Open Thread - October 9th, 2010

Fall is upon us. I do not recommend The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism. Too thin. Finally getting to Paul Bloom's How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like. But after hearing him in interviews and reading his articles on the topic over the past six months as he was promoting the book I'm finding that there isn't that much that's surprising! For various reasons I didn't get a DonorsChoose page up & running this year. But I suggest you check out the science bloggers leaderboard. Anne Jefferson has a summary of what's going on. For more general charitable concerns, I suggest checking out GiveWell. Also see their blog.