Daily Office: Friday
¶ Matins: Can we call this “gesture substitution”: Vijay Anand has discovered a way to fight corruption. Instead of resisting or cooperating with demands for bribes, people use his zero-rupee notes to “pay” crooked officials. (CommGAP; via 3 Quarks Daily)
¶ Lauds: Here’s a good one: the directors of the art museums in the homes of the Super Bowl contenders have made a bet: either Turner’s The Fifth Plague of Egypt will go to New Orleans, or Claude Lorrain’s Ideal View of Tivoli will go to Indianapolis, depending upon whether the Saints or the Colts win the Super Bowl. (Speakeasy)
¶ Prime: We’re hoping to see some hard-ball analysis of AT&T’s quarterly earnings report, which claimed a boost of 26%. Here in New York City, where new iPhones are not being sold at the moment, because AT&T’s network is inadequate to existing demand, the company’s good news strikes a dissonant note.
One wonders where the nation’s anti-trust watchdogs have been. It would appear that we’ve seen a classic case of the disadvantages (to consumers) of monopolies. Free-marketeers might argue that it would be in Apple’s interest to force AT&T to make improvements, but accordingly to anecdotal evidence, nobody close to Steve Jobs cares very much what happens on the East Coast. (NYT)
¶ Tierce: Habitats by the (cubic) foot: Maria Popova writes about One Cubic Foot. (Brain Pickings)
¶ Sext: Choire Sicha explains “mansplainin,” with the help of a few good women. (The Awl)
¶ Nones: Ketuanan Melayu: The LRB’s Asia correspondent, Joshua Kurlantzick, suggests that the Malaysian government, in an attempt to win back the support of ethnic Malays, may be playing with matches.
¶ Vespers: Bookmark this: Timothy Egan’s provides a handy snap of the state of play in bookland at the dawn of the iPad, particularly with regard to two currently roiling issues: bookstores and royalties. Prognostications are widely avoided, and Mr Egan concludes on the wisest of notes. (NYT)
Whether books flourish the future, textbooks are probably doomed. (VentureBeat; via Marginal Revolution)
¶ Compline: Louis Auchincloss’s death marks, as Henry James would say, an era; but Louis himself would be the first to pooh-pooh talk of nostalgic backward glances.