Michael Pettis | Economonitor | 18 May 2012 Just a matter of time. Painful, but no politically workable alternative. "The country has already started on the self-reinforcing downward spiral that leads to a crisis, and there is no one big enough to reverse the spiral" Comments Anna Fifield | FT | 19 May 2012 Main topic: Losing faith in Obama. He overpromised, underdelivered. “It’s like a novelist being obsessed with Tolstoy or Proust, and then he ends up writing short stories that can barely get into some middlebrow magazine." Ouch Comments Mike Dash | Smithsonian | 17 May 2012 Goebbels knew he had to engage the public, at home and abroad. "It was an effort that led directly to the creation of that oxymoron in four-bar form: A Nazi-approved, state-sponsored hot jazz band known as Charlie and His Orchestra" Comments Anonymous | n+1 | 18 May 2012 Essay. On growing up in an unhappy family in a blighted American town. "Fresno is amorphous, a conical blob that looks like a piece of bubble gum squashed against a sidewalk". Downtown died in the 1970s. Gangs took over the streets Comments Alan Brody | Philosophy Now | 17 May 2012 Addiction assessed via philosophy. "For Socrates, ‘yielding to temptation’ is not being unwillingly overpowered, but is the experience of being a willing participant choosing what is at that moment wrongly thought to be best" Comments Henry Adams | Smithsonian | 16 May 2012 Enjoyable blogpost on how people interact with museum exhibits. Suggests we often look at paintings for just three seconds, and very rarely for more than 45. Fine art encourages us to walk in orderly fashion, but not so modern art Comments |