Samir’s Selection 03/23/2013 (p.m.)
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How Noam Chomsky is discussed | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign the character, “style” and even mental health of those who challenge them. The most extreme version of this was an old Soviet favorite: to declare political dissidents mentally ill and put them in hospitals…
But the strangest attack on Chomsky is the insinuation that he has changed nothing. Aside from the metrics demonstrating that he has more reach and influence than virtually any public intellectual in the world, some of which Edemariam cites, I’d say that there is no living political writer who has more radically changed how more people think in more parts of the world about political issues than he. If you accept the premise (as I do) that the key to political change is to convince people of pervasive injustice and the need to act, then it’s virtually laughable to depict him as inconsequential. -
The Economics of Evil Google – Paul Krugman – NYTimes.com
As Avent says, historical examples with these characteristics – like urban transport networks – have been resolved through public provision. It seems hard at this point to envision search and related functions as public utilities, but that’s arguably where the logic will eventually lead us.
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Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson for Democracy Journal: Past Perfect?
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? By Jared Diamond (2012)
Diamond strongly underscores that though some societies did grow richer and more technologically advanced than others, that does not mean they are “better.” Historically, societies have been organized in many different ways, and the idea of The World Until Yesterday is to use this huge variation in social organization as a lens through which to view the pros and cons of the modern world and to evaluate the institutions and social norms that structure Western society… -
BBC News – Children should be allowed to get bored, expert says
Children should be allowed to get bored so they can develop their innate ability to be creative, an education expert says…. Dr Belton, who is an expert in the impact of emotions on behaviour and learning, said boredom could be an “uncomfortable feeling” and that society had “developed an expectation of being constantly occupied and constantly stimulated”. But she warned that being creative “involves being able to develop internal stimulus”. The academic, who has previously studied the impact of television and videos on children’s writing, said: “When children have nothing to do now, they immediately switch on the TV, the computer, the phone or some kind of screen. The time they spend on these things has increased. “But children need to have stand-and-stare time, time imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or assimilating their experiences through play or just observing the world around them.” It is this sort of thing that stimulates the imagination, she said, while the screen “tends to short circuit that process and the development of creative capacity”.
Samir's Selection 