Newsletter 846

18 Nov 2012 • 2 min read

Best of the Moment

While The Band Played On

Adam Curtis | BBC | 14 November 2012

A bit of video and music fun. Curtis has cut together some arresting footage from the BBC archives of people dancing; and put the footage to two different soundtracks to show how music affects your perception of what you're seeing Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/while-band-played)

Your Daughter Died

Deborah Blum | Wired | 15 November 2012

Chain of fatal poisonings in Thailand, mostly of foreign tourists. Police refuse to investigate. Authorities blame insecticide in hotels. "I used to work in Phuket and have seen it to be a common practice to poison foreigners" Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/your-daughter-died)

Interview: Anne Applebaum

Jonathan Derbyshire | New Statesman | 8 November 2012

Succinct Q&A about Soviet power in post-war Europe. "If Austria had been taken over, Austria would have been a communist country. And if the Soviets hadn’t taken over Poland, Poland wouldn’t have been a communist country" Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/interview-anne-applebaum)

Kill The Password

Mat Honan | Wired | 15 November 2012

"Nothing you do, no precaution you take, no long or random string of characters can stop a dedicated and devious individual from cracking your account. The age of the password has come to an end; we just haven’t realised it yet" Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/kill-password)

Will Arabs Turn Out For Gaza?

Marc Lynch | Foreign Policy | 16 November 2012

"Israel is gambling that the Arab uprisings have changed little, and that Arab leaders will continue to act much as they did during its 2008-09 war against Gaza, controlling popular anger while doing little beyond heated rhetoric" Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/will-arabs-turn-out-gaza)

Learning To Love Volatility

Nassim Nicholas Taleb | WSJ | 16 November 2012

We must learn to benefit from disorder that "black swans" bring. Taleb's term for this quality is "antifragile", and here are his "five policy rules that can help to establish antifragility as a principle of our socioeconomic life" Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/learning-love-volatility)
(http://www.amazon.com/Best-of-FiveBooks-2011-ebook/dp/B007GAM6RC?tag=thebro-21)

FiveBooks Interview

(https://thebrowser.com/interviews/dominic-lawson-on-chess)

Dominic Lawson on Chess

You don’t have to be a genius to play chess, but it helps. The journalist tells us about the logical beauty of the game, its history and political context, and the lives and minds of its greatest masters Read on (https://thebrowser.com/interviews/dominic-lawson-on-chess)

Featured Special Report

(https://thebrowser.com/reports/petraeus-affair)

The Petraeus Affair

An affair with his biographer has cost the CIA director, David Petraeus, his job. Should it have done? Read on (https://thebrowser.com/reports/petraeus-affair)

Reader Recommendations

@polit2k (http://twitter.com/polit2k) : How to be German in 20 easy steps – part 1 t.co/mK5YHsGh #browsings (http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=#browsings) @msgbi (http://twitter.com/msgbi) @rszbt (http://twitter.com/rszbt)
More like this (http://thebrowser.com/browsings)

Book of the Day

Book of the Day (https://thebrowser.com/recommended/testament-youth-by-vera-brittain)

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

Wade Davis says (http://thebrowser.com/interviews/wade-davis-on-legacies-world-war-one) : To me, Testament of Youth is simply one of the finest, most heart-rending and most moving memoirs – not just of the Great War, but of any conflict.
FiveBooks Archive (http://thebrowser.com/fivebooks/archive)