Newsletter 852


Hic sunt camelopardus: this historical edition of The Browser is presented for archaeological purposes; links and formatting may be broken.

Best of the Moment

Unbelievable Lightness Of African States

James Fearon | Monkey Cage | 23 November 2012

"What is striking and surprising is how easy it can be to take over some African states, or large parts of them. Post-independence historical record provides numerous examples where dozens or a few hundred armed men have done it" Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/unbelievable-lightness-african-states)

Cooking For Freedom

Aidan Hartley | Spectator | 24 November 2012

Somali-born British chef goes home to open restaurant in Mogadishu. First guests include three Al-Shabab suicide bombers, who kill themselves and 20 customers. Service resumes after four or five coats of white paint Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/cooking-freedom)

Scientific Blind Spots

David Shaywitz | WSJ | 18 November 2012

Review of Samuel Arbesman's "Half-Life Of Facts". When an idea, even a mistaken one, becomes conventional wisdom, it is hard to dislodge. Spinach owes its reputation as an iron-rich food to a German chemist's error in 1870 Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/scientific-blind-spots)

Lies, Damn Lies And GDP

Morton Jerven | Guardian | 20 November 2012

Big African countries have been growing far faster than published figures suggest. Ghana has revised GDP estimate upwards by 60%. Nigeria may soon do likewise. Official statistics have failed to capture structural changes in economy Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/lies-damn-lies-and-gdp)

Why Can't India Feed Its People?

Mehul Srivastava | Businessweek | 21 November 2012

Reporter returns to village of his father's family to see how people there live, eat and work today. He towers over them, a product of better childhood nutrition, and finds their diet still woefully inadequate Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/why-cant-india-feed-its-people)

What Killed Michael Porter's Monitor Group?

Steve Denning | Forbes | 20 November 2012

Consulting firm founded by business-school guru goes bankrupt. Why? Because Monitor advised clients to focus primarily on protecting themselves from competition. Not on innovation or customer satisfaction. Bad strategy Comments (https://thebrowser.com/articles/what-killed-michael-porters-monitor-group)
(http://www.amazon.com/Best-of-FiveBooks-2011-ebook/dp/B007GAM6RC?tag=thebro-21)

FiveBooks Interview

(https://thebrowser.com/interviews/alex-bellos-on-maths)

Alex Bellos on Maths

The author of "Alex's Adventures in Numberland" tells us about popular attempts to explain the history of counting and numbers Read on (https://thebrowser.com/interviews/alex-bellos-on-maths)

(https://thebrowser.com/reports/hackers)

Hackers

Cars, nuclear plants, computers, phones, webcams -- they all succumb to hackers in the end Read on (https://thebrowser.com/reports/hackers)

Reader Recommendations

@polit2k (http://twitter.com/polit2k) : Online course of the day, investing department - Felix Salmon  t.co/JYNe7YWJ  #browsings (http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=#browsings)  #ponzi (http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=#ponzi)
More like this (http://thebrowser.com/browsings)

Book of the Day

Book of the Day (https://thebrowser.com/recommended/west-indies-and-spanish-main-by-anthony-trollope)

The West Indies and the Spanish Main  by Anthony Trollope

Paul Theroux says (http://thebrowser.com/interviews/paul-theroux-on-travelling) : I don’t think there’s the temptation to fictionalise. There might be a temptation to over-describe
FiveBooks Archive (http://thebrowser.com/fivebooks/archive)

Video of the Day

Stories Of Philosophies

(https://thebrowser.com/videos/stries-philosophies)

Descartes, Nietzsche, and a fountain pen More videos (http://thebrowser.com/videos)

Quote of the Day

Bill Gates, on religion (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bill-gates-quotes-book-excerpt)

"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning"

More quotes (http://thebrowser.com/quotations)

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