In Brief

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond. (Illustration via Monotonous Forest -- the joke's prerequisite is that you have read this post earlier this week)

• Via Maud Newton, what documents of extensive secret police surveillance tell us about the life of Alexander Pushkin in "the nation that reads the most books." [Moscow Times]


• The Church Sign Generator used to make the image seen here is only one of several fun design-your-own image sites run by the same group -- check out the Concert Ticket Generator, the Cassette Tape Generator, and the Vinyl Record Generator. Hours of fun for the whole family! [Says-It.com]


• Information yearns to be free-range! Via Boing Boing, another great purveyor of published goodness has set its archive free on the Internet, joining the New York Times. When will you come to your senses, Wall Street Journal? [The Atlantic Monthly]


• Phil Ford has a great quote from Elgar, wistfully recalling the joy of first discovering music as a boy. In my own life, I remember my undergraduate piano teacher discovering that I had never heard the first Brahms piano concerto. She looked at me with what I can describe only as incredulous envy. "You are so lucky to be able to hear that piece for the first time," she said and sent me to the library to find a recording immediately. [Dial "M" for Musicology]


• Anne-Carolyn Bird is on her way to sing Susanna, in my home state, the Great State of Michigan. Get that woman a Petoskey stone! Also, I hope she has a good, warm hat. [The Concert]


• Speaking of the Great Lake State, can this be true? A real contemporary art museum in East Lansing, designed by Zaha Hadid? Eli Broad went to Michigan State, too? The museum will be "at the corner of Grand River Avenue and Farm Lane at the Collingwood Campus entrance." The pictures of the design look pretty cool. [International Herald Tribune]