To his supreme credit, Alexander McCall Smith claims that his remarks about Irvine Welsh have been “misinterpreted.” Welsh’s status has been downgraded to “a partially indecent hooligan whom I’ll never buy a drink for.”

A new Michigan law requires publications that depict “explicit content” to be covered up. Booksellers and reading groups are furious. And they’ve filed a lawsuit. In the meantime, they may want to consider covering up Ann Coulter’s books. Pretty explicit stuff, given that she’s advocated blowing up the New York Times building, as well as suggesting, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” (via Sarah)

Catherine Kennan has a very juicy piece on highbrow personals. It doesn’t get any closer to understanding the phenomenon (who can?), but it does feature a very amusing exchange between Kennan and one of the guys behind a personal ad. And it’s impossible to resist this ad: “Find the 10th coefficient in the expansion of the binomial (1+x) to the 20th power. Then love me some more. Mathematical Ms, Cambridge.” (via Chica)

The latest culprit behind declining book sales? USA Today suggests it’s the DVD.

Sarah Waters has turned down a Who’s Who entry because she’s not sure how relevant the directory is to today’s world.

Columbia Journalism Review has a piece on former New Republic editor Gregg Easterbrook. It’s another guy fired because of blog story, but the cause here is far more nefarious (and strangely immediate).

And more on Norr from the Daily Planet. Efforts to track down settlement terms are nice from an outside source, but there are few conditional questions revealed.