Newsletter 933
I'm Waiting For My UPS Man
Ned Beauman | n+1 | 18 February 2013
Buying drugs online. "There are two websites where you can add a gram of heroin to your shopping cart. One belongs to Sigma-Aldrich, the chemical company that synthesizes pure opioids for use in laboratory studies. For this you need to be a federally accredited laboratory. The other is Silk Road. For this you just need an internet connection"
Why Southern Weekly?
Qian Gang | China Media Project | 18 February 2013
Former deputy editor of liberal Guangdong newspaper Southern Weekly gives background to censorship row last month, when provincial authorities rewrote paper's front page amid public protest from journalists. Culmination of year-long struggle with Guangdong propaganda chief who had "made it his mission to bring Southern Weekly to heel"
The Value Of Life And The Badness Of Death
Alexandre Erier | Practical Ethics | 18 February 2013
Notes on a discussion between Jeff McMahan of Rutgers and John Broome of Oxford. Not about badness of death in general, but badness of any particular death. You might equate the badness of a given death to the quantity and quality of life it cuts short. But that would make the death of an embryo worse than that of an child, which feels wrong
Buffett Brand Has More Beans Than Heinz
Alice Schroder | Financial Times | 18 February 2013
Lessons from Berkshire Hathaway's takeover of Heinz. It's a very low-risk deal for Buffett. Even if Heinz loses money, he gets a dividend on his preferred stock. If Heinz goes bust, he can wipe out the other creditors. "While he has a well-established pattern of using other people’s money for Berkshire’s benefit, this sets a new bar"
Exposing One Of China’s Cyber Espionage Units
Anonymous | Mandiant | 19 February 2013
Report from American computer security company detailing long investigation into Chinese hacking group called here "APT1", the most prolific of at least 20 such groups. Leaves little or no doubt that APT1 is a unit of the Chinese army, active since 2006, primarily engaged in stealing data from US companies in strategic industries (PDF)
China, Technology And The US Middle Class
Chrystia Freeland | Reuters | 15 February 2013
You know that one point on which all economists can supposedly agree—that free trade makes everyone better off? Brace yourself for some bad news. "The big surprise, at least for believers (like me) in the classic liberal economic view that trade benefits both parties, is the strong and negative impact of globalisation on US workers"
Video of the day: The Art Of Raw
Thought for the day:
"It isn't disrespectful to the complexity of existence to point out that despair is, often, just low blood sugar and exhaustion" — Alain de Botton
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