Daily Office: Wednesday

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¶ Matins: Tyler Cowen answers a question posed at EconLog: Why do colleges care about extracurricular activities, when businesses don’t? (Yes, we think that the question is interesting, too, regardless of the answer.)

¶ Lauds: James Ivory finishes the last Merchant Ivory production, an adaptation of Peter Cameron’s The City of Your Final Destination, with MI alum Anthony Hopkins.

¶ Prime: More about Magnetar from one of the men who really knows, Jim Kwak of The Baseline Scenario. Wait! There’s more. In the following paragraphs, Mr Kwak illustrates the disconnect between “performance pay” and real performance. (via Abnormal Returns)

¶ Tierce: Elementary school teachers are always talking up “creativity,” but in fact they don’t want genuinely creative students in their classrooms. Jonah Lehrer reports. 

¶ Sext: Next time a loved one threatens suicide, try the piss-off gambit, which recently saved a live in Sweden. Come to think of it, this is the sort of thing that works only in Sweden (Mail Online; via The Awl)

¶ Nones: Two views of the situation in Thailand. Joshua Kurlantzick (LRB) is not only less optimistic than Philip Bowring (IHT), but he has a significantly different take on the economy.

¶ Vespers: Terry Teachout ties up a bouquet of books that he would not care to re-read (no matter how much they affected him when he was a student) with a glance at the kind of book that he doesn’t read now. (About Last Night)

¶ Compline: At DoubleX, K J Dell’Antonia writes movingly about how close she came to following the example of Torry Hansen, and sending her little girl back to China. (via The Morning News)