Daily Office: Tuesday
¶ 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.