Here’s a useful take on Hendrik Hertzberg’s sound Comment about the Larry Craig debacle (debacle of misappropriated police resources and legislative energy, that is); if you’ve seen any good takes on Hertzberg’s piece, please post them in the comments.

I just started reading How Starbucks Saved My Life, so I’ll write about it when I’m done. For context, here’s today’s New York Times profile, with a photo slide show, of Michael Gates Gill, the self-sufficient and contented man, well-respected barista at a Starbucks store, son of Brendan Gill, and former ad executive, in approximately that order. As a rule, I don’t like Starbucks that much, but I’m touched.

Christopher Hayes praises my friend Katha Pollitt’s new book, Learning to Drive: “A few of the personal essays in this book appeared in the New Yorker, but there’s some wonderful new stuff as well, including an absolutely spot-on hilarious chapter about a Marxist study group she used to belong to. As always, Pollitt writes like a dream.”

I’m reading it now, and I’m planning to buy it for half a dozen others. It should be required reading for every humanist, capitalist, true lover, skeptic, feminist, deep thinker, and humor appreciator this side of the exosphere. You’ll remember the New Yorker essays “Webstalker” and “Learning to Drive”; they’re in there, all right, and so are a whole bunch of other pieces you’ll be delighted to discover.

Cartoon news: This blogger has some caption-contest suggestions; cartoon editor Bob Mankoff comments on a cartoon controversy.

A nice reflection on what makes good readings so good; the writer recalls readings by John Hodgman, Marisha Pessl, and Sean Wilsey, among others.

This piece about ideas of privacy includes this story: “In another well-known case, The New Yorker magazine was sued by a hermit whose privacy was shattered when a James Thurber story disclosed that many years before he had been a famous child prodigy.”

Finally, remember the Talk of the Town by Lauren Collins about Barbara Hillary, the 75-year-old woman who wanted to be the first African-American woman to reach the North Pole? She did it!