Pick of the Week– How Poverty Taxes the Brain (Emily Badger, Atlantic Cities)– A discussion of probably the most important book you will read this year.
Science
How to Read and Understand a Scientific Paper: a guide for non-scientists (Jennifer Raff, Violent Metaphors)
Syria
Not Sure How to Feel About Syria? (John Judis, New Republic)
Two Minds on Syria (George Packer, New Yorker)
Authorization for action in Syria (Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, WaPo)
Military Interventions on Behalf of Rebels Typically Lead to More Killing of Civilians Not Less (Matthew Yglesias, Slate)
Holding tyrants personally accountable (The Philosopher’s Beard)
The Failed Grand Strategy in the Middle East (Walter Russell Mead, WSJ)
Some Context for our Upcoming Bombing Campaign (Paul Waldman, The American Prospect)
Economy
The Swedish model for economic recovery (C. Fred Bergsten, WaPo)
Is the economy forcing colleges to spend more? (Dylan Mathews, Wonkblog)
Why Supersized CEO Pay is the Worst–in Three Charts (Sarah Anderson, The American Prospect)
Don’t You Dare Say ‘Disruptive’ (Judith Shulevitz, The New Republic)
Want to know if your hospital is a rip-off? Move to North Carolina (Sarah Kliff, Wonkblog)– Finally, NC gets back around to doing something right.
Education
If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person (Allison Benedikt, Slate)
Politics
The Stranglehold on our Politics (Elizabeth Drew, NYRB)
The Big Picture
President Obama shows the progress we’ve made. His speech shows how terribly we’ve failed (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog)
These ten charts show the black-white economic gap hasn’t changed in 50 years (Brad Plumer, Wonkblog)
How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class (David Autor and David Dorn, NYT)
Dangerous Deportations (Kristel Mucino, The American Prospect)
A New Kind of Union (Benjamin Sachs, NYT)
Looking for Fraud in All the Wrong Places (Cole Stangler, In These Times)
Foreign Affairs
Snowden in Exile (Amy Knight, NYRB)
Office for the ‘Cultivation of Beautiful Flowers from the Same Garden’: a Reflection on the State Department’s Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives (Cara Burnidge, Religion in American History)
Culture
To make journalism harder, slower, less secure (Jay Rosen, PressThink)
To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense (Richard Sandomir, James Andrew Miller and Steve Eder, NYT)
Mormonism
Mormonism’s Possible Political Theologies: Reading the Constitution through a Lens of Continuing Revelation (Jordan W., Juvenile Instructor)– with part 2 here.
The Nightstand @ Weightier Matters of the Law 