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Thursday, February 2, 2012

The Browser daily newsletter [2 Feb 2012]

2 February 2012

 Best of the Moment

We're All In The Same Boat

Adam Curtis | BBC | 31 January 2012

Social history of the cruise ship industry, from the 1960s to the wreck of the Costa Concordia. Ships as "giant floating theatrical bubbles" in which ordinary people could behave for a while as though they were upper class Comments

Facebook, Wall Street: Friends With Benefits

Brad Stone | Businessweek | 2 February 2012

"By friending Wall Street at the start of its journey to the public markets, Facebook is giving its users something unpleasant to think about: Their personal information is helping to make rich people even richer" Comments

The Most Terrible Polar Exploration Ever

Mike Dash | Smithsonian | 27 January 2012

Utterly gripping account of Douglas Mawson's 1912-13 Antarctic expedition. Unimaginable hardship in the cause of science. Mawson's hair fell out, skin peeled off. He survived only by bathing his eyes in cocaine and eating his dogs Comments

Sino-Americana

Perry Anderson | London Review Of Books | 1 February 2012

Judiciously snarky review of books on China by Ezra Vogel, Henry Kissinger, Jay Taylor: "Works that appear to be about China, or some figure or topic from China, but whose real frame of reference, determining the optic, is the US" Comments

David Cronenberg

Jonathan Penner | LA Review Of Books | 28 January 2012

Interview. "If you mix your blood with other people’s, then you will create something that you wouldn’t have done on your own, but is enough of you that it’s exciting and feels like you. It’s kind of like making children" Comments

To My Old Master

Jourdan Anderson | Letters Of Note | 30 January 2012

US colonel writes to former slave, requesting he return to work. Former slave replies, in some style. Signs off with: "Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me" Comments

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