Newsletter 832

4 Nov 2012 • 3 min read

Best of the Moment

The Execution Of Carlos DeLuna

Gabriel O'Malley | Boston Review | 22 October 2012

How Texas murdered an innocent man. Pro-death penalty arguments sometimes run along the lines of there being no clear evidence that convicts have been executed for crimes they didn't commit. Can that argument still be made? Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/execution-carlos-deluna)

Supermarket Banking

Frances Coppola | Coppola Comment | 1 November 2012

What went wrong with retail banking. Problems didn't arise from proximity to investment banking; they came from the retail sector. Banks became supermarkets for financial products; staff became salespeople Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/supermarket-banking)

What's The Foreign Policy Agenda For The Next Four Years?

Stephen Walt | Foreign Policy | 31 October 2012

"No matter who wins on November 6, the feature that is going to dominate US national security planning is constraint. The budget math is real and unforgiving." That said, here's Walt's list of what will take up the president's time Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/whats-foreign-policy-agenda-next-four-years)

Dead As A Doornail?

Peter Rothman | H+ | 1 November 2012

Death today is a term with more legal than scientific meaning. Its definition has changed substantially over the past 200 years. Medical advances mean it will continue to change. Where will the boundary finally be drawn? Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/dead-doornail)

Meet The Most Indebted Man In The World

Matthew O'Brien | Atlantic | 2 November 2012

Interview with Frank Partnoy about rogue traders. Banks say that rogue traders evade controls designed to stop them. But it happens with suspicious frequency. What if the controls are designed to be porous, to encourage risk-taking? Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/meet-most-indebted-man-world)

Some Notes On The Novella

Ian McEwan | New Yorker | 29 October 2012

We're attuned to novels and short stories, uneasy with novellas. Why so? Brevity is beauty. The novella is to fiction as the sonata is to music. Within it you can achieve perfection. Think of "The Dead", or "Heart of Darkness" Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/some-notes-novella)
(http://www.amazon.com/Best-of-FiveBooks-2011-ebook/dp/B007GAM6RC?tag=thebro-21)

FiveBooks Interview

(https://thebrowser.com/interviews/ilan-kelman-on-disaster-diplomacy)

Ilan Kelman on Disaster Diplomacy

The perception that disasters are isolated events beyond our control is simply not true; we – governments and others – have a greater role in creating them than we wish to acknowledge, says the disaster research expert Read on (https://thebrowser.com/interviews/ilan-kelman-on-disaster-diplomacy)

Featured Special Report

(https://thebrowser.com/reports/paying-election)

Paying for the US Election

How much is Romney vs Obama 2012 going to cost? Who's paying? And what do they expect in return? Read on (https://thebrowser.com/reports/paying-election)

Reader Recommendations

@polit2k (http://twitter.com/polit2k) RT @guardian (http://twitter.com/guardian) : Michael Haneke: There's no easy way to say this… t.co/VdcDYie6 (via @ObsNewReview (http://twitter.com/ObsNewReview) ) #longreads (http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=#longreads) #browsings (http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=#browsings) More like this (http://thebrowser.com/browsings)

Book of the Day

Book of the Day (https://thebrowser.com/recommended/aping-language-by-joel-wallman)

Aping Language by Joel Wallman

Helene Guldberg says (http://thebrowser.com/interviews/helene-guldberg-on-man-and-ape) : "Joel Wallman’s book is very important because it shows, really convincingly, that animals do not have language, and that language is unique to human beings" FiveBooks Archive (http://thebrowser.com/fivebooks/archive)