¶ Matins: At The Second Pass, Michael Rymer appraises David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, and although he finds the book to be “hobbled,” he reminds us that cracked explanations appeal by telling a good story.

¶ Lauds: In one interview, or perhaps two, Ewan McGregor talks to the Wall Street Journal and to its popular-scene blog, Speakeasy, about working with Roman Polanski and his “upcoming projects.”

¶ Prime: Few pundits share David Brooks’s gift for papering over surprising omissions with a patina of reasonable patter that sounds comprehensive. In a recent column, for example, Mr Brooks finds regrettable drawbacks in the “meritocratic” nature of the American elite. He attributes the fact that respect for “our institutions” has “plummeted” to all sorts of interesting slippages among the alleged holders of power, from rootlessness to insensitivity to “context.” One factor that goes unmentioned, however, is an income disparity that has left too many Americans without much of a reason to respect anything. Chris Lehman rebuts with the suggestion that nation may have become even less progressive than it was in the 1950s. (NYT, The Awl)

¶ Tierce: At The Infrastructurist, Yonah Freemark considers alternatives to concrete in the paving of sidewalks. Brick and stone are more attractive, but brick is fragile and stone is expensive, and both make for uneven surfaces. Who’d a thunk it: the bane of recycling may do the trick.

¶ Sext: Having thought the matter over, Mike Johnston decided that merely crediting the maker of a YouTube clip that he embedded at The Online Photographer. And he sent Harlan Ellison $25. And he got a thank-you note.

(Information may want to be free, but it doesn’t have to eat.)

¶ Nones: Sebnem Arsu’s report on the latest arrest of alleged military conspirators in Turkey clarifies some of the complexity in which national sovereignty is entangled, as newly empowered religious conservatives seek an alternative to the militant secularism of Turkey’s Twentieth-Century past. The alignment of values is altogether unlike what’s familiar in the Christian West. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Now that some time has passed by, and the brouhaha is all but forgotten, Maud Newton pauses over The Original of Laura and finds it to be a fitting finale to Vladimir Nabokov’s career.

¶ Compline: Why unignited natural gas stinks: the New London School Explosion of 1937. (via MetaFilter)

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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