Daily Office: Thursday
¶ Matins: The accidental death of a cyclist in Washington who was knocked down by a military vehicle attached to the nuclear security summit — has raised questions about the appropriateness of such vehicles on city streets. Matthew Yglesias is even more offended by the military’s immediate response. (via Felix Salmon)
¶ Lauds: Leipzig’s Bach Museum, far from being a dusty attic of dubious knickknacks, centers its collection upon information, not objects. (WSJ; via Arts Journal)
¶ Prime: The great promise of microfinance has attracted for-profit investors, saddling micro-borrowers with gigantic interest rates. In a Times report, Elizabeth Malkin writes of a very interesting wrinkle called “forced savings.
¶ Tierce: Tired of accumulating a lot of stuff that you lose interest in almost immediately after you’ve acquired it? A tip from the chipper folks at PsyBlog suggests that you treat your purchases as experiences rather than as things: Think experientially.
¶ Sext: A journalism student asked Felix Salmon some questions about business blogging. Naturally, the student wanted to know how it is that some business bloggers — Mr Salmon among them — acquire such a broad readership despite the lack of journalist credentials. The answer makes us wonder if journalism schools are still a good idea.
¶ Nones: Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, speaking at Johns Hopkins University, makes some remarks that might run afoul of his country’s severelèse-majesté laws. (NYT)
¶ Vespers: Complaining about the extremely rudimentary classifications in place at the iBook Store prompts Laura Miller to make some interesting observations on the importance of codicological metadata — information about books that helps us to find them. (Salon; via Arts Journal)
¶ Compline: Crowdsourcing the National Archives: that’s what AOTUS David Ferriero has in mind. But first, let’s crowdsource his idea. (Chron Higher Ed; via The Morning News)