What the well-dressed head of state is wearing this season: this is Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, at the inauguration of Oslo’s new opera house earlier this month. “It’s a highlight in the history of European architecture,” she told reporters.

If you're envious of what other people own in Second Life, is that avatarice?

This will be good – Poneke has announced that he will post the text of his talk to the Skeptics conference four years ago on how the media treats medical issues, ie whether science-based medicine is treated the same way as alternative medicine. Guess what? It isn’t.

The post is solid at 2500 words and will come on Sunday. I regard Poneke as the finest journalist of his (my) generation, so this really is something to look forward to. Watch that space.

There was a great item last night on Concert FM’s Sound Lounge about Morton Feldman, my new favourite uneasy listening composer. He was active from the 50s to the 80s, and was friends with key New York painters such as Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Jackson Pollock: one of his best-known pieces is called The Rothko Chapel. He told a great story – it was wonderful to hear his voice, and John Cage’s and all the others’ – about his teacher, Stefan Wolpe, a Marxist, telling him that his music was too esoteric. They were talking about this in Wolpe’s studio on Fourteenth Street, then a working-class area. “What about the man on the street?” demanded Wolpe. As they looked out the window they saw Jackson Pollock crossing the street.

If you have any interest in contemporary music, don’t miss the second instalment next Tuesday.

There’s a thorough 2006 overview of Feldman by the estimable Alex Ross here, and follow-ups here and here. Feldman’s music is surprisingly easy to check out online and download: many pieces are on iTunes, eMusic and even Amazon. The Rothko Chapel is probably a good place to start – Ross calls it “one of the masterpieces of the twentieth century”.

And he looks a bit like Jermaine Clements.

This set of cartograms maps the world as seen through the eyes of print and online editors. The Economist and Slate come out of it best.

Tim Blair is having a laugh with this story from the Herald about an alleged assault with a deadly hedgehog: Psycho Quiller.

In the comments:

I will admit that as a weapon, the aerodynamic hedgehog has its advantages over the overly clingy echidna, but in my experience, you only have to show the average NZer the poisonous spurs of the platypus, and they will put down their Erinaceinae and leave you in peace.

The sister-in-law has moved her blog here:

I was on a flight last week when the air hostess said, ‘At Air New Zealand we are passionate about the environment.’
‘No you’re not!’ I snorted. ‘If you were passionate about the environment you’d be Walk New Zealand.’

This is what the six-year-old got from her godmother:

Alex Ross in the New Yorker on the current production of Tristan und Isolde at the Met:

He might make an arresting Peter Grimes; he already has the weathered, haunted look

I’ll bet, after this experience.

Heading of the month, from Stuff:

Rap music glamorises drug use, study says