The Browser | Best of the Moment

On Censorship | Salman Rushdie | New Yorker | 15 May 2012

The Browser — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:40:39 +0000

Superb short essay in favour of boat-rocking. "Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes." This is where great art comes from. If we believe in liberty, we must celebrate it

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Economic Case For Same-Sex Marriage | Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers | Bloomberg | 15 May 2012

The Browser — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:06:59 +0000

"The joining of husband and wife yields a more productive firm, because it allows one spouse to specialise in earning income from working in the market, while the other specialises in the domestic sphere." But times change

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A Splash Of Marilyn | Lawrence Schiller | Vanity Fair | 08 May 2012

The Browser — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:38 +0000

Photographing Marilyn Monroe. Lawrence Schiller did it, to great effect. His account of working with the flirtatious, calculating star has shades of a coming-of-age story and makes for surprisingly compulsive reading

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Imagining Myself In Palestine | Randa Jarrar | Guernica | 14 May 2012

The Browser — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:10:54 +0000

American citizen of Palestinian descent flies to Israel, aiming to visit sister in West Bank. On landing in Tel Aviv she faces immigration. Despite best preparations, it doesn't go well. Soon she's sent to the "Arab room"

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The Cold War Rival To Eurovision | Steve Rosenberg | BBC | 14 May 2012

The Browser — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:06:45 +0000

Remembering Intervision, Soviet Union's version of Eurovision song contest. Concept came from Wladyslaw Szpilman, hero of Polanski's film The Pianist. Aim was "to prove to the West that 'anything you can sing, we can sing better'"

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My Daughter's Favorite Sport | Joe Posnanski | Joe Blogs | 15 May 2012

The Browser — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:02:24 +0000

Sportswriter's daughter had never shown much interest in his area of expertise. Then, unaccountably, she developed an interest in NASCAR, one of the few sports her father knew virtually nothing about. Eh? Classic, charming Posnanski

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Barack Obama, The Great Deceiver | Yves Smith | Naked Capitalism | 14 May 2012

The Browser — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:10:27 +0000

Scathing takedown of US president. "It isn’t simply that Obama lied. Politicians lie. But there are norms for political lying. The depth and dependability of Obama’s misrepresentation constitute a difference in kind"

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In Search Of The Money Gene | Leon Neyfakh | Boston Globe | 13 May 2012

The Browser — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:40:05 +0000

Is our financial behaviour decided by genes? A group of young economists believe so. They've gone beyond neuroeconomics, and established a new field – genoeconomics. Here's what they hope to achieve. And the issues they face

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The Wrong Carlos | Ed Pilkington | Guardian | 15 May 2012

The Browser — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:36:20 +0000

Troubling story of Carlos DeLuna, executed in 1989 for the brutal murder of a young woman. DeLuna always insisted that the killer was a lookalike, Carlos Hernandez. But police denied Hernandez even existed. They were wrong

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Bullfighting Is Not A Sport, It Is A Tragedy | Ernest Hemingway | Hemingway Papers/Toronto Star | 07 May 2012

The Browser — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:30:54 +0000

Hemingway's old paper, the Toronto Star, has launched a terrific new project to republish his columns. In this piece, from 1923, Hemingway describes the first bullfights he saw – an experience he was to revisit in his first novel

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