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Friday, December 21, 2012

The Browser daily newsletter [21 Dec 2012]

21 December 2012

 Best of the Moment

Death Of A Revolutionary

Gady Epstein | Economist | 21 December 2012

"On March 20th 1913 a man who represented one possible future for China stood in Shanghai railway station. He was in line to become China's first democratically elected prime minister." Instead, he was shot. Democracy died with him Comments

The Tragic History Of Robert Bork's Last Name

Stephen Carter | Bloomberg | 20 December 2012

He was the only living American whose name became a verb. OED says to "bork" is "to defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usually with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office" Comments

Crazy Far

Tim Folger | National Geographic | 17 December 2012

Will humans ever travel to the stars? What would it take? To get an idea of the challenge, it would take the fastest spacecraft ever built 17,000 years to reach the nearest star. But in 100 years' time things might look different Comments

End Of Byzantium

Helena Drysdale | Aeon | 20 December 2012

In which the author visits Bartholomew I, 270th Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, spiritual leader of 300m orthodox Christians. Her great-grandfather visited the patriarch's predecessor in 1848. What has changed since then? Comments

Nietzsche's Typewriter And Medium Theory

David Berry | Stunlaw | 19 December 2012

Does technology determine prose style? Henry James switched from handwriting to dictation without any noticeable effect on his novels. But Nietzche's work shows a clear stylistic break between handwritten and typewritten books Comments

A Social Offender For Our Times

Evan Goldstein | Chronicle Review | 17 December 2012

"Every era has its emblematic scoundrel: Once it was the cad, later it was the phony, today it is the asshole." But how exactly would you define an asshole? An academic linguist and a philosopher try to work it out Comments

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