyberwar†contains the word “war,†the Pentagon has argued that it should be the locus of American defensive and offensive strategy — and it is creating the kind of infrastructure that was built around nuclear weapons in the 1940s and ’50s.
§ Sext. I love this kind of story, because Jane Jacobs taught me to — or did she? I guess that whips and gag balls do not really constitute “import replacement” manufacturing. I wonder if any of the consumers — Americans for the most part, but also Germans and Nederlanders — squeeze extra frissons from daydreams about the “shoddy factory” in which their equipment is produced. Surely there’s a kicky kink here:
It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.
“If our mom knew, she would disown us,†said Adnan, seated on a leopard-print fabric covering his desk chair.
Stendhal was right: people wouldn’t take up S & M if they didn’t read about it. (Snark)
§ Nones. Forecasts for Latvia and Estonia are at least as bleak.
Again and again, “construction” or “building” figures as a significantly tumbling sector. It’s as though following the American model of capitalism weren’t enough: emulators took up its wasteful land-use practices.
§ Vespers. There’s only one little problem: the group is mentored by Jeffrey Archer.
§ Compline. Of the six ideas (all of which are attractive), the big wow goes to Philips, for its “Light Blossom” (also a wind turbine!)
The “lunar resonant” streetlamp may not be everything that stargazers hope for, but it will certainly increase the ambient romance!