The weekend is a great time to catch up on some of the reading you skipped during the week.  We hope you enjoy this set of long-form links.

Investments

Can Clayton Christensen’s “disrupters” make for good investments?  (Technology Review)

How the high-beta wealthy lose it all these days.  (WSJ)

Meet Ramit Sethi, Gen Y’s new personal finance guru.  (Fortune)

How should we view volatility in the markets.  (Rick Bookstaber)

Finance

The split in Europe is about more than the Tobin tax.  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

Is consulting just as much to blame for our woes than the rise of finance?  (NYTimes)

The “circular world” of a Chinese venture capitalist.  (The Financial Investigator)

Incentives

The overjustification effect.  (You Are Not So Smart via The Browser)

timarr, “Incentives are not the solution to agency problems, because their unintended, perverse, consequences create a different set of problems and a less just world. ”  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

Economics

WWMTD:  What Would Margaret Thatcher Do.  (WSJ)

America needs workers with industrial skills.  (New Geography)

A profile of IMF chief Christine Lagarde.  (FT)

Lessons in economics: the Norwegian butter shortage and the idiotic cab regulations.  (Slate, ibid)

Society

Christopher Buckley on Christopher Hitchens.  (New Yorker)

The death penalty seems to be in “sharp decline” in the US.  (The Atlantic)

The NHL cannot “wait for the science” on concussions.  (Grantland)

Benton Harbor, Michigan is trying to reboot its economy.  (NYTimes)

A brief history of pubic hair in America.  (The Atlantic)

The very weird year in poker.  (Grantland)

Science

Why pilotless flights are a long way off.  (Freakonomics)

Is this the next, big step in space flight?  (WSJ)

Our five senses are far more interdependent than previously thought.  (Boston Globe)

The hope for cancer vaccines.  (Newsweek)

How 3-D printing or “additive manufacturing” is going to change everything.  (Economist)

Books

Bloomberg’s list of the top business books of 2011.  (Bloomberg)

The best nonfiction of 2011 including Marc Levinson’s The Great A&P.  (WSJ)

Three excerpts from Winifred Gallagher’s New: Understand Our Need for Novelty and Change.  (Bloomberg, part 2, part 3)

Media

The real story behind Apple’s “Think Different” campaign.  (Forbes)

Are you reading the best magazine in America?  (Jack Shafer)

Inside the phenomenon that is The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition.  (Slate)

Roger Ebert’s list of the best movies of 2012.  (Sun-Times)

Some lessons learned from the Louie C.K. experiment.  (Big Picture)

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