Daily Office:
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Matins
¶ The good news about a New Scientist roundup of AIDS-fighting developments is that there’s good news — especially about that vaginal gel. The bad news is that AIDS is slipping into company with all the other diseases that disproportionately victimize the poor.
Lauds
¶ We don’t know anything about “pedigreed” film critic Armond White (or, if we did, we forget), but his brazen dismissal of Roger Ebert brought on one of those Stop And Think moments that make our day. (/Film; via The Awl)
Prime
¶ What we can’t help loving most about Felix Salmon’s thinking is his optimism about smaller institutions prevailing over larger ones. Yesterday, Felix tackled a story, by colleague Matt Goldstein, about how big retail banks believe that they ought to be allowed to become even bigger. Having noted that he has seen no evidence that economies of scale increase beyond a $10 billion asset level has been passed (and he notes that one Wall Street branch of Citibank alone — and not its principal one, either — carries $1.5 billion in deposits), Felix turns his attention to an Accenture report that notes consumer disinterest in “one stop shopping.”
Tierce
¶ Ed Yong sends his sputum to 23andme; a month later, he receives his DNA analysis. How cool is that? What’s cool is, precisely, Ed’s very grown-up assessment of the service, which, despite its designer’s best efforts, is not, in his view, for everyone — or possibly even for most people. All the information in the world does not make us better at assessing risk. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
Sext
¶ We think that John Koblin’s story about Gerry Marzorati and the Times has all of the essential ingredients for a multi-planed meta-loaded novel about Gotham hipsterissimo. A bunch of people edit a chic magazine for a living (the Sunday Times), and of course they’re good at that, for a while at least (nothing lasts forever). But how good at they are presenting themselves to outsiders who ask “What Went Wrong?” The issue of whether Megan Liberman is an “abrasive woman” or a smark cookie who can see the bullshit in “bookish” could take up chapters all by itself. A gifted novelist — calling Jennifer Egan! — could look into Lynn Hirschberg’s eyes when she says, “It makes me sad. I don’t dislike or hate Gerry at all. I feel things went wrong somehow.” In other words: don’t expect Mr Koblin’s story to clear up a thing. (The Observer; via The Awl)
Nones
¶ In The Nation, Eric Foner reviews two books about the Confederacy and its aftermath that constructively disrupt a few assumptions that were lying around in our attic. It turns out that, as a polity — as distinct from a fighting machine — the Confederacy was not as unifed as we Yankees might have thought — or been encouraged to think when the War was over.
Vespers
¶ At The Millions, J P Smith writes about how he set about reaching his goal of reading Proust in the original, with only three years of (forgotten) high-school French — via, interestingly, the work of Patrick Modiano, which inspired his own first novel.
¶ Meanwhile, Jean Ruaud muses about “moins” — less — so suavely that we daydreamed that he has kitted out his Paris flat not with stuff but with information. (Mnémoglypes)
Compline
¶ When we were students, teachers were like nannies: if they had personal lives, we never saw them, and we assumed, thinking back later on, that many of them hadn’t had personal lives, just to avoid the complications. Like so much else in the world, that is changing. Not so long ago, we’d have read Josh Barkey’s account of tacitly sharing the breakup of his marriage with his private-school students with a toss of our head: what was he thinking? But we can’t bring ourselves to conclude that, just because he’s a teacher, Mr Barkey has no right to write his life in blog form. Perpend. ( Good)
Have a Look
¶ Does this make us laugh because we’re big fans of Mike Judge’s Extract, and couldn’t help thinking of Beth Grant’s character? (FAIL)