Daniel B. Klein (GMU) and Charlotta Stern (Stockholm): Groupthink in Academia: Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid. From FP, Nathan Brown on how Middle East peacemaking has failed — it’s time for Plan B; and from Tokyo to Riyadh, governments are pouring billions into their economies — find out who stands to gain the most and who's out of luck. Barrett Brown on Thomas Friedman’s five worst predictions. From Literary Review, a review of Hot Flushes, Cold Science: A History of the Modern Menopause by Louise Foxcroft; and a review of Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves by James Le Fanu. The long and winding road to an MA in Beatles songs: Liverpool Hope University launches UK's first master's course in fab four studies (and more and a quiz). Organic and local is so 2008: Our industrial food system is rotten to the core; heirloom arugula won't save us — here's what will. A look at how Mother Jones is testing the nonprofit model in a race to survive the recession. From The Atlantic, resisting the Kindle: Sven Birkerts comments on what we lose in the page-to-screen transfer; and in defense of the Kindle: Rare books librarian Matthew Battles contends that the Amazon Kindle will promote the culture of letters, not undermine it. Whatever happened to cinephilia? Does it still exist? Scott McLemee wants to know.
