And now one for all the sleepy parents: author Adam Mansbach‘s new bedtime story book, Go the F*ck to Sleep was already enjoying success for its comically frustrated narrative of an exhausted parent fighting off his child’s every attempt to escape bedtime. But while the text itself was funny enough, Mansbach somehow found the two most appropriate voices to tell the tale: Samuel L. Jackson for the audiobook and Werner Herzog in a dramatic reading at the New York Public Library yesterday.

No need to have the “I’m researching a book” excuse at the tip of your tongue. The New York Public Library says yes, by all means, go ahead and use their public computers to check out porn. A desperate ploy to get porn-loving but computer-less New Yorkers to visit the library? More a First Amendment deal, the library tells the New York Post. “Customers can watch whatever they want on the computer,” said Brooklyn Public Library spokeswoman Malika Granville, describing the anything-goes philosophy that’s the rule at the city’s 200-plus branches.

How does a smut safe zone coincide with, say, storybook reading hour for kids? Not so well, say critics:

I came into the lobby of my building a few weeks ago, and stumbled upon 1974. There, in a brick cube about three feet per side, were the brand new Manhattan white pages. Just off the press, wrapped in plastic, sitting and waiting for people to spirit them away. Which, of course, no one did. It’s 2010. It may as well have been a pile of typewriter ribbon or ticker tape. Even if the Internet didn’t exist (which it does) (meta!), who has a landline any more? I haven’t had a landline since I had to get one for my DSL – in 1999.

A web developer and former Columbia student undertook a unique project: sketching the evolution of a New York City block, from 1795 to today. The resulting animation, dubbed “The Block” (specifically, Eldridge Street between Rivington and Stanton), is rough in its details but gives a good sense of the highs and lows of the street’s [...]

Who: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach What: Live From NYPL’s “Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach: The Fantastic Mr. Fox” When: November 9, 2009 Where: New York Public Library’s Celeste Bartos Forum Thumbs: Up. Ideally, drawn through stop motion.