The New Yorker, 2005-10-17, a

[fiefoe]

"Summer Vacation: Daniel, In Mass" / Jon Mooallem
__ He has also perfected a strategy that could be described as the Lippman Reverse: teasing a bias in his setup, then blow-darting the bureaucrat from the other direction.

"A Theft in The Library" / William Finnegan

• How do new things become imaginable? Looking at Old World maps, you can see it happen. Around the turn of the sixteenth century, dragons start to withdraw from the seas west of Europe, and landmasses appear.
• ... distilled, in that room, is the sweet and humane beauty of libraries, their deeply civilized spirit.
  

"Unfinished Business" / Geraldine Brooks

• for the tiles he wanted something very specific: a tile that “had gloss but did not have a mirror effect. A tile with a coarse structure that resembled hammered silver.” He did not want a blinding flare off the roof surfaces, or a “normal” glaze, which looks “as if it is made from white cardboard.” He used many metaphors for what he was seeking. The tiles, he said, should contrast matte against sheen, like a fresh layer of snow on a frozen snowbank, or the shine of a fingernail against skin.
• Utzon has designed deep, slightly angled stone niches, each framing its own view of the sea. These reduce heat and glare in the manner of traditional Mediterranean homes, but also dramatize the play of light and shadow across the stone. The view becomes a sort of serial, as each opening draws the eye in turn. A boat was moving across the horizon as we stood there. It appeared, then vanished, then returned, each time as a kind of surprising apparition, worthy of renewed interest.
• “We had four hundred and fifty different trades working on that site. It was a fantastic ballet every day. Huge elements—ten-ton pieces of concrete. They would raise them up into the air, and they would meet on the millimetre.” His long-fingered hands fanned the space between us as he remembered how it was.
• “Everyone was doing more than their best. How can you express this? I asked a Finnish carpenter, and he said the word in Finnish is sisu —the desire for something extra that you pull out of yourself.”
  

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