December 22, 2017

From Harper's:

Economics students behave more selfishly than do arts majors and science majors in monetary experiments because they expect less from others.

From Harper's:

Anger shifts people toward fiscal conservatism.

From The Economist:

Though renewable energy could profitably generate a fair share of the world’s electricity, nobody knows how to get rich simply by removing greenhouse gases.

When the need is great, the science is nascent and commercial incentives are missing, the task falls to government and private foundations. But they are falling short. 

From Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny:

The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions--even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.

From The Guardian (Jennifer Egan on "Best books of 2017"):

Short story and thriller tend to be incompatible genres, but not in the hands of Tara Laskowski. Bystanders (Santa Fe Writers Project) is a spooky, quirky collection reminiscent of Roald Dahl: a mash-up of Hitchcockian suspense and campfire-tale chills. In Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders has somehow managed to write a historical novel that hews deeply and movingly to archival fact while also being an all-out crazy spectacle of his own invention. Abraham Lincoln’s visit to his young son’s grave becomes the locus of a whirl of dialogue from around the cemetery: a puzzling, hilarious vortex of invention that only Saunders could pull off. The novel made me feel intimate with Lincoln, and that particular moment of history, in a way I never had before. Female friendship has become a literary focus in recent years, and Zadie Smith’s take on the subject in Swing Time (Hamish Hamilton) is my favourite. Tracing the evolution of a childhood friendship into adulthood, she bracingly portrays the compromises and bargains we all eventually make. Smith’s idiosyncratic gaze and keen, supple prose transform and elevate everything she touches.