Jack In The Box

What the heck. Couldn't resist a few more links.

* Jane Jacobs is no more, alas. The New Yorker reproduces an old interview with her: "Our songs and cities are the best things about us. Songs and cities are so indispensable. Even if we go into darkness, the time will come when people will want to know how these ruins were made—the essence of the life we made. "

* Carlos Fuentes' new book, The Eagle's Throne, is set in 2020, a time when Condoleezza Rice is President of the United States. Why her? "Why not? She has good legs. She can play the piano."

* Salman Rushdie echoes Amartya Sen: “We are being encouraged to define our identities into smaller and smaller boxes. However, we are 30 or 40 of those things. The more broadly we understand ourselves, the more easily we relate. The more narrowly we define ourselves, the more intolerant we are.”

* We-Wish-We'd-Come-Up-With-That-Ourselves-Dept: "Everyman does for death and dying what Portnoy’s Complaint did for masturbation."