Quotes of the day

Your hands should not, together with the face,
be drawn with the brush
You reveal them in your work
And hide them in the painting.--François Malherbe

It is difficult to say what will happen for Google, but a good dose of self-doubt that they are somehow above it all is a good place to start. Oh yes, and Facebook, if you are listening, all of the above applies to you too.--Joshua Gans

In China, the year is traditionally divided into periods based on the moon’s orbit around the earth and the sun’s path across the sky. This lunisolar calendar is laden with myths and celebrated by rituals that allowed Chinese to mark time and make sense of their world. So too the modern political calendar in China. It takes shape around the mysterious workings of the Communist Party, which rotates its top leaders every decade at a Party Congress, a comet-like event that awes onlookers as a portent of change and renewal. The next congress is set to take place in the fall of 2012—the 18th occurrence in the party’s 91-year history—and is already being associated with unusual phenomena. The most spectacular was last week’s eclipse of Bo Xilai.--Ian Johnson