December 2008
79 posts
Making Books →
A veteran editor offers a year-end report on the mood in the book publishing industry.
Why we are, as we are →
As the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On The Origin of Species” approaches, the moment has come to ask how Darwin’s insights can be used profitably by policymakers.
Time After Time →
The biological clocks that control the daily lives of every living thing.
Katrina's Hidden Race War →
The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply “didn’t belong.”
The economic Civil War →
The South’s attempt to kill the North’s auto industry is the latest battle in an ongoing conflict. It’s time for a Third Reconstruction to put an end to it.
Warning: Intrusive ads.
Oil Not the Climate Change Culprit — It's All... →
If the world replaced all of its oil usage with carbon-neutral energy sources, ecologist Kenneth Caldeira of Stanford University calculated that it would only buy us about 10 years before coal emissions warmed the planet to what many scientists consider dangerous levels.
A World Enslaved →
There are now more slaves on the planet than at any time in human history. True abolition will elude us until we admit the massive scope of the problem, attack it in all its forms, and empower slaves to help free themselves.
The Remedist →
I don’t suppose that Greenspan actually bought this story literally, since experience of repeated financial crises too obviously contradicted it. It was, after all, only a model. But he must have believed something sufficiently like it to have supported extensive financial deregulation and to have kept interest rates low in the period when the housing bubble was growing. This was the...
Hysteria in Four Acts →
Hysteria is not disappearing. Its incidence waxes and wanes, and so do its modes. Today, psychological guises—amnesias, fugues, multiple personalities—tend to be more common than neurological ones like the seizures, paralyses, and sensory losses that were in vogue a century ago. And the imitations of illness that hysterics display can be convincing—particularly if the patient is himself a nurse...
Holiday schedule
Give Me Something To Read will be posting infrequently next week, December 22-26, as online publishing slows down and everyone (including the editor) goes on vacation. If you still need something to read:
Browse the archive
Jump to a random old post
Regular posting will resume, content permitting, during the week of December 29.
One man's garbage, another's wisdom →
I used to wonder why Uncle Joe gathered so much stuff. Now my brain has become much like his garage.
Submitted by Barry, who says: “An interesting and well-written perspective on education. Although it specifically refers to philosophy, more broadly it is about the value of studies in the humanities and in the arts.”
Thanks, Barry!
Set in Our Ways: Why Change Is So Hard →
Millions of us dream of transforming our lives, but few of us are able to make major changes after our 20s.
The Great Unraveling →
Our banking crisis has made it increasingly clear that the U.S. and China are becoming two countries, one system. But they appear to be on very different historical trajectories.
Do Something New Every Three Years →
When I was at The Economist, there was a policy to rotate everyone every three years. The idea was that fresh eyes were more important than experience.
Why History Can't Wait →
The place has a vaguely familiar feel to it, this air of transient shabbiness and nondescriptitude. You can’t quite put your finger on it …
“It’s like the set of The Office,” someone offers.
Bingo.
It is here that we find Barack Obama one soul-freezingly cold December day, mentally unpacking the crate of crushing problems — some old, some new, all...
Barack Obama-san →
[…] we thought we’d recount the history of the last major country that tried to spend its way to “stimulus” — Japan during its “lost decade” of the 1990s.
After Credentials →
What [credentials] are, functionally, is a way of predicting performance. If you could measure actual performance, you wouldn’t need them.
So why did they even evolve? Why haven’t we just been measuring actual performance?
The Remedist →
Why John Maynard Keynes is the man of the year.
Drunkenfreude →
Everyone comes on time, behaves well, drinks a little wine, eats a few tiny canapés, and leaves on time. They all still drink, but no one gets drunk anymore. Neither do they smoke. What on earth has happened?
Leaving Literature Behind →
The professionalization of the field is turning students off.
Life on the Inside →
Charles Platt’s gripping account of his visit with his friend, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for murder.
When Jesus met Buddha →
Something remarkable happened when evangelists for two great religions crossed paths more than 1,000 years ago: they got along.
Does She Love You? →
A comprehensive list.
Scott Adams on how to save your career →
As the cartoon turns 20, Dilbert creator Scott Adams speaks out on boss diversity, where Wall Street went wrong, Dilbert’s scary job hunt, and more.
A Better Car-Bailout Plan →
The Big Three would bid against one another for bailout money, and only two would get it.
By Eliot Spitzer.
The second Long March →
China has been transformed by the changes ushered in by Deng Xiaoping 30 years ago. But the biggest step has yet to be dared.
News You Can Lose →
The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.
On the financial woes of the newspaper industry.
The Real Generation X →
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation,” that classic about our parents and their incredible sacrifices during World War II. What I’ve been thinking about actually is this: What book will our kids write about us? “The Greediest Generation?” “The Complacent Generation?” Or maybe: “The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their...
Roads to nowhere →
America is in danger of getting the wrong kind of infrastructure.
Bush's Final F.U. →
The administration is rushing to enact a host of last-minute regulations that will screw America for years to come.
The Existential Clown →
Why Jim Carrey makes us uncomfortable.
Pop Psychology →
Why asset bubbles are a part of the human condition that regulation can’t cure.
Obama’s Secretary of Food? →
As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”
Upgrade yourself →
The way I think about it is buying nice products that you’ll use for several years/decades is both a financial investment and an investment in your personal well-being, even if it’s just some nice salt to make your food taste a little better.
Future Schlock →
In the 1950s, Disneyland thrilled visitors with its imaginative House of the Future. Now Disney has opened a new House, with a new vision of future domesticity. Our correspondent looks in—and finds that what’s to come will be tough on the stomach, relentlessly beige, and, in every sense, subprime.
Mr. Un-Popularity →
We count a few of the ways in which things have gone sour for Governor Blagojevich.
While Detroit Slept →
Whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you. Just don’t think it won’t be done. If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee, promise me that you’ll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.
Joseph E. Stiglitz on capitalist fools →
Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who’s to blame. It’s crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes—under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II—and one national delusion.
Why Infrastructure? →
What’s fascinating about his announcement is how quickly this idea has migrated from the relative fringes of economic discourse into a pillar of centrist conventional wisdom.
The Decline and Fall of an Ultra Rich Online... →
By age 23, Brock Pierce had been a movie star, media exec, and CEO of a company that made millions selling virtual merchandise.
And now for a world government →
The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.
So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.
The brilliance of creative chaos →
Are we able to think clearly when surrounded by mess because chaos is inherent in all our minds, even those of the great writers and thinkers?
Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum... →
How could bees of little brain come up with anything as complex as a dance language? The answer could lie not in biology but in six-dimensional math and the bizarre world of quantum mechanics.
Inconvenient Truths →
The media’s disingenuous failure to state the obvious.
Typing Without a Clue →
I have a question for Joe [The Plumber]: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet?
I didn’t think so. And I don’t want you writing books.
Occupy, resist, produce →
Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis report on how Argentina’s worker-run factories have nurtured a powerful social movement, while seamstress Matilda Adorno explains how a dispute over pay became a political struggle.
Our Mutual Joy →
Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.
The Checklist →
If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it.
If something so simple can transform intensive care, what else can it do?
Only Yesterday →
Many Americans of the 1930s had reason to wonder if they’d ever again have it so good. And many feel the same way now, amidst a drumbeat of news about depleted 401(k) accounts, vanished home equity, and upended certainties about a prosperous retirement. There’s no Only Yesterday to eulogize the departed world — not yet, at least — but plenty of people are stopping to consider what has gone...
Foreign Affairs: A Balanced Strategy →
The Pentagon has to do more than modernize its conventional forces; it must also focus on today’s unconventional conflicts — and tomorrow’s.
By Robert M. Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defense.