Alan Jacobs

Narrative Science is one of several companies developing automated journalism software. These startups work primarily in niche fields—sports, finance, real estate—in which news stories tend to follow the same pattern and revolve around statistics. Now they are entering the political reporting arena, too. A new service from Narrative Service generates articles about how the U.S. electoral race is reflected in social media, what issues and candidates are most and least discussed in a particular state or region, and similar topics. It can even incorporate quotes from the most popular and interesting tweets into the final article. Nothing covers Twitter better than the robots.

It’s easy to see why Narrative Science’s clients—the company says it has 30—find it useful. First of all, it’s much cheaper than paying full-time journalists who tend to get sick and demand respect. As reported in the New York Times last September, one of Narrative Science’s clients in the construction industry pays less than $10 per 500-word article—and there is no one to fret about the terrible working conditions. And that article takes only a second to compose. Not even Christopher Hitchens could beat that deadline. Second, Narrative Science promises to be more comprehensive—and objective—than any human reporter. Few journalists have the time to find, process, and analyze millions of tweets, but Narrative Science can do so easily and, more importantly, instantaneously. It doesn’t just aim to report fancy statistics—it attempts to understand what those numbers mean and communicate this significance to the reader. Would Narrative Science have unmasked the Watergate? Probably not. But then most news stories are easier to report and decipher.

Since I’m late to this: What Is Pinterest and Why Should I Care?

Shocks there have been. Nobody in 2002 saw what was coming. That’s why many of us, courteously disagreeing on some issues, have remained convinced that Rowan was the right man for the job. Shallow, polarizing analyses remain irresistible for commentators; many in the church go along for the ride. But Dr Williams is a thinker’s thinker. He burrows down into an issue, reads it up, mulls it over, prays it through, and then speaks his mind. We have needed that. He is a classic Anglican theologian: not one for big, clunky systems, but solid, deep and rich in his study of the Bible and the Fathers. To hear Rowan expounding St John or St Augustine is to encounter Anglican theology at its best. Watch him translate that theology into pastoral mode: with children, say, or praying quietly with someone in the wings of a conference. Like all loveable people, he can be infuriating. But loveable none the less.

It’s that decision not to press charges that makes Stand Your Ground laws, which a bunch of other states have adopted, a crazy departure from the past. It’s one thing to raise self-defense at trial. It’s another to have what the Florida Supreme Court calls “true immunity.” True immunity, the court said, means a trial judge can dismiss a prosecution, based on a Stand Your Ground assertion, before trial begins. At least there’s supposed to be a hearing before that happens, at which the defendant has the burden of proof. And yet as the Hernandez and Martin’s case shows, Stand Your Ground laws often lead prosecutors to decide against so much as bringing charges. According to the Sun Sentinel, “In case after case during the past six years, Floridians who shot and killed unarmed opponents have not been prosecuted.” Now the death of Trayvon Martin is the latest in that line. Maybe this is the kind of case that is so sad and so tinged with racism that Florida will think hard about the very scary place where their self-defense laws have taken them. Maybe.

The second major flaw in the Goldbergs is how jolly they are. Joy is the default mode of the work, hand in hand with G major. Just look at the bouncy, boisterous, leaping first variation, with its clever crossing of hands. Then (why not) head over to the leaping eighth variation, with the hands arpeggiating over each other, and its bouncy boisterous triads, and the wonderful eleventh variation, in which (shockingly!) the hands charmingly criss-cross and leap, or number fourteen … You get the idea. There is a surfeit of virtuosic, humorous leaping. Someone could easily fall asleep 20 minutes in, have a solid 50 minute nap (certainly enough to wake refreshed), and then, upon awakening, you might feel it sounds more or less the same. You might be confused, wonder if you’d slept at all! That’s ridiculous, you say; but you know, it could happen.

Yes, Bach did insert three minor-key variations in order to change up the mood. But three out of thirty is not many—not enough. The Goldbergs are a desert of happiness with oases of sadness: we drink thirstily at all-too-rare darkness. People often say their favorite variation is number 25, the last minor variation, the darkest, the so-called “black pearl.” But number 25 is a pretty serious exception. What they’re saying is that their favorite part of the piece is the part that’s not really like the piece.

Overall I think the general trend, as exemplified by social networks and the evolution of Google, is towards ever smaller bits of information delivered ever more quickly to people who are increasingly compulsive consumers of media and communication products. So I would say more screens, smaller screens, more streams of information coming at us from more directions, and more of us adapting to that way of living and thinking, for better or worse.

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A group of psychiatrists have spearheaded a movement to include ongoing grief as a disorder, to be labeled “complicated” or “prolonged grief.” Others have proposed, separately, that a mourner can be labeled clinically depressed only two weeks after the loss of a loved one. The problem with both potential changes is that more people’s grief will be diagnosed as abnormal or extreme, in a culture that already leads mourners to feel they need to just “get over it” and “heal.”

In January, more than 10,000 mental health professionals, concerned about the credibility of the science behind several proposed additions to the manual, including the potential addition of complicated grief, have signed a petition calling for an “independent review” of the DSM-5. Their concerns are worth taking seriously. Grief, even the ostensibly extreme variety that the DSM might include, is a universal and normal human reaction to the loss of a loved one. Unlike most disorders in the manual, it is a condition we will all experience. It is not a disease and it has no place in a book dedicated to listing mental disorders. In a culture that has largely turned grief into a private experience rather than a communal one, the decision to include grief in the DSM risks doing more harm than good, making it easier than ever to view those who are simply experiencing a painful rite of passage as abnormal.

If you rehearse a prewritten speech enough, you can get asymptotically close to the sort of engagement you get when speaking ad lib. Actors do. But here again there’s a tradeoff between smoothness and ideas. All the time you spend practicing a talk, you could instead spend making it better. Actors don’t face that temptation except in the rare cases where they’ve written the script, but any speaker does. Before I give a talk I can usually be found sitting in a corner somewhere with a copy printed out on paper, trying to rehearse it in my head. But I always end up spending most of the time rewriting it instead. Every talk I give ends up being given from a manuscript full of things crossed out and rewritten. Which of course makes me um even more, because I haven’t had any time at all to practice the new bits.

Apple is not the main worker-safety problem in China. Nor even Foxconn. Not even close. Internationally owned factories are at the better end of the Chinese spectrum in wages, working conditions, safety, and (usually) environmental policies. Foxconn’s wages are higher, and its accident rate is lower, than for Chinese-based factories as a whole — and Chinese manufacturing overall is much safer than the Chinese mining or metals industries. (Back in 2007, I saw an item in a Chinese paper saying that 32 metal workers had been horrifically boiled to death, when a giant ladle full of molten steel slipped off its hoist and spilled onto them. The episode got almost no international attention.) Pressure on the Apple supply chain is sensible and valuable if it always presented as a lever for raising Chinese safety and environmental standards generally — and as an ever-ascending standard that the rest of them should meet.