Alan Jacobs

Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn’t enough. Search had to be social. Android had to be social. You Tube, once joyous in their independence, had to be … well, you get the point. Even worse was that innovation had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction.

Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the “old Google” and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a “new Google” that promised “more wood behind fewer arrows.”

The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again.

The problem is that having spent most of the book showing how hard it is to get us to think rationally about morality, Haidt then tries to get us to see reason about politics. This is an American book and it’s the current state of American politics that Haidt wants to remedy. He despairs of its extreme partisanship and the toxic levels of mistrust on both sides. But his analysis can neither explain nor cure this phenomenon. He can’t explain it because it is relatively recent – the partisanship has got much worse in the last couple of decades – so it is not something that can be accounted for by evolution. People are predisposed to be divided by morality, but if we have suddenly become more divided that can’t be explained by our predispositions. Something else must have happened: changes to the role of money, or technology, or communication, or party organisation, or voting habits. In other words, the explanation is political not evolutionary.

The way Haidt wants to cure it is to have people understand that the divisions have gone too far. He flags up some traditional leftish arguments that might make sense to people on the right, and some rightish arguments that could appeal to the left. But he sets them out in essentially evolutionary terms: for instance, he wants people on the right to recognise the need for tighter government control of corporations because corporations are “super-organisms”. How’s that going to go down in a focus group? His hints at practical reform are equally unconvincing. He says that it would be better if politicians came to Washington with their families so that they would be forced to socialise with the other side. But why does he think that the families would choose to socialise with the other side rather than with people like themselves? Everything he says in the book suggests that people cleave to their own when their moral judgments are on the line.

As ‘After-birth Abortion’ spread around the world and gained wide publicity ​— ​that damned Internet ​— ​non-ethicists greeted it with derision or shock or worse. The authors and the editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics were themselves shocked at the response. As their inboxes flooded with hate mail, the authors composed an apology of sorts that non-ethicists will find more revealing even than the original paper.

'We are really sorry that many people, who do not share the background of the intended audience for this article, felt offended, outraged, or even threatened,’ they wrote. 'The article was supposed to be read by other fellow bioethicists who were already familiar with this topic and our arguments.’ It was a thought experiment. After all, among medical ethicists 'this debate’ ​— ​about when it’s proper to kill babies ​— 'has been going on for 40 years.’

— Andrew Ferguson. I think Ferguson might make even more of this than he does. The editors are saying, quite straightforwardly, We do not expect or want the people who could be affected by our recommendations to see those recommendations, or how we arrive at them. This is the classic behavior of what Coleridge called the “clerisy,” the self-appointed intellectual custodians of society: Run along, now, little ones, while your betters make decisions on your behalf. To call this attitude “contemptible” would be too kind by half.

Malte Koeditz: “I researched the Golden Section and its use in design extensively for my dissertation earlier this year. Its proportions are believed to yield aesthetically pleasing results when implemented by designers and many architects including Leonardo Da Vinci, Leon Battista Alberti and Le Corbusier have used the Golden Ratio as a proportioning system for designing facades. However, being an Apple fan, I was intrigued when @dangullan pointed out that Apple have used the system in designing their Logo.”

via @millinerd

In 2009 the United States graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math, and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual-and-performing-arts graduates in 1985. There is nothing wrong with the arts, psychology, and journalism, but graduates in these fields have lower wages and are less likely to find work in their fields than graduates in science and math. Moreover, more than half of all humanities graduates end up in jobs that don’t require college degrees, and those graduates don’t get a big income boost from having gone to college.

Most important, graduates in the arts, psychology, and journalism are less likely to create the kinds of innovations that drive economic growth. Economic growth is not the only goal of higher education, but it is one of the main reasons taxpayers subsidize higher education through direct government college support, as well as loans, scholarships, and grants. The potential wage gains for college graduates is reason enough for students to pursue a college education. We add subsidies to the mix, however, because we believe that education has positive spillover benefits for society. One of the biggest of those benefits is the increase in innovation that highly educated workers theoretically bring to the economy.

Best book jackets EVAR

One thing that struck me about the 9/11 footage shown during last year’s anniversary was that in 2001, the people on New York City’s sidewalks had no smartphones with which to record the events of the day. History may well look back on 9/11 as the world’s last underdocumented mega-event. But aside from the absence of phone cameras, the people and streets of September 2001 looked pretty much identical to those of September 2011: the clothes, the hair, the cars. I mention this because it has been only in the past decade that we appear to have entered an aura-free universe in which all eras coexist at once — a state of possibly permanent atemporality given to us courtesy of the Internet. No particular era now dominates. We live in a post-era era without forms of its own powerful enough to brand the times. The zeitgeist of 2012 is that we have a lot of zeit but not much geist. I can’t believe I just wrote that last sentence, but it’s true; there is something psychically sparse about the present era, and artists of all stripes are responding with fresh strategies.

Senator Estes Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, will you give us very briefly your background and your views about this legislation? Stengel: Well, I started in professional ball in 1910. I have been in professional ball, I would say, for 48 years. I have been employed by numerous ball clubs in the majors and in the minor leagues. I started in the minor leagues with Kansas City. I played as low as class D ball, which was at Shelbyville, Ky., and also class C ball, and class A ball, and I have advanced in baseball as a ballplayer. I had many years that I was not so successful as a ballplayer, as it is a game of skill. And then I was no doubt discharged by baseball in which I had to go back to the minor leagues as a manager, and after being in the minor leagues as a manager, I became a major league manager in several cities and was discharged, we call it “discharged,“ because there is no question I had to leave. In the last 10 years, naturally, with the New York Yankees, the New York Yankees have had tremendous success and while I am not the ballplayer who does the work, I have no doubt worked for a ball club that is very capable in the office. I have been up and down the ladder. I know there are some things in baseball, 35 to 50 years ago that are better now than they were in those days. In those days, my goodness, you could not transfer a ball club in the minor leagues, class D, class C ball, class A ball. How could you transfer a ball club when you did not have a highway? How could you transfer a ball club when the railroads then would take you to a town, you got off and then you had to wait and sit up five hours to go to another ball club? How could you run baseball then without night ball? You had to have night ball to improve the proceeds to pay larger salaries and I went to work, the first year I received $135 a month. I thought that was amazing. I had to put away enough money to go to dental college. I found out it was not better in dentistry, I stayed in baseball. Any other questions you would like to ask me? Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, are you prepared to answer particularly why baseball wants this bill passed? Stengel: Well, I would have to say at the present time, I think that baseball has advanced in this respect for the player help. That is an amazing statement for me to make, because you can retire with an annuity at 50 and what organization in America allows you to retire at 50 and receive money? Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, I am not sure that I made my question clear. Stengel: Yes, sir. Well that is all right. I am not sure I am going to answer yours perfectly either. Kefauver: I was asking you, sir, why it is that baseball wants this bill passed. Stengel: I would say I would not know, but would say the reason why they would want it passed is to keep baseball going as the highest paid ball sport that has gone into baseball and from the baseball angle, I am not going to speak of any other sport. I am not here to argue about other sports, I am in the baseball business. Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney: Did I understand you to say that in your own personal activity as manager, you always give a player who is to be traded advance notice? Stengel: I warn him that. I hold a meeting. We have an instructional school, regardless of my English, we have got an instructional school. O’Mahoney: Your English is perfect and I can understand what you say, and I think I can even understand what you mean. Stengel: Yes, sir. You have got some very wonderful points in. O’Mahoney: Mr. Chairman, I think the witness is the best entertainment we have had around here for a long time. Senator John A. Carroll: The question Senator Kefauver asked you was what, in your honest opinion, with your 48 years of experience, is the need for this legislation in view of the fact that baseball has not been subject to antitrust laws? Stengel: No. Senator Carroll: It is not now subject to antitrust laws. What do you think the need is for this legislation? I had a conference with one of the attorneys representing not only baseball but all of the sports, and I listened to your explanation . It seemed to me it had some clarity. I asked the attorney: What was the need for this legislation? I wonder if you would accept his definition. He said they didn’t want to be subjected to the ipse dixit of the Federal Government because they would throw a lot of damage suits on the ad damnum clause. He said, in the first place, the Toolson case was sui generis, it was de minimus non curat lex. Do you call that a clear expression? Stengel: Well, you are going to get me for about two hours. Kefauver: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel. We appreciate your testimony. Mr. Mickey Mantle, will you come around? Mr. Mantle, do you have any observations with reference to the applicability of the antitrust laws to baseball? Mantle: My views are about the same as Casey’s.

It would be great to get rid of Kony. He and his forces have left a path of abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years. But let’s get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn’t been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.

First, the facts. Following a successful campaign by the Ugandan military and failed peace talks in 2006, the LRA was pushed out of Uganda and has been operating in extremely remote areas of the DRC, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic – where Kony himself is believed to be now. The Ugandan military has been pursuing the LRA since then but had little success (and several big screw-ups). In October last year, President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 U.S. Army advisors to help the Ugandan military track down Kony, with no results disclosed to date.

Additionally, the LRA (thankfully!) does not have 30,000 mindless child soldiers. This grim figure, cited by Invisible Children in the film (and by others) refers to the total number of kids abducted by the LRA over nearly 30 years. Eerily, it is also the same number estimated for the total killed in the more than 20 years of conflict in Northern Uganda.

As I wrote for FP in 2010, the small remaining LRA forces are still wreaking havoc and very hard to catch, but Northern Uganda has had tremendous recovery in the 6 years of peace since the LRA left.

So why is “Uganda” trending on Twitter? Unfortunately, it looks like meddlesome details like where Kony actually is aren’t important enough for Invisible Children to make sure its audience understands.

Steve Shanabruch’s logos for Chicago neighborhoods