Matins

¶ An interesting piece about the improving the levees of New Orleans, not just as engineering necessities but as features of the landscape, throws light on a big shift in contemporary thinking, away from the Enlightenment project of triumphing over nature, from making environmental problems disappear to making them feel at home, for everyone. (Good)

Lauds

¶ Move over, Mad Men: Sherlock’s back in town. Or will be, presently: the BBC has exhumed and updated Anglophonia’s most famous sleuth, and engaged Benedict Cumberbatch to impersonate him. (Guardian; via MetaFilter)

Prime

¶ At Private Sector Development Blog, Ryan Hahn compares microcredit to the ropes that lashed Odysseus to the mast of his ship when the Sirens sang. (He goes on to point out that Odysseus himself, like most men, would not resort to microcredit for self-help purposes.) (via The Awl)

Tierce

¶ At Wired, Kevin Kelly has a short interview with Fred Brooks, author of (most recently) The Design of Design, a book that we’ve enjoyed dipping into. via kottke.org)

Sext

¶ Nige takes a walk in the beautiful Leicestershire countryside, where the land still tells of a past that was by no means bucolic and charming.

Nones

¶ Burma — land of the future? The “military junta” that controls Myanmar’s wealth is nothing but a retro-patriarchal plutocracy. That it should flourish in the Twenty-First Century is shocking — until we consider growing income disparties around the world. Hannah Beech at Time. (via Real Clear World)

History suggests that the junta class will disintegrate from within over time. But that is only a suggestion.

Vespers

¶ At Critical Mass, Mark Athitakis talks to David Pritchard, founder of the literary Web site Critical Flame.

Compline

¶ “Our T-shirt will read: I just don’t know.” Ron Rosenbaum is lucid about agnosticism, which ever way it faces.

Have a Look

¶ New York art critic Jerry Saltz’s favorite NYC paintings. (via The Morning News)

¶ There goes the garden! What happens to a (dying) washing machine when you toss a brick into its spin cycle. (via MetaFilter)

¶ Nice Muscles. (Café Muscato)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 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.