Saturday, October 20, 2012

The Browser daily newsletter [20 Oct 2012]

20 October 2012

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Best of the Moment

Are Capitalism And Democracy Failing Us?

Raghuram Rajan | Fault Lines | 19 October 2012

"There are two important challenges to the legitimacy of capitalism in the West today. First, it no longer seems to provide equal opportunity to all. A second big challenge is the coming selective enforcement of property rights" Comments

Paradise With An Asterisk

SC Gwynne | Outside | 17 October 2012

Visit to Bikini Atoll. Tiny ring of islands in middle of the Pacific; stunningly beautiful; site of US nuclear bomb tests. Long-term effect of fallout wasn't understood; Bikinian people were sent into nuclear exile; lives ruined Comments

Mad To Be Saved

Thomas Powers | London Review Of Books | 17 October 2012

Best first sentence ever: "Jack Kerouac's short life, big talent and last dollar were all just about exhausted when Joyce Glassman bought him a dinner of hot dogs and beans on a Saturday night in New York City in January 1957" Comments

Out Of The Ashes Of Dead Trees

Andrew Sullivan | Daily Beast | 18 October 2012

Reflections on the death of Newsweek's print edition. "There's a reason why Drudge Report and the Huffington Post are named after human beings. It's because when we read online, we migrate to read people, not institutions" Comments

Sympathy For The Plutocrat

Nick Hanauer | Reuters | 16 October 2012

"People like me don't hate Obama because he's going to raise our taxes, although we hate that plenty. We hate him because his views about the importance and primacy of the middle class diminish our status. Our prestige is at stake" Comments

Visualizing Vastness

Steven Strogatz | NYT | 15 October 2012

"If I tell you the Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and 93,000,000 miles from the Sun, does that give you any sense of the distances involved? No, because the numbers are too big." So here's how to go about understanding size Comments

FiveBooks Interview

Gary Taubes on Dieting

Struggling to hold yourself to a calorie-counting regimen? Ignore the conventional advice on losing weight, says the science writer – what constitutes a healthy diet needs to be drastically re-evaluated

Featured Special Report

Air Travel

Airlines opened to us a world of thrilling possibility. But, for many, flying is still a terrifying prospect. Crashes, though rare, do happen. And then there are the security procedures bequeathed to us by 9/11

Reader Recommendations

@smiler29 #browsings Mitt, Tagg, And The Romney Family's Myth Of Self-Reliance | The New Republic t.co/aKyMSNzP #browsings

Book of the Day

Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries by

Jessica Pressman says: “This should be the first port of call for anyone who wants to see electronic literature in action. It creates a performance online that challenges the ways in which we describe and understand what we mean by literature.”