Tom Bergin | Reuters | 6 December 2012 After shining a light on the tax avoidance strategy of Starbucks (to some effect), Reuters turns the heat on Amazon. The online retail giant uses a complex strategy to ensure that its profits pile up in tax-friendly Luxembourg Comments Shadi Hamid | Foreign Policy | 4 December 2012 Can Egyptians agree on what a modern nation state should be? Should it be ideologically neutral, or should it be an enforcer of morality, intent on creating virtuous families and virtuous individuals? Comments Austin Hughes | New Atlantis | 1 December 2012 "Is it really true that natural science provides a satisfying and reasonably complete account of everything we see, experience, and seek to understand — of every phenomenon in the universe?" Or is there still a role for philosophy? Comments Franz Wild et al | Bloomberg | 5 December 2012 Israeli diamond dealer Dan Gertler bankrolls Kabila family in their struggle to keep control of Congo. His reward: Cheap mining assets. So far he's made $2.5bn. He says he's investing in the country. Critics say he's looting it Comments Gene Weingarten | Washington Post | 5 December 2012 Jeffrey MacDonald is serving a life sentence for murdering his wife and two daughters 42 years ago. But film-maker Errol Morris says MacDonald is innocent, and claims new DNA evidence. Did drug-addled hippies do it, after all? Comments Shane Parrish | Farnham Street | 5 December 2012 Bayes's theorem teaches us to deal with new information by adjusting our expectations. "It a statement about how we learn. We learn through approximation, getting closer and closer to the truth as we gather more evidence" Comments |