Number One for 8 July 2011

• The best paragraph I read yesterday:

  This is why I got into the newspaper business, to be able to write like this and get paid for it. This is what newspapers used to do — some of them, anyway. We would publish pieces like this on a Sunday, and no one would ask, as they would in later years, “But what’s the utility here? Can we include a sidebar on the sperm bank’s hours and rates? This seems awfully long. Are we being self-indulgent here? I mean, really, who cares?”

  [Nancy Nall]
  
• Courtesy of the Hon. ZW: Eric Mazur on how to teach without lecturing
  
• How to respond to criticism [Duck of Minerva]
  
• Is partisan polarization a consequence of U.S. relative economic decline? [Matthew Yglesias]
  

"Crepuscolo Sul Mare", Piero Umiliani