Marko A. Rodriguez and Jennifer H. Watkins (LANL): Revisiting the Age of Enlightenment from a Collective Decision Making Systems Perspective. The truth about grit: Modern science builds the case for an old-fashioned virtue — and uncovers new secrets to success. From Policy Review, James Goldgeier on the decline of the honor culture: An old code becomes declasse. Conor Clarke interviews Kenneth Arrow (and part 2 and part 3). From TNR, Adrian Vermeule and Eric Posner review The Constitution in 2020. How is America going to end? The world's leading futurologists have four theories; and Slate's "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" lets you map out the death of the United States. From The New Yorker, the courthouse ring: Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism; and Judith Thurman on the mother and daughter behind the Little House stories. The first chapter from The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood by Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman. The absence of alien probes visiting the solar system places severe limits on the number of advanced civilizations that could be exploring the galaxy. A Daily Beast investigation shows how conservative think tanks have quietly achieved domination over the opinion pages of America’s biggest papers.
