Daily Office: Friday

k0326

¶ Matins: Whatever critics were calling President Obama prior to this week, they now appear to concur that he’s a capable Machiavellian. Stephen Burt joins the chorus of commentators cited by William Saletan at Slate. (LRB)

¶ Lauds: Alexandra Lange, who teaches architecture criticism at NYU, explains why she’s unhappy with Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. Doing so, she lays out a handful of very sound principles to bear in mind when reading almost any critic. (Design Observer)

¶ Prime: If this is the best that Ernst & Young can do to exculpate itself from facilitating the folly at Lehman Brothers, says Felix Salmon, “they really are in for a world Lehman-related pain.”

¶ Tierce: At Wired Science, “6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth.”

¶ Sext: At The Awl, Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Julie Klausner discuss Greenberg.

¶ Nones: Will those 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem prove to have the weight of a fatal straw? (Ethan Bronner, at the Times)

Also interesting in this connection is Michael Young’s piece in the (Lebanon) Daily Star: “Israel is losing the battle of narratives.

¶ Vespers: A delightful reminiscence of mythologue Stanley Edgar Hyman and his wife — Shirley Jackson — by one of Hyman’s thesis students at Bennington, Patricia Highsmith biographer Joan Schenkar. After reading it, you may want to dig out Jackson’s immortal short story, “The Lottery.” (Speakeasy)

¶ Compline: The Editor was recently asked by a friend if he thought that future generations would pity us as condescendingly as we pity, say, medieval folk. “I certainly hope so,” was his optimistic reply. At New Humanist, Sally Feldman surveys an aspect of life that could be a lot more civilized (outside Japan, anyway).