Wes Phillips

<I>Scientific American</I> takes a look at online dating.

<I>Firing Squad</I> has an interesting take on DRM. Warning: the site has super-annoying "content links that are just as annoying as "malicious viruses and rootkits."

Shalom Auslander didn't review Mailer's <I>The Castle</I>. He really, really wanted to. He just couldn't bring himself to <I>read</I> it. I know what he means.

Meridian's resident genius, Bob Stuart, sends along this old but still appropriate article by Janis Ian. Be sure to read her follow-up, "Fallout," as well.

The creator of <I>Calvin & Hobbes</I> gave a legendary (some say notorious) speech called "The State of Cartooning" in 1989. I'd heard of it, but never read it until <I>Planet Cartoon</I> posted it yesterday.

Fiona Maddocks writes a fine rebuttal to Norman LeBrecht's <A HREF="http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/070124-NL-tchaikovsky.html">grous… dismissal</A> of the BBC's Tchaikovsky Experience.

That's Spengler's argument in this <I>Asia Times</I> essay, at any rate. Within that discussion, however, Spengler muses about why modern art is so much more popular with the public than "modern" music&mdash;and <I>that's</I> the <I>hmmm</I> part of his essay&mdash;that music, unlike the plastic arts, can only be experienced within time.