Daily Office: Friday
¶ Matins: Rebecca Solnit addresses media complicity in the property-rights racket of post-disaster “looting.” (Guernica; via The Rumpus)
¶ Lauds: London art critic Jonathan James asks: “Should critics point out how exhibitions could have been done differently?”
We think that Mr Jones is exactly wrong about a critic’s principal duty: motivating the public to see and hear things. There’s a place for considering the purposes of exhibitions and such, but it is not in the daily critic’s commentary. Mr Jones confuses stock and flow. (Guardian)
¶ Prime: Megan McArdle assesses yesterday’s White House banking proposals. In passing, she notes the witlessness of Big Banking’s business-as-usual behavior in 2009. (The Atlantic)
Ms McArdle’s expecatation that the legislation will hurt New York will probably be what ensures passage.
¶ Tierce: Terry Teachout still seems surprised by the popularity of Pops, his life of Louis Armstrong. It has kept him exhilaratingly yet worryingly busy. (About Last Night)
¶ Sext: Liz Colville treats us to a parody preview of Elizabeth Gilbert’s as-of-yet untitled next book. (The Awl)
¶ Nones: Here’s a headline: “Accord Reached to Let Honduran President Depart.” Only problem: Guess Who hasn’t signed on. Elisabeth Malkin reports. (NYT)
¶ Vespers: Martin Schneider considers the possibility that the number of “game-changing” non-fiction books has been dwindling.
Don’t miss the list of important books from the period 1955-1975 — a lot of them still look important to us, especially that game-changiest of paradigm shifting books, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). It was a thrilling read five or six years later, when it figured in the Editor’s assigned reading at college. (Emdashes)
¶ Compline: “Thorstein Veblen” celebrates the first anniversary of Economists For Firing Larry Summers by renewing the appeal implicit in his Web log’s title.