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.

Video

techonomy on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Can technology be society’s economic engine? A debate between Tyler Cowen and Eric Brynjolfsson. (Livestream via Crossing Wall Street)

Investing

How our relationship with money changes as technology intervenes.  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

The latest from Howard Marks on our fiscal predicament.  (OakTree Capital)

The battle between economists and traders.  (Business Spectator)

The world’s stock exchanges have become disengaged from their original purpose.  (FT)

Business

What is Sony ($SNE) now?  (Businessweek)

Did Napster ruin the music business? Evidence suggests not. (voxEU)

How elite firms hire.  (EconLog)

Cargo ships just keep bigger and bigger.  (Economist)

Economics

Which economic indicators best predict presidential elections?  (FiveThirtyEight, ibid)

How a United States of Europe could come about.  (WSJ)

Eight innovative ideas from around the world.  (The Atlantic)

America needs to rethink its retirement system.  (Institutional Investor)

Why developed countries should embrace immigrants.  (Economist)

The 1930s in America were not a decade in stagnation.  (Free exchange)

Society

Salman Khan as the Andrew Carnegie:  the “new golden age of the autodidact” is here.  (Time via The Browser)

The “fracturing” of Pennsylvania.  (NYTimes)

The sad decline of FM rock.  (Slate)

The sordid story that is Penn State football.  (SI)

Profiles

Was Steve Jobs really just a “tweaker”?  (Daring Fireball)

Michael Lewis and Billy Beane once again talk Moneyball.  (Slate)

Jeff Bezos has not been afraid to disrupt his own business.  (Wired)

Science

Phil Birnbaum, “Ninety-nine percent of the time, a research paper does not “show” anything — it only argues it. Because, correct conclusions don’t just pop out of a regression.”  (Sabermetric Research)

Is that scientific heretic a loon or a genius?  (WSJ)

How crowdsourcing is changing science.  (Boston Globe)

On the tyranny of blood levels.  (The Atlantic)

How does Prozac work?  (The Frontal Cortex)

Is the mouse model leading medical research astray?  (Slate)

Neanderthal neuroscience.  (Discover)

Mixed media

Creativity needs some constraints to succeed.  (The Frontal Cortex)

The heads of Easter Island are just the tip of the iceberg.  (follow the money)

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