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.

Investing

Are traders dumber than drooling dogs?  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

Howard Marks’ take on why the markets swooned in August.  (Zero Hedge)

A profile of the very high profile hedge fund of fund manager Anthony Scaramucci.  (Bloomberg also Felix Salmon)

The Efficient Markets Hypothesis is as silly as an Efficient Atmospheres Hypothesis.  (The Physics of Finance)

The big book

James Grant (and Roger Lowenstein) in praise of Sylvia Nassar’s new book Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius.  (WSJ, Businessweek)

Financial engineering

A wide-ranging interview with Satyajit Das on the financialization of our economy.  (naked capitalism)

Real engineering vs. financial engineering.  (Wired and Ready)

Startup culture

How Zynga gets people to spend real money on virtual goods.  (WSJ)

The Groupon model is not all that revolutionary.  (The Frontal Cortex)

There are six types of startups and only one successful government program to nurture them.  (The Atlantic)

Technology

Microsoft ($MSFT) vs. Apple ($AAPL): which company changed the world more? (SAI)

How AT&T conquered the 20th century.  (ArsTechnica via @longreads)

Content

On the dangers of trying to keep with your RSS feeds.  (ArsTechnica)

Can curation be a serious business?  The case of The Browser.   (GigaOM also WashingtonPost)

Psychology

Self-control can be improved through training.  (The Frontal Cortex)

Can probiotic yogurt cure your mental illness?  (Scientific American)

Culture

Italy, India, immigration and the production of Grana Padano.  (NYTimes)

Noel Gallagher after Oasis.  (Grantland)

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