The world in a window

Seize Power, Shareholders | Eliot Spitzer | Slate | 16 March 2010

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Belief in regulation has made shareholders lazy. They must use their latent power. Ownership trumps regulation, litigation, as means for controlling corporate behavior

Capital Export And The Renminbi | Paul Krugman | NYT | 16 March 2010

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Attack on China's trade surplus, call for America to react, with duties if necessary. "Never before in history has a nation followed this drastic a mercantilist policy"

Collaboration | David Byrne | Journal | 15 March 2010

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Musician's discussion of advantages and constraints of collaborative songwriting: "Fewer agonizing decisions in the writing process, and sometimes, faster results"

Addiction And Freedom | Sally Satel | New Republic | 15 March 2010

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Wrong to treat drug, alcohol addiction as brain diseases like, say, Alzheimer's. They are choices, patterns of behaviour, which can be changed by incentives

After Stevens | Jeffrey Toobin | New Yorker | 15 March 2010

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Landmark profile of John Paul Stevens, 90-year-old Supreme Court justice, soon to retire. Republican appointee, liberal icon, legal realist

What Happened to Women? | Katha Pollitt | Democracy | Spring 2010

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American liberalism reluctant to fight for women's issues. At most, polite sympathy. Of early goals, abortion now legal but contested, childcare scarce, only equal opportunity broadly accepted

Triumph Of American Outrage | Joshua Greenam | NY Daily News | 12 March 2010

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Since Clinton impeachment, "we are left with ever-present outrage in search of something to be outraged about. We have a tone in search of a target"

Night Lights, Blankets and Lullabies | Siri Hustvedt | NYT | 14 March 2010

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Lovely meditation on children, sleep, and parental care. "There is no reason we should expect young children to enter the nocturnal darkness of sleep and dreams without help"

Shrinking The Eurozone | Wolfgang Münchau | FT | 14 March 2010

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Germany's talk of European Monetary Fund is a decoy. Real aim is to ensure weak countries leave eurozone without leaving EU. Greek bailout will be first and last of its kind

Happiness And Public Policy | Elizabeth Kolbert | New Yorker | 14 March 2010

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Quadriplegics happier than lottery winners. Nigerians twice as happy as Japanese. Why? Spurred by social-science research, governments start looking at happiness as policy goal

Rogue US Operation Tracks Militants | Dexter Filkins & Mark Mazzetti | NYT | 14 March 2010

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http://nyti.ms/9chWv0

Straight out of a thriller novel. Pentagon official uses millions diverted from other projects to run private intelligence network targeting assassinations in Afghanistan, Pakistan. Allegedly

Ten Things About Burkina Faso | Mark Weston | Global Dashboard | 14 March 2010

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Excellent short guide. Notable features of country include locusts, droughts, high fertility rate, reputation for honesty, world's best place names

Bill Gross Interview | Elena Moya | Guardian | 12 March 2010

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World's biggest bond-market investor is fiscal conservative, social liberal. Won't buy Greek, British debt. Says bankers should be taxed more heavily.

Economics Of Sainthood | Robert Barro et al | February 2010

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http://bit.ly/aUDKhA

Academic paper. "Our goal is to apply social-science reasoning to understand the Church’s choices on numbers and characteristics of saints" (PDF)

The Petraeus Briefing | Mark Perry | Foreign Policy | 13 March 2010

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US army commander says US has to stick up more visibly for Palestinians. Seemingly unconditional support for Israel endangers US troops in region

Biggest Little Man In The World | Andrew Corsello | GQ | April 2010

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http://bit.ly/dzvA3i

Extravagant profile of Manny Pacquiao, world-champion Filipino boxer: "a cyclone of madness and dysfunction and karaoke and tango dancing and grown men vying to fluff his rice"

Driving Drunk In Jerusalem | Thomas Friedman | NYT | 13 March 2010

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Israel needs a wake-up call. US needs to show backbone. After East Jerusalem fiasco, Biden should have got straight back on his plane and flown home

And Our Survey Says | Nigel Hawkes | Independent | 13 March 2010

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Aberdeen is most sleep-deprived city in Britain, Bristol unhealthiest, London smelliest. Or so this week's newspapers say. How cheap opinion polls manufacture bogus statistics that news editors love

Odds Are, It's Wrong | Tom Siegfried | Science News | 13 March 2010

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Tests for statistical significance are widely misunderstood and misinterpreted, leading to countless wrong conclusions in scientific literature, contradictory and confusing conclusions in medical studies

Excerpts From Lehman Report | Wall Street Journal | 12 March 2010

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Nuggets from 2,200-page investigation by US bankruptcy-court examiner. Scathing. Only Warren Buffett emerges looking good: refused to put money into Lehman unless its own executives did likewise

Case Against The Hockey Stick | Matt Ridley | Prospect | 10 March 2010

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Informative review of Andrew Montford's "Hockey Stick Illusion", debunking climate-change graph supposedly showing sudden recent uptick in world temperature. "One of the best science books in years"

Toward A New Alexandria | Lisbet Rausing | New Republic | 12 March 2010

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Essay. Historically, libraries preserved and organised scarce resources. Issue now is coping with abundance. Best done by maximising open access online, especially to academic writing

119 Banned Words In One Sentence | Ian Chillag | NPR | 10 March 2010

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Perfectly safe for work. American TV station tries to ban newsreaders from using 119 clichéd words and phrases. Here they all are, run together into a surreal and very funny monologue

Powerless Lenin | Leslie Chamberlain | TLS | 10 March 2010

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Entertaining review of biography focusing on Bolshevik leader's early life as exiled agitator. He was a "dogged little fellow, bald with a red beard, who fell off his bicycle and wrote Marxist articles"

Wolfgang Schauble’s Torture Chamber | Gideon Rachman | Rachmanblog | 12 March 2010

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German finance minister's proposals for reinforcing eurozone are contradictory, hypocritical, verging on hysteria. Gives impression Germany favours chucking weak countries out of common currency

The Big Short | Felix Salmon | Barnes & Noble Review | 12 March 2010

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"Probably the single best piece of financial journalism ever written", says Salmon, reviewing Michael Lewis's book on the banking crisis. Equally strong on financial detail, and on human dimension

Coming Greek Debt Bubble | Simon Johnson, Peter Boone | Baseline Scenario | 11 March 2010

the browser — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:37:59 +0000

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Recent rally in Greek debt is a ramp. Greece will have to default unless it gets a lot more EU aid, dumps the euro, or runs a much more drastic austerity program. Preferably all three

Confessions Of A Call Bear | Rusty McMann | Salon | 11 March 2010

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Paunchy 40-something male explains how he makes a living as a Las Vegas prostitute. Nicely done, risqué but not too rude. And not at all the sort of thing one gets to read every day

Honest Journalism Versus Fox News | Howard Raines | Washington Post | 11 March 2010

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Ex-editor of NYT says Fox, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes pervert American journalism, publish propaganda, not news. Other media intimidated

Letting Go of My Father | Jonathan Rauch | Atlantic | April 2010

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Beautifully written, terribly sad memoir of looking after 80-year-old father dying from multiple system atrophy. "He could not cope, and I could not cope"

Hold Your Applause | Alex Ross | RPS Lecture | 8 March 2010

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New Yorker critic takes rule against applauding between movements as cue for virtuoso reflection on social context of classical music. Rule took hold in early 1900s, inspired by Bayreuth (PDF)

Cautionary Tale From Chechnya | Anna Badkhen | Boston.com | 11 March 2010

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Grozny reborn. Here a bistro, there a sushi bar. No trace of long war with Russia. But price of public peace is tyrannous local government that abducts, kills, tortures in private

Sheikh Tantawi, 1928-2010 | Issandr El Amrani | Arabist | 10 March 2010

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Obituary of Egypt's top Muslim cleric, head of al-Azhar university and mosque. Allowed mortgages, game shows. Tried to compromise between fundamentalists and modernisers, angered both.

Credit Default Swaps | Gary Gensler | Conference Speech | 9 March 2010

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Regulator explains history and mechanics of CDS market, and its part in recent banking crisis. Argues for tighter regulation. Long, sometimes heavy going, but clear and not overly technical

At The Tea Party | Jonathan Raban | NYRB | 10 March 2010

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Sympathetic, funny account of Tea Party convention in Nashville. Sprinkling of truthers, birthers, racists, religious fundamentalists. But mostly decent old people. Great unifier: love of Palin

Bloomberg Does Baseball | Sean Gregory | Time | 10 March 2010

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Financial information giant diversifies into sports statistics. First product targets big consumer market of fantasy baseball players. Later, advanced and expensive analytics for major-league clubs

Germany's Eurozone Crisis Nightmare | Martin Wolf | FT | 9 March 2010

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Germany's twin post-war objectives, sound money and European integration, now in conflict. Germany wants all EU to adopt German economic model, but that is logically impossible

Man Versus Afghanistan | Robert Kaplan | Atlantic | April 2010

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Big think-piece. Enemy in Afghanistan is not just the Taliban, it is history, geography, economics. Can the US army change the fundamentals of a country? And at what cost to itself?

Regrets? Everyone Should Have A Few | John Kay | FT | 9 March 2010

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To learn from your own mistakes, you must first acknowledge them. People who do that: Warren Buffett and George Soros. People who don't: Dick Fuld and Gordon Brown

Whales: We Owe Them An Apology | Philip Hoare | Slate | 5 March 2010

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Once we hunted them for consumption: whale oil lit and lubricated the industrial revolution. Now we demand to be entertained by them. What they want, most probably, is to be left alone

Italian Towns Face Financial Ruin | Rachel Sanderson et al | FT | 8 March 2010

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Excellent, shocking report. Investment banks sold derivatives contracts to unsophisticated Italian local authorities that wanted cash up front. Now the bill comes due, and it may hit $10bn

Philosophers Rip Darwin | Michael Ruse | Chronicle Review | 7 March 2010

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Scientists have got used to to dismissing religious and lay criticisms of Darwinism. It's more of a problem when eminent philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Jerry Fodor lead the attack

They Saved Banks, Lost The Economy | Simon Johnson | Baseline Scenario | 8 March 2010

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US dealt with symptoms of banking crisis, not causes. Banks get bigger, regulation stays weak. Problem no longer "too big to fail". Banks will be too big to save when next crisis comes

Health Reform Passes the Cost Test | David Cutler | WSJ | 9 March 2010

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Public seems to worry that proposed health care reform will increase entitlements without cutting costs. Wrong. President's plan attacks costs in six ways, could do more with Republican help

Our Man in Kabul | Michael Crowley | New Republic | 9 March 2010

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Profile of brutal Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, radical Islamist who fought the Red Army with US support, then led the anti-US insurgency after 2001. US needs him as a friend again

Limits Of Rahmism | Peter Baker | NYT Magazine | 8 March 2010

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Latest of many features on divisive White House chief of staff. Still well worth reading as a fine profile of Rahm—he wants to be mayor of Chicago—and a take on why presidency is struggling

The Man Who'll Welcome Aliens | Jon Ronson | Guardian | 6 March 2010

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Very funny, gently mocking interview with Paul Davies, head of US-funded scientists' group advising how to respond if aliens contact Earth. He thinks Einstein will travel well, but not Picasso

Time To Take The Internet Seriously | David Gelernter | Edge | 4 March 2010

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Computer scientist argues that the internet is evolving, not as a tool nor as a universe of answers, but as a giant thought process. Soon, everything will be structured as part of a lifestream

Wrong Kind Of Green | Johann Hari | Nation | 4 March 2010

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Overwrought, but amazing if true. Much of America's conservation lobby has been captured by funding from private industry, secretly opposes serious action against climate change

No Credit For Geithner | John Cassidy | New Yorker | 7 March 2010

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Treasury Secretary defends financial stability plan. Right not to nationalise banks. Economic recovery vindicates strategy. But politically costly. Obama was blindsided by health care

Defectors Denounce Scientology | Laurie Goodstein | NYT | 6 March 2010

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Defectors turn on church, say they were beaten, pressured to have abortions, had passports taken, were forced to work without sleep on little pay—and billed thousands of dollars when they left

Stop Your Spaniel Eating The Milkman | Jeremy Clarkson | London Times | 7 March 2010

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Tirade against British nanny state, sparked by new plan to regulate dog ownership more tightly. Dog-owners to be tested for competence, dogs required to carry GPS monitoring and insurance

Gendercide | Anonymous | Economist | 4 March 2010

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Ultrasound, abortion, small families mean more boys, fewer girls in developing world. Socially dangerous. Instead, increase women's economic value with more education, less discrimination

Challenger To London’s Black Cabs | Adam Jones | FT | 5 March 2010

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That rare thing, an interesting company profile, full of surprising detail. Addison Lee, London hire car company, takes on licensed black cabs by offering lowering fares, better service

Street Fightin' Man | Detroitblogger John | Metro Times | 17 February 2010

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Superb local reporting from fringe Detroit neighbourhood struggling to keep drug dealers, thieves at bay. Police don't respond, houses fall vacant, dogs are poisoned

Our Microbial Overlords | Carl Zimmer | Loom | 4 March 2010

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"Can the bacteria in our bodies control our behavior in the same way a puppetmaster pulls the strings of a marionette? This wonderfully creepy possibility may be true"

Interview: Dambisa Moyo | Sophie Elmhirst | New Statesman | 5 March 2010

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"Dead Aid" author says foreign-aid industry has not helped, may have retarded growth in Africa. Working on a new book about standard models of economic development

Iraq’s Elections Give Sliver Of hope | David Gardner | FT | 4 March 2010

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Sunday’s election a milestone for Iraq, and for Mid-East democracy. Likely to produce Shia-led coalition. Main thing is to keep institutions working until newer, better leaders emerge

Challenges Of The Two-Bill Strategy | Keith Hennessy | 1 March 2010

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Detailed guide to procedures for getting healthcare reform bill passed. Very wonkish. But if you want to understand the politics—as opposed to the policy—this is the piece

The New Commandments | Christopher Hitchens | Vanity Fair | April 2010

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Good idea, unevenly realised. Biblical commandments commented and rebalanced. First three can go, making room for plenty of newer man-made horrors that demand to be outlawed

Building A Better Teacher | Elizabeth Green | NYT Magazine | 2 March 2010

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Gripping treatment of seemingly dull-but-important subject: teacher training. Centres on researcher who spent five years studying great teachers, compiled taxonomy of their tradecraft

Jonathan Safran Foer's Vegetarianism | Mark Rowlands | TLS | 3 March 2010

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Philosopher applauds "Eating Animals", Foer's latest book, as "brilliant synthesis of argument, science and storytelling ... original and breathtaking in its vivacity"

Don’t Tell the Kids | Kim Severson | NYT | 2 March 2010

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http://nyti.ms/camvly

Report from rabbit-killing seminar in Brooklyn. Rabbits "the new chicken". Easy for urban farmers to raise, breed. Increased restaurant demand for meat. But you do have to kill them

Rahm Emanuel: The Chief | Noam Scheiber | New Republic | 3 March 2010

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Best piece yet in spin-war over Emanuel's outsize role in underperforming White House. Obama chose Rahm to do machine politics, curb president's own idealism. Tension guaranteed

Goverment's Role In The Market | Eliot Spitzer | Boston Review | March 2010

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Government's job: enforce integrity and transparency, overcome market failures, bust monopolies, uphold social values. Instead it has let self-regulation fail, picked up the bill

Just-As-Good Medicine | David Kent | American Scientist | Mach 2010

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There's usually a market for goods that are much cheaper than the best, yet still fit for purpose. That's why we go to Ikea, Walmart. Why doesn't healthcare work the same way?

African Poverty Is Falling, Faster Than You Think | Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala‐i‐Martin | 17 January 2010

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Academic paper rebuts conventional wisdom on Africa, says poverty has been falling rapidly across continent, inequality decreasing, thanks to growth spurt beginning in 1995 (PDF)

Bombs For Beginners | Michael Rühle | IP Global | March 2010

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http://bit.ly/cJobqo

Step-by-step guide for going nuclear. You need a civilian nuclear programme to cover enrichment, a space programme to cover missile acquisition. North Korea and Russia will help

Betting On The Blind Side | Michael Lewis | Vanity Fair | April 2010

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Excerpt from Lewis's new book, "The Big Short". Profile of Michael Burry, doctor-turned-investor who diagnosed subprime crisis early, bet that loans would default, made $825m

Arrest Of Agathe Habyarimana | Philip Gourevitch | News Desk | 2 March 2010

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France arrests ex-first lady of Rwanda on genocide charges, after sheltering her since 1994. France now accepting it was wrong on genocide, restoring relations with Kagame government

Your Reality Is Out Of Date | Samuel Arbesman | Boston.com | 28 February 2010

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Introducing the mesofact: basic information that is slow to change. Periodic table adds 12 elements since 1970. 400 new planets since 1995. Half world's population uses cellphones

Predators Over Pakistan | Kenneth Anderson | SSRN | 28 February 2010

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Targeted killing by unmanned aerial vehicle is good anti-terrorist policy, legitimate self-defense. Obama is right to step up programme, needs to assert its legality more aggressively (PDF)

Britain’s Lack Of Credibility Hurts Sterling | Willem Buiter | Financial Times | 1 March 2010

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Economic fundamentals awful. Fiscal problems as bad as Greece’s. Tough action could rescue situation. Terrible time for hung parliament. Get coalition agreement in place well before

Money In North Korea | Ruediger Frank | Asia-Pacific Journal | 22 February 2010

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Scholarly backgrounder on North Korean currency reform. Government wants to turn back clock, reverse partial monetisation of national economy in 2002-03, which eroded state control

Larry Fink’s $12 Trillion Shadow | Suzanna Andrews | Vanity Fair | April 2010

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Despite clichés and gush, an admirably detailed profile of low-profile financier who built world's biggest asset-management firm, oversees $130bn of bailed-out assets for US government

Man Who Blew Up The Welfare State | Ian McDougall | n+1 | 27 February 2010

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http://bit.ly/9Splou

Essay on Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. The Sweden you didn't know about: corrupt state, misogyny, crime, violence. With remarkable background on Larsson's own life and death

Don't Care | Bill Gross | Pimco | March 2010

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Strangely bilious column from bond guru, asking: can you get out of a debt crisis by piling on another layer of debt? Governments are trying that now. It may work, but only for the strongest

Blame Yesterday’s Reforms for Today’s Congress | David Frum | Frum Forum | 1 March 2010

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Golden era for US reform was 1950-1980, when a few senior figures ran Congress, working in secret. Now we have more openness, less discipline—and an unmanageable legislature

Buried Treasure In Your TV Dial | Richard Thaler | NYT | 27 February 2010

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http://nyti.ms/91DaAl

Auctioning off 49 channels of broadcasting spectrum currently reserved for over-the-air television could raise $100bn for US budget and give huge stimulus to internet, smartphones

Love Among the Ruins | Matt Labash | Weekly Standard | 1 March 2010

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Report from post-earthquake Haiti centering on Father Rick Frechette, an American pastor helping with the clear-up. Starts shakily, but picks up speed when action reaches Port-au-Prince

How Iraq Broke Tony Blair's Spirit | Andrew Rawnsley | Observer | 28 February 2010

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Book extract. Inside story of Blair's much-delayed resignation, exhausted and demoralised by Iraq, counterpointed by Gordon Brown's furious impatience to take over. Much swearing.

America, Fragile Empire | Niall Ferguson | LA Times | 28 February 2010

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Empires are complex systems, thus unpredictable. Small event can trigger switch from benign equilibrium to crisis. Fiscal weakness makes America vulnerable to such events

Martha Nussbaum: Politics Of Disgust | Christine Smallwood | Nation | 25 February 2010

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Disgust underpins racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia. But it's an unreliable emotion, often a form of self-hatred, certainly not an acceptable basis for law or public behaviour

Rupert Murdoch, Raging Septuagenarian | Gabriel Sherman | New York | 28 February 2010

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Big, gossipy profile of News Corp boss, combative in old age. Main elements: WSJ prepares to take on NYT, spat with Google, paid content, James Murdoch's struggle to succeed

Big Pharma Might Not Be Lying | Amy Tuteur | Salon | 23 February 2010

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http://bit.ly/azwYLS

Surge in childhood mental illness commonly blamed on over-diagnosis, encouraged by drug companies. But 100 years ago we didn't diagnose much cancer in children, either

Earthquake In Chile | Big Picture | Boston.com | 27 February 2010

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35 photographs from the earthquake zone: a couple of them grisly, all of them stunning. And a thread of 1200 comments

What China Cannot Do With Its Reserves | Michael Pettis | China Financial Markets | 22 February 2010

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Technical but lucid post explaining how China manages its exchange rate, why the central bank probably hasn't been selling US$ assets, and why China would gain from revaluation

Perfectly Framed Assassination | Robert Baer | WSJ | 27 February 2010

the browser — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:37:19 +0000

http://bit.ly/bcZ5IX

Ex-CIA agent concludes that high-level assassinations are pretty much finished as a political tool. Thanks to CCTV you just can't get away with it any more, as Israel has found in Dubai

It's George Wallace's GOP Now | Jonathan Rauch | National Journal | 27 February 2010

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http://bit.ly/9hRLJV

Sarah Palin brings back Wallace's brand of right-wing anti-intellectualism—though without the racism. It's nasty to watch, and bad for the GOP. Incoherent anger isn't an election-winner

Like Rome Before the Fall? Not Yet | Piers Brendon | NYT | 24 February 2010

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http://nyti.ms/bt8hLx

British historian considers whether America doomed to imperial decline, like Rome and Britain. Not necessarily: America stronger than either. But it does need to husband resources

Reply To All | Nathan Yau | Flowing Data | 8 February 2010

the browser — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:53:38 +0000

http://bit.ly/9HTp87

A lesson for site administrators on how not to structure an email list, unless you want to drive all of its members mad. Courtesy of Caltrans, which did just that. Excellent visualisation

Annual Letter To Shareholders 2009 | Warren Buffett | Berkshire Hathaway | 27 February 2010

the browser — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:40:22 +0000

http://bit.ly/d6Ij1o

Wise and funny as ever. On Burlington Northern acquisition, paid partly with stock: "Charlie and I enjoy issuing Berkshire stock about as much as we relish prepping for a colonoscopy" (PDF)

Slave Whale That Fought Back | Alexander Cockburn | First Post | 26 February 2010

the browser — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:09:21 +0000

http://bit.ly/dfLF3i

In defence of Tillikum, whale that killed its trainer last week. Captive whales have a history of mutiny. Only to be expected. They are wild animals, imprisoned and exploited like slaves

Good Poems About Ugly Things | Molly Young | Poetry Foundation | 24 February 2010

the browser — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:25:52 +0000

http://bit.ly/bHkHqd

Frederick Seidel's rakish poetry evokes Bukowski and Kerouac in its lust, crudeness, cynicism. An "accurate X-ray" of modern American male concerns, honest and incriminating

Information Transforms Traditional Business | Kenneth Cukier | Economist | 25 February 2010

the browser — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:09:09 +0000

http://bit.ly/df5wpI

Computing power and online analytics give firms access to much new market intelligence. An airline passenger who orders a vegetarian meal is not going to change his reservation

Romantic Side Of Familiar Words | Geoff Nunberg | Language Log | 26 February 2010

the browser — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 07:55:15 +0000

http://bit.ly/b3SpOK

Why does literary opinion hold "cellar door" to be the most beautiful phrase in English? It's partly anti-snobbery, to fix on the prosaic, partly the feminity of the phonetics

Department Of Mad Scientists | Paul Waldman | American Prospect | 26 February 2010

the browser — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:55:20 +0000

http://bit.ly/aCkn4F

Interview with author Michael Belfiore about Darpa, US military research agency which first strung together the internet, and quietly goes on bringing visionary projects to verge of viability

Climate Change's OJ Simpson Moment | Bill McKibben | Mother Jones | 25 February 2010

the browser — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:24:35 +0000

http://bit.ly/bniusp

The more evidence of climate change accumulates, the easier it is for skeptics to find procedural errors. They are winning battle for public opinion, by saying what public wants to hear

Cancer Drug Gives Sudden Reprieve | Amy Harmon | NYT | 22 February 2010

the browser — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:46:10 +0000

http://nyti.ms/a4CAyX

Clinical trials of miracle anti-melanoma drug showed tumours disappearing within a fortnight, even when cancer had penetrated bone. Two-part series. Outstanding story

America And Post-Election Iraq | Tom Ricks | CNAS | 24 February 2010

the browser — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:09:00 +0000

http://bit.ly/duwFQW

Iraq relatively stable for past year. Not clear if this will last, or if factions merely keeping powder dry until Americans gone. Extending US presence beyond 2011 would be helpful (PDF)