Daily Office: Tuesday
¶ Matins: At the risk of playing with paradoxes, we submit that, buried in plain sight in the following extract from Jill Lepore’s Letter from Boston, “Tea and Sympathy,” there is an indictment of the largely liberal academic class — an indictment not from the right or from the left, but from the point of view of engaged humanism. (The New Yorker)
¶ Lauds: Toni Bentley has her hip replaced, and comes to terms with the arthritis that ended her City Ballet career when she was still a young woman. She also learns what you do with bones to keep them from going rancid. (NYRBlog)
¶ Prime: For some reason, the idea of self-financing the Securities and Exchange Commission — funding staff and operations with fines and fees would double its budget — has just moved Tyler Cowen to consider the idea. He sees some pros, but more cons. (Marginal Revolution) The Epicurean Dealmaker made the case for self-financing in March.
¶ Tierce: Fight or flight: a guy thing? Looks like it. Ingrid Wickelgren reports at Scientific American.
¶ Sext: In case you’ve been hoping that the story would just go away, David Carr wrote a thoughtful piece about it over the weekend: “Monetizing an iPhone Spectacle.” Quaere: is a news story a commodity? Perhaps it’s better to ask if a news story is actually involved in this case. (NYT)
¶ Nones: Todd Cowell and Joshua Kurlantzick agree that intercession by Thailand’s King Bhumibol would probably not quell the Red Shirts’ insurgency. Mr Cowell traces chilling similarities between Thailand today and Spain in 1936. Interestingly, it’s difficult to assess the one difference that he locates — is it a good thing or a bad thing?
¶ Vespers: What Jill Lepore calls presentism (above), Patrick Kurp calls temporal parochialism. (Anecdotal Evidence)
¶ Compline: There’s a first time for everything, and this one is sweet to read about: Emily Guerin takes her first train ride along the Northeast Corridor, from Boston’s South Station to Washington’s Union Station. It’s a strange kind of sightseeing, to be sure. (The Bygone Bureau)