Daily Office: Thursday
¶ Matins: A few days ago, Felix Salmon looked at the Zachary Kouwe plagiarism hoo-haw at the Times and took the opportunity to share an incredibly interesting insight: print media companies still don’t understand blogging. We’ve been chewing it over, and we’ve decided that we do.
¶ Lauds: Fundamentally silly but still full of goodies: Michael Kimmelman on Caravaggio (stop it with the Michelangelo already!) at the Times.
¶ Prime: What, exactly, is the “national debt” — besides scary-huge, that is? Bruce Bartlett lays it out, and, frankly, we recommend that you skip this part. (Capital Gains and Games; via Marginal Revolution)
¶ Tierce: Laura Miller discusses David Shenk’s explosive new book, The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong, admitting that it left her somewhat shaken. (Salon; via 3 Quarks Daily)
We have always suspected that, in a nation of post-Calvinists, genetic determinism is a naturally compelling misreading of the hard facts.
¶ Sext: Now what? Now that the Oscars have been awarded, what’s a Hollywood blogger to do? Speakeasy asks a couple of writers.
¶ Nones: The pith of Martin Wolf’s provocative Financial Times piece about Germany’s “Eurozone nightmare:”
¶ Vespers: What with Christopher Hitchens stuck in the limelight, we sought relief — and, hoo boy, found it! — in Christopher Tayler’s arch-browed LRB review of the Latest Volume of Clive James’s memoirs, The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years.
¶ Compline: Nick Paumgartner’s “The Ski Gods,” a riveting look into the sport’s dark side, lies on the other side of the firewall at The New Yorker, but Christopher Shea comments on two of its major points at Brainiac. First, the invented tradition thing. Second: why no women jumpers?