To kick off the year, here are a few things I might have blogged about over the last week or so, had I maintained the impressive Christmas-season pace achieved by many of my peers (or any pace at all, really).

Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias ponder whether the newspaper business could have done more to save itself.

David Frum and Alan Jacobs ponder the decline of literature.

The New York Times ponders the decline of moviegoing.

Ta-Nehisi Coates ponders racial politics and Roland Burris.

George Packers ponders inauguration poetry - and then ponders it again, in response to a response from Ta-Nehisi.

Jim Webb ponders prison reform - and good for him, provisionally, even though Virginia Republicans will give him hell for it.

And to answer the question of the day: I would love to run into a primate while shopping for groceries, but I recognize that may be a minority taste. (Plus, there's the slippery-slope problem ...)