Abstract Capital: January 2010

Abstract Capital

Friday, January 29, 2010

Slate: Corporations Are People, Too - Why do courts give companies the same rights as individuals?

Slate: The real meaning of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United

Economist: Free speech and campaign cash - Unbound: The Supreme Court undermines convoluted campaign-finance rules

New Yorker: Profile - John Mackey & Whole Foods

Newsweek: Why Free Markets Require Free Minds, Even China's

Slate: French President Sarkozy declares that capitalism can be made kinder and more humane. Good luck with that!

Newsweek: May the Best Theory Win - How economists are competing to make sense of our failed financial system

Economist: Seven questions for Jeffrey Sachs

Slate: How long have presidents been trying to "change the culture of Washington"?

CSMonitor: Brett Favre - Hero or villain?

Slate: Why does conventional wisdom espoused by incredibly rich people sound so intelligent?

New Republic: Obama's War With The Court Just Escalated

Atlantic: Obama’s Supreme Court Criticism - The president was right to reprimand the least accountable branch of government

Economist: Regulating America's banks - Stage prop

Atlantic: Q&A With the IMF's Simon Johnson On Financial Reform

New Republic: The Chin Abides - In Defense of Jay Leno

New Republic: Why Do People Love 'Catcher In The Rye'?

Newsweek: J.D. Salinger's Influence - Salinger himself, as well as his most famous character, has influenced pop culture, crime—even modern linguistics.

Slate: The Saints Are Coming - New Orleans celebrates its football team's first-ever Super Bowl appearance.

New Republic: Did "African American" History Really Happen In Atlanta, Cleveland, Philly, And Detroit? Listening To The Census

TIME: India vs. China - Whose Economy Is Better?

New Republic: Postmodern At Bedtime

New Republic: Obama's Dull, Cheap, Successful Speech

New Republic: The Return of Ulysses S. Grant

Slate: How would Pope John Paul II have gone about self-flagellating?

TIME: Pope John Paul II Whipped Self

Economist: Liberalism in Brazil - The almost-lost cause of freedom: Why is economic liberalism so taboo in socially liberal Brazil?

Newsweek: Bristol Palin’s Abstinence About-Face

Economist: Bihar's remarkable recovery - Bihar has blossomed under Nitish Kumar. But his reforms need deeper roots

Economist: The Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger - A union of pariahs

Economist: A special report on social networking

Slate: Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith shows how not to switch parties

Economist: The party of No - Barack Obama has revived the Republicans. But they show few signs of using their new influence constructively

Economist: Populists and bankers - The populist left meets the populist right to hammer the Fed

CSMonitor: Supreme Court won't halt Noriega's extradition to France

Economist: Capitalism in China - The spirit of enterprise fades: The cradle of China’s start-up firms is showing its age

Slate: What happens to 3-D glasses after you drop them in the bin at the theater?

posted by Flaco @ 2:16 AM 0 comments

Monday, January 25, 2010

Slate: (Primer) - The Supreme Court Gets Ready To Turn on the Corporate Fundraising Spigot

Newsweek: The Sweeping Impact of SCOTUS's Campaign-Spending Decision

New Yorker: A Bad Judgment

TIME: Supreme Court Campaign-Finance Ruling - Big Business Win?

CSMonitor: Supreme Court - Campaign-finance limits violate free speech

Slate: The misguided theories behind Citizens United v. FEC

Salon: This Week in Crazy - Clarence Thomas: The Supreme Court judge brings insanity to the campaign finance decision, and inaugurates our new weekly feature

Atlantic: It's Not Crazy To Say That Corporate Ads Count As Associational Speech

Newsweek: Volcker - Bernanke Didn't Go Far Enough

Economist: Obama and the banks - Glass-Steagall lite

Atlantic: Don't Celebrate Obama's New Bank Breaking Effort Yet

WSJ: Obama Proposes New Bank Regulations

Salon: Conan O'Brien & the End of "The Tonight Show"

New Republic: Rogue State - A Case Against Delaware

New Republic: Meditations On Dostoyevsky

TIME: Indira Gandhi - Death in the Garden

TIME: Q&A - Is There Life After Death?

FP: The Real Jimmy Carter - America’s 39th president was not the weak and ineffective leader of popular caricature. But Barack Obama could still learn from his failings.

Economist: Chile's presidential election - Piñera promises a gallop

USAToday: 'Lost' philosophy - Something to think about

Newsweek: The Psychology of Missed Field Goals - Was Nate Kaeding's Performance Part of a Choking Outbreak?

New Republic: The Conservative Turn - Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (Book Review)

Slate: Haiti's Other Towns after the earthquake

Economist: Pets in the recession - Howls for help

Economist: Antitrust law and football - Out of many, one: Is the NFL more than the sum of its parts?

TIME: Why Air America Will Be Missed

Atlantic: Will Obama's Bank Plan End Moral Hazard?

FP: How the Court's campaign-finance ruling will damage our credibility

posted by Flaco @ 1:05 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 21, 2010

New Republic: How would I describe the Haiti coverage? Redundant.

Salon: Why can't the NYT and WP agree on Haiti? How the media's conflicting coverage of race, class and the earthquake evokes memories of Hurricane Katrina.

Slate: Why Staten Island—home to three members of Jersey Shore—is New York City's most mocked borough

Slate: How can we tell if NFL cornerbacks are any good?

FP: The big three that need to forgive Haiti's debt

FP: A visit to Libya - First Impressions

Slate: Vancouver - Notes From a Native Daughter

TIME: The Volcker-Steagall Act - Do the Obama administration's new Wall Street proposals really address the problem?

Newsweek: Paul Volcker and Regulating Wall Street

Slate: Watching as the Supreme Court turns a corporation into a real live boy

Atlantic: Citizens United - Winners And Losers

Slate: The Supreme Court kills campaign finance reform in Citizens United

Atlantic: The Autumn of the Multitaskers - Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy

Economist: Freedom to spend - The Supreme Court rules that businesses and unions may fund political messages in elections

New Yorker: On Rebuilding Haiti

Economist: Chile's presidential election - Right again

SI: Roger Maris' family hopes their dad will make the Hall of Fame

Newsweek: How Technology Can Transform Cities

Newsweek: Rare Tobacco Leaves Infuse Cuba's Cohiba Cigars

Slate: The Deep End is a shiny take on life at a white-shoe law firm

Foreign Affairs: The Better Half - Efforts to provide the world's women with economic and political power are more than just a worthy moral crusade: they represent perhaps the best strategy for pursuing development and stability across the globe.

Slate: Orthodox Judaism finally begins to face gay rights

Atlantic: YouTube Enters the Movie Rental Business

TIME: YouTube Movie-Rental Service Set to Offer Sundance Films

TIME: Air America Goes Off the Air

New Republic: Obama’s Dick Morris moment

Atlantic: Making Sense of the Golden Globes

New Republic: Inside the Messy Collapse of the DCPost

CSMonitor: Obama at one year - New realism in foreign policy

SI: Teams that got the most bang for their buck last decade

CNN: Rep. Ron Paul weighs in on the state of the nation (video interview)

TIME: The Hemisphere - HISPANIOLA: A History of Hate

CNN: Is hearsay evidence admissible in the Peterson case?

TIME: How to Quit Facebook, Twitter

posted by Flaco @ 9:06 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Newsweek: Reasons Behind Haiti’s Poverty

New Republic: And Now The Tourists Arrive In Port-au-Prince

Salon: Congress hypocritically, finally, takes a bold stand on surveillance abuses

USNews: 17 Ways Consumers Are Changing

Atlantic: I'm Back Blogging about the Economic Situation (Posner)

CSMonitor: Chile, once Latin America's economic model, now overtaken by Brazil

FP: Is Chile's Pinochet era finally over?

New Yorker: The history of memoirs

New Yorker: Fox News' latest blowhard

TIME: India's Communists Uncertain After Jyoti Basu's Death

ESPN: Looking back at the past decade of college football

CSMonitor: ‘Pants on the ground’ goes viral - Top five Larry Platt covers

Newsweek: Stop treating pregnant women like property

Newsweek: Weak Defense - Although the man who admits killing abortion doctor George Tiller can argue he committed voluntary manslaughter rather than murder, he is unlikely to succeed in doing so.

posted by Flaco @ 8:34 AM 0 comments

Sunday, January 17, 2010

New Republic: The Inherent Hubris of Bioethicists

Salon: When war is peace and right is center - It's not 1984, but Newspeak lives on in the media's skewing of the terms of our political debate

Slate: The financial industry has always been wrong about the dangers of regulation

Newsweek: China's Love Affair with Rogue States

Slate: Why Jon Stewart failed to make John Yoo squirm

Atlantic: Can Sports Bring World Peace? No.

Newsweek: Haiti and the frustrating Theology of Suffering

FP: Why there can't be a Nixon-to-China moment in Tehran?

Atlantic: The Year Of Living Dangerously - Obama And His 5 Good, And 5 Bad, Law-Related Moves

FA: An Elegy for Journalism?

New Yorker: The Jets - A Peculiar Glory: Can they overcome years of pessimism?

Slate: How dubbing works

Atlantic: Cuban Baseball

Economist: Australia's aborigines - Atomic amends

posted by Flaco @ 1:53 AM 0 comments

Friday, January 15, 2010

Slate: The Supreme Court justices prove they know nothing whatsoever about the NFL

Newsweek: Spurning Obama, McCain and Cantwell propose resurrecting Glass-Steagall to break up Wall Street.

New Yorker: Chicago Economists

New Republic: Double Down - Argentina offers up a textbook example of how not to manage a central bank

FP: The Ghosts of Port-au-Prince - Why is Haiti so haunted?

New Republic: Haiti's Tragic History

Atlantic: Bring Back the Mugwumps

Salon: Haiti's "pact with the devil" myth - How Pat Robertson turned a country's origin myth into a cheap invocation of Satanism

Newsweek: Why Wars No Longer End with Winners and Losers

Slate: Dr. George Tiller's killer argues his crime was justified

Slate: How will they figure the death toll from the earthquake in Haiti?

Slate: Haiti Earthquake FAQ - Do buildings in Haiti have earthquake codes? Why do some quakes cause tsunamis and others don't? And what's a "hospital ship," anyway?

Economist: The Obama presidency, one year on - Barack Obama’s first year has been good, but not great—and things are going to get a lot harder

Economist: Barack Obama's first year - Governing is harder than campaigning. But America’s 44th president has made an adequate start

Economist: Democracy's decline - Crying for freedom: A disturbing decline in global liberty prompts some hard thinking about what is needed for democracy to prevail

Economist: France's ban on the burqa - The war of French dressing

Economist: Venezuela's devaluation - The weakening of the “strong bolívar”: In a harsher world Venezuela faces a reckoning

CSMonitor: New face of religion in Latin America - Evangelicalism sweeps through churches, leading some to say that Latin America is emerging as the new center of Christianity

Salon: Conan forever - Big Red won our hearts as Leno became the Voldemort of comedy -- even, shockingly, to his fellow comedians

Economist: The economy - The trap: The curse of long-term unemployment will bedevil the economy

Economist: Michigan - As America hopes for recovery, Michigan needs whole-scale reinvention. It may be 15 years before the state returns to prosperity

SI: Supreme Court skeptical of NFL antitrust protection

posted by Flaco @ 12:01 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Slate: Learning to appreciate astronomy

Slate: The Supreme Court plays nice over international child custody

Slate: Conservatives claim Obama's policies are weakening the dollar. Let's examine the evidence

Newsweek: Is The Dollar As Weak As Conservatives Say?

Newsweek: How Strong Should the Dollar Be?

Newsweek: London's Financial Demise Has Been Exaggerated

CNN: America's new financial capital is ... Washington

Salon: Women writers on Late-Night

Salon: An Iranian nuclear physicist is murdered

Slate: Could the assassination of a physicist stop Iran's nuclear weapons program?

Slate: The Filibuster Backlash - Is an anti-filibuster movement taking hold?

Slate: When Did the Word Negro Become Taboo? In 1966 or soon thereafter.

TIME: Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny

Slate: Stop crying "terrorism" every time we're attacked

Economist: Google and China - Google errs: Google's plan to withdraw from China may be as much about poor business prospects as ethics

FP: Random thoughts from the road - What if our airlines were like Europe's?

TIME: Google to End China Censorship After E-Mail Breach

Salon: Social separation breeds contempt - There is no better place to learn the delicate ballet of social skill than in a big city

Slate: Should the feds take over Medicaid?

Salon: The case for economic rights - FDR said it and it holds 66 years later: There are benefits and opportunities every American should expect to enjoy

Newsweek: A Man Who Knows The Secrets: Veteran CIA Lawyer Seeks Book Deal

FP: 'Best Defense' advice - Should an Ivy League Ph.D. join the military?

New Republic: A Scholar's Guide to the Kindle

NYT: The Americanization of Mental Illness

Slate: How can we counter educated, eloquent, well-connected Islamists?

Slate: Words have replaced sex as the cause of the classic Washington scandal.

Slate: The Weirdest Zip Codes on the New York Times Netflix Map

SI: Why American Needle v. NFL is most important case in sports history

Economist: Influenza and wildlife - Which animal species are most likely to get flu?

FP: 'Langley Won't Tell Us' - How I fought the intelligence turf wars -- and lost.

Slate: Weird new Domino's ads that compare the pizza to cardboard

posted by Flaco @ 11:52 AM 0 comments

Sunday, January 10, 2010

SI: Baseball writers have no business electing players to Hall of Fame

Newsweek: Why You Can't Stop Gay Marriage and Marijuana

Newsweek: Recalling the Upside of the Great Depression

New Yorker: Mike and the Mad Dog - Can Shanahan get along with Snyder? And other pressing issues surrounding the arrival of the Redskins’ dull, egomaniacal, tireless, soft-spoken new coach.

Atlantic: Supreme Court Considers Patenting Abstract Ideas

Economist: Universities and Islam - Hearts, minds and Mecca

Economist: Lula and the generals - The army blocks a truth commission

Economist: The future of Catalonia - Of bulls and ballots: Catalonia is set to have a big role in Spain’s politics

Atlantic: The Lawsuit That Could Grant the NFL Omnipotence

CNNMoney: 'Honest-Services' Fraud Law & Critique

Newsweek: Why New York City Needs a New Economic Strategy - 'If New York City is a business, it isn't Wal-Mart,' Mayor Bloomberg once sneered. Maybe it should be.

Slate: How to Make America More Innovative - Give scientists more incentives to innovate

New Republic: College Education: Metros’ Anti-Recession Vaccine?

Salon: The backfiring of the surveillance state

TIME: 'Committed' Gilbert on Marriage After 'Eat, Pray, Love'

Slate: What happens to an embassy's staff when the building closes?

Slate: The Sins of Guantanamo - We're keeping detainees in the camp because we're afraid of things they haven't done yet?

FP: A $123 Trillion China? Not Likely. The many, many reasons - from the financial crisis to the country's aging population to environmental limitations - why Robert Fogel's economic forecast for China is completely inconceivable.

Slate: Why are we still reporting on the "wind chill"? It's time to get rid of a meaningless number

CSMonitor: The Pilgrims were a surprisingly worldly, tolerant lot

Newsweek: Should legal immigrants be deported for drug possession? The Supreme Court will decide

Newsweek: The psychology behind Iranian support for the country's nuclear program.

Newsweek: Does the Internet Change How We Think?

CSMonitor: On birthday of Kim Jong-il's son, a North Korea rising star - On the birthday of Kim Jong-un, North Korea leader Kim Jong-il's son, newspaper drew attention to the "unusual brightness" and placement of Venus, which was seen as a good sign for Kim Jong-un.

Newsweek: The Recession Generation - Those entering the workforce now will likely make less and save more—not just in the short term but for the rest of their lives.

Newsweek: Bush's Solicitor General - Gay Marriage Is a Right

Slate: How do food companies determine "serving size"?

TIME: A Micronesian Paradise — for U.S. Military Recruiters

NYT: MBA Programs - Are They Students? Or ‘Customers’?

New Republic: Conservatism Is Dead - An intellectual autopsy of the movement

FP: How do you rescue someone, or a group, who doesn’t want to be rescued? (North Koreans)

FP: Why Nuclear Weapons Aren't As Frightening As You Think - President Obama’s pledge to rid the world of atomic bombs is a waste of breath. But not for the reasons you might imagine

Newsweek: The Battle of the Antiviolence Gurus - Two men. Two different approaches to violence prevention. And one small pool of funding dollars.

Atlantic: What Does GOP Now Want? Why, Activist Judges Of Course!

DCPost: The Myth of Judicial Activism

Economist: The Trans-Texas Corridor - Population growth means a looming transportation challenge

Economist: Hispanics in America - Reshaping politics

FP: Twitter vs. Terror - How the U.S. State Department should enable and encourage social-networking sites in the global fight for freedom.

ESPN: Is Oklahoma City an NBA purgatory or a fine place for ballers to chill?

CNN: Sex makes life better

FP: The Kremlin Kowtow - Why have Western leaders and intellectuals gone soft on Russia's autocracy?

FP: Why Iran's Green Movement Is a Civil Rights Movement, Not a Revolution

FP: How India Gives Global Governance the Biggest Headache

FP: Why India Is No Villain

CSMonitor: New findings on dark energy back discarded Einstein theory

Atlantic: Newspaper articles are too long

NPR: Astronomers Map Dark Matter 'Beach Ball'

TIME: A New Theory on Why the Sun Never Swallowed the Earth

Newsweek: The World's Top 10 Spammers

NPR: What Makes A Blockbuster - George Lucas Weighs In

FP: The Israeli Lobby & its Attempts to Shape the Discourse on Iran

NYT: Why Does Justice Antonin Scalia Hate the Word 'Choate'?

Mother Jones: Disappeared in the Andes - Exactly 25 years ago, my brother vanished while hiking near a shadowy German colony in Chile. I’ve been searching for the truth ever since. (Colonia Dignidad)

New Republic: The Butt Bomb - Al Qaeda's hidden weapon

Slate: The Year of Running Dangerously - In a tough economy, incumbency is the one job nobody wants

NPR: Amish Teens Tested in 'Devil's Playground' - Documentary Reveals Youths' Experiments with 'English' Life

Salon: Why do we listen to Rudy? A big blunder today reinforces the sad fact - "America's mayor" now has badly tarnished cred

Economist: A Mexican cult - Death in holy orders: Syncretism in the era of the drug baron

TIME: Grieving on Facebook - How the Site Helps People

Economist: Spooked - The troubles of American intelligence

Economist: Quorum quibbles - The National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) finds itself in a couple of fine messes

Salon: The Clintonites were wrong - The "new economy" was an illusion. Neoliberals have to admit that before they can stop the bleeding. (Questionable argument though, in my opinion)

Economist: Schumpeter - Womenomics

CNN: Audiences experience 'Avatar' blues, longing to live in 'Avatar' world of Pandora

NYT: Fewer Blacks and Mexican-Americans at Law Schools

CNNMoney: Heineken buys brewer of Tecate (Dos Equis) for $7.6 billion

posted by Flaco @ 10:41 AM 0 comments

Monday, January 4, 2010

Economist: Marine archaeology - Davy Jones's lock-up: Underwater robots can help study the world’s shipwrecks, a trove of information about the past, more easily and cheaply

CSMonitor: Organic coffee - Why Latin America's farmers are abandoning it

Economist: The idea of progress - Onwards and upwards: Why is the modern view of progress so impoverished?

Salon: What Does Avatar Tell Us About Masculinity and Disability?

Economist: Being foreign - The Others: It is becoming both easier and more difficult to experience the thrill of being an outsider

Slate: How the new cable wars will hurt consumers - How the conflicts among News Corp., Time Warner, and Comcast will hurt consumers

Big Money: Does Boycotting Big Banks Make Sense? No. (Sorry, Arianna.)

Newsweek: Fukuyama - History Is Still Over: How capitalism survived the crisis.

CSMonitor: Frustrated black youths take to the Internet

FP: Limbo World - Dispatches from Countries That Do Not Exist: They start by acting like real countries, then hope to become them..

New Republic: COIN Toss - The cult of counterinsurgency

FP: When economists should stay away from political analysis..

FP: Model Behavior - Political scientists Stephen Majeski and David Sylvan question the usefulness of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's predictioneering

Salon: Inside the hermit kingdom - A rare and fascinating glimpse of the lives of ordinary North Koreans

Salon: Singing the American zeitgeist blues - The end of U.S. intellectual hegemony? The downfall of the Western worker? As 2009 closes, everyone has a sob story..

Slate: Why do college students get such long winter vacations?

Slate: Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees?

Slate: Siberia - Where Russia Meets China: Don't Call Them Twin Cities

Slate: Siberia - Where Russia Meets China: Why Are Siberian Russians Drawn to China?

Slate: Siberia - Where Russia Meets China: Vladivostok's Used-Car Dealers are Mad as Hell

Slate: Siberia - Where Russia Meets China: China - Russia's Land of Opportunity

New Republic: The Year's Biggest Ideas in Economics

CSMonitor: Supreme Court drops key case on limits of immunity for prosecutors - Prosecutors alleged to have framed two innocent men for a murder agreed on a $12 million settlement Monday. A Supreme Court ruling could have clarified the limits of immunity for prosecutors – a legal issue that had even the Obama administration commenting on the case..

posted by Flaco @ 11:47 PM 0 comments

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