Matins

¶ We did not read the justly-praised Washington Post story about the nation’s topsy-turvy, unaccountable security system, any more than we’re going to read the Wikileaks papers about Afghanistan. We don’t claim to know everything that’s in these reports, but we are certain that both are stuffed with evidence that unreconstructed masculine types have all too naturally found refuge behind weapons of one kind or another — rifles or surveillance cameras, it doesn’t matter which — from which it will be difficult to dislodge them. But if confronting these nightmares directly cripples us with despair, we can at least welcome the esteem with which they have been greeted, and join a bit in the applause.

¶ Another unsurprising story: “US ‘fails to account’ for Iraq reconstruction billions.” (BBC News)

Lauds

¶ At Dance Magazine, Wendy Perron cautions choreographers against writing up their creative process — “You should be utterly at a loss for words…” — but what she says has very wide application. It serves equally as a caution to readers who imagine that artists can tell us “how they do it.”

Prime

¶ Joshua Brown writes about “Recovery Apartheid“: businesses without comfy cash cushions to protect them from spotty consumer demand — that would be small businesses — are doing the opposite of thriving. (The Reformed Broker; via Abnormal Returns)

Tierce

¶ Someday, it will be understood that truly great conversation is better than sex, but for the moment we’ll have to be satisfied with some preliminary findings: when two people are talking and they “click,” feeling that they’re on the same “wavelength,” that’s not an illusion. Something measurably correspondent is probably occcurring in their brains, namely, similar blood flows. Brendan Keim at Wired Science:

¶ Our friend Jean Ruaud has been writing about his corner of Touraine. He is currently vacationing at a family member’s home outside Chinon, where he grew up. St-Benoît-la-Forêt, the town where he’s staying, stands in a clearing carved out of the Forét de Chinon about a thousand years ago, perhaps longer. You can survey the area here. Don’t forget to zoom in on Rochambeau Village, the American suburb built for GIs stationed at the NATO base in the Forêt. De fil en aiguille…

Nones

¶ Secretary of State Clinton has turned up the heat under Chinese claims to sovereignty over the South China Sea, a bit of overreaching that has China’s neighbors looking to Washington to broker a resolution. This makes for an interesting counterpoint to the Korean minuet. Willy Lam reports at Asia Sentinel. (via Real Clear World)

Vespers

¶ It’s the talk of the town: Michiko Kakutani LOVES Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story. (NYT)

Compline

¶ Huge fans of micropayments that we are, we perhaps read more into Melissa Lafsky’s piece about tolling roads than we were meant to do. (The Infrastructurist)

As we’ve seen in New York, transponder-based automatic toll-paying systems like E-Z Pass take the congestion out of tolling. Nor do tollgates have to be few and far between. It also occurs to us that lower-income drivers could be relieved of tolls altogether with special accounts — a very important benefit as American cities revert to the historic urban norm, pushing the poor toward the outer suburbs.

Have a Look

¶ Mila’s Daydreams. (via kottke.org; The Awl)

¶ “Confessional can’t become sauna, church rules.” (via Marginal Revolution)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Have A Look, The Hours. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.