Susan Lepselter (Indiana): The Resonance of Captivity: Aliens and Conquest. Stephen Rushin (UC-Berkeley): The Regulation of Private Police. Andrew Hacker reviews The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t by Nate Silver, The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by James Owen Weatherall, and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. From Conversations With History, Harry Kreisler interviews Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor of the New Republic. A pickpocket’s tale: Adam Green on the spectacular thefts of Apollo Robbins. From Migration Information Source, a look at the top 10 migration issues of 2012. Anthropologist Susan Hayes has used forensic facial approximation techniques to show how the mysterious Flores “hobbit” might have once looked. A dispatch from Edinburgh: Benjamin Morris on Independence Day. "Proust is important for everyone": Gilles Lipovetsky interviews Mario Vargas Llosa on the relative merits of "high" and "mass" culture in the contemporary world. Here are 6 harsh truths that will make you a better person.
