Daily Office: Thursday
¶ 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)