Mucho lollio, little timeo, so straight into it.

Mark sends Matthew Taylor, CEO of the Royal Society of the Arts: "We have to ask ourselves why the internet is so good for wankers, gamblers and shoppers, and not so good for citizens and communities."

Speaking of wanking, here's The Atlantic on girlie mags. Also the new super rich in Shanghai, the brilliant Peter O'Toole's last best chance at an Oscar and bad news - plans to remake Brideshead.

What makes good and bad writing? Zadie Smith explains why it's so hard to define, let alone achieve. Can't get a good review? Buy one.

Stephen sends dispatches of Ponsonby, Farrar's guide to the new NCEA grades, a backgrounder on the Labour cabinet and, from his significant other, the Phrontistery.

Chris sends a story from Boingboing about someone taking photographs of discarded Christmas trees on the streets of London and New York. He points out Richard Brautigan did the same thing in 1964 and wrote about it in his story "What are you going to do with 390 photographs of Christmas trees" in The Tokyo-Montana Express, which he reckons is beautiful and still available.

Arts & Letters Daily wants to know what the Great Minds are optimistic about. An “intellectual impresario” puts the question to leading thinkers including Boing Boing super-vixen Xeni Jardin, in downbeat mood, and NZBC ‘Five minutes with’ guest Douglas Rushkoff, who is hopeful that now Richard Dawkins has kicked notions of God into touch, humans might rise above killing one another.

In a useful story, an arts blogger looks at the kind of light reading best suited to nursing a hangover. Try not to turn those pages too loudly. And Melvyn Bragg’s Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ show examines the work of Jorge Luis Borges.

Ciao.