And A Few More for Friday

* Ridley Scott Announces Blade Runnerer Will Be Terrible. I know what you’re thinking: Green Lantern had a writer?

* Surprise! CBO report shows 50% of government tax expenditures go to top 20% of earners.

* Aspiring Marijuana Mogul, Former President Of Mexico Join Forces In Unlikely Roll-Out Of National Pot Brand.

* Wash. State Police Dogs Must Unlearn How To Smell Pot.

* And for old times’ sake, a truly classic Fox News lie: Cut government because ‘no one’ died of starvation before welfare.

Tuesday Afternoon!

* PSA from Charlie Stross: Ignore the news.

Just a brief reminder that news is bad for you. No, seriously: publicly available news media in the 21st century exist solely to get eyeballs on advertisements. That is its only real purpose. The real news consists of dull but informative reports circulated by consultancies giving in-depth insight into what’s going on. The sort of stuff you find digested in the inside pages of The Economist. All else is comics. As there’s an arms race going on between advertising sales departments, the major news outlets are constantly trying to make their product more addictive. And like most other addictive substance, news is a depressant, one fine-tuned to make you keep coming back for more.

* As if you needed a reason: Tetris may treat PTSD.

* Inequality and the New York City subway.

* Why you can’t have nice things: pro-austerity economicists are liars or incompetents (take your pick).  How Much Unemployment Was Caused by Reinhart and Rogoff’s Arithmetic Mistake? It’s great that when challenged they retreat to the more defensible claim that their work is actually irrelevant, but many policymakers and pundits seem to feel otherwise.

* “What companies like is just-in-time learning that gives somebody a skill they need at the time they need it,” says Mark Allen, a Pepperdine University business professor and author of The Next Generation of Corporate Universities. ”What traditional universities do to a large extent is just-in-case learning.”

* Our bubble-headed, zombie-creating reliance on high-stakes testing.

And contrary to the claims of test-makers, the tests aren’t getting better. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds, they’re getting worse.

* Universities Need to Innovate, But Put Down the Sledgehammer.

* The birth of critical university studies.

* The Chronicle profiles David Graeber as academic in exile.

* Software to detect student plagiarism is faced with renewed criticism from the faculty members who may confront more plagiarism than do most of their colleagues – college writing professors.

* Lost Generation: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment.

* Is nothing sacred? NC governor takes aim at addiction on campus.

* New App Prevents Icelanders from Sleeping With their Relatives.

* And your 2012 tax receipt. Enjoy those fighter jets!

Correlation/Causation

Research Says: Studying Economics Turns You Into a Liar.

Our Noses Work In Interesting Ways

Lying apparently heats up the tip of your nose.

Three More for Saturday Night

* Jacob Remes talks disaster capitalism at Salon.

* Drones and the end of human rights.

* The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism.

* UPDATE: Weird bonus link: New Jersey residents displaced by storm can vote by email. #seemslegit

Thursday Night Links

* Sandy moves the needle: Michael Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Citing Climate Change As Main Reason.

* Without prior approval from his higher-ups, KHON2 morning show co-anchor Jai Cunningham, a victim of domestic violence himself, responds to the alleged murder of a friend at the hands of her husband by vowing to shave his head on the air every time a woman or child dies as a direct result of domestic abuse.

* Without Electricity, New Yorkers on Food Stamps Can’t Pay for Food. The Hideous Inequality Exposed by Hurricane Sandy. It Will Only Cost $7 Billion To Build A Storm Surge Barrier For New York. Photos Before and after Sandy. Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Arrested Protesting Keystone XL Pipeline: ‘I’m Here To Connect The Dots.’

* My expectation of control over my body is something that children do not have—from the second they wake up until the second they go to bed, children’s bodies are subject to the authorities around them. Of course David is pissed.

* David Graeber: This essay is not, however, primarily about bureaucracy—or even about the reasons for its neglect in anthropology and related disciplines. It is really about violence. What I would like to argue is that situations created by violence—particularly structural violence, by which I mean forms of pervasive social inequality that are ultimately backed up by the threat of physical harm—invariably tend to create the kinds of willful blindness we normally associate with bureaucratic procedures. To put it crudely: it is not so much that bureaucratic procedures are inherently stupid, or even that they tend to produce behavior that they themselves define as stupid, but rather, that are invariably ways of managing social situations that are already stupid because they are founded on structural violence.

* In the face of this situation — as much as it pains me to say this — you are failing. Your so-called “objectivity,” your bloodless impartiality, are nothing but a convenient excuse for what amounts to an inexcusable failure to tell the most urgent truth we’ve ever faced.

* Gurenica talks Lord of the Rings and This Is How You Lose Her with board-certified genius Junot Díaz.

* 7 polling models that predict an Obama victory. Obama’s Electoral College ‘Firewall’ Holding in Polls.

* Psychological research using the D&D Monster Manual.

* Another shoe drops at Penn State.

* Romney gets away with it.

* There was no one out when I was in high school, either. Class of 1998.

* The world’s last Nazi hunter.

Monday Night

* Sandy links: Did Climate Change Help Create ‘Frankenstorm’? “All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.” Nuclear Plants from Virginia to Vermont Could Be Impacted from Massive Hurricane Sandy. Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem all the more grotesque. “If There Was Ever a Wake-up Call, This Is It.” The Worst-Case Scenario For New York City Is Unimaginable. Crew abandons the HMS Bounty. Stop the Rising of the Oceans LOL.

* Sam Wang, in defense of nerds. Wang’s own model (simpler than Nate Silver’s, and perhaps more accurate based on its performance in 2004 and 2008) puts an Obama victory at over 90%.

* Why you should be paying attention to poll averages, in one chart.

* As someone on Twitter put it: Romney’s lied about everything so much, he had no idea the one thing you’re not allowed to lie about is a corporation.

* Let’s Pretend Bush v. Gore Was Constitutional.

* Luxury repo men.

* Aaron Bady vs. dads.

* Woman legally changes name to include 14 different Bond Girls.

Miss Pussy Galore Honey Rider Solitaire Plenty O’Toole May Day Xenia Onatopp Holly Goodhead Tiffany Case Kissy Suzuki Mary Goodnight Jinx Johnson Octopussy Domino Moneypenny.

Wednesday Links

* There’s an Earthlike planet in Alpha Centauri. This is the best news I’ve ever heard and I’m halfway to my space victory already I just have to research Fusion and Ecology.

* Compared to this the discovery of a planet with four suns and another all-diamond planet just seems boring.

* The other day they drove the Space Shuttle through Los Angeles.

* University of Phoenix to close 115 locations.

* Like Lee Bessette I’m pretty skeptical of this move towards a “teaching track.” Has establishing multiple tiers like this ever improved labor conditions?

* World’s biggest geoengineering experiment ‘violates’ UN rules. I’ve been fascinated for years that large-scale geoengineering projects are now within the reach not just of nations, but of individuals. Things are going to get interesting, in the “ancient Chinese curse” sense.

* Title suggestions for Future Die Hard Movies.

* The Problem with Presidential Precedent.

* Will California end the death penalty this year? They should.

* Firefly animated spinoff? I really think at this point I’d rather just be happy with what we got than ride a bad version of the thing I love into the ground. #geekheresy

* The Strange Death of Alfalfa.

* Debt Collector Illegally Seizes Disabled Vet’s Savings, Tells Him ‘You Should Have Died.’

* How Buffy Predicted Geek Misogyny. I’m not sure predicted is really the right tense here. What an Academic Who Wrote Her Dissertation on Trolls Thinks of Violentacrez. Michael Brutsch, ViolentAcrez, and Online Pseudonyms. On Ruining Violentacrez’ Life. I’m told r/creepshots is already back, masquerading as a “fashion police” subreddit.

* Gallup and Josh Marshall teases crisis as a real divergence seems possible between the popular and the electoral vote.

* Some debate highlights: a brutal on-the-spot fact-check that will be part of presidential debate prep for years to come. How epistemic closure hurts a candidate. The binder story that launched a thousand memes wasn’t even true. Leaked Debate Agreement Shows Both Obama and Romney are Sniveling Cowards. And whoever is elected, the planet loses. What an embarrassing spectacle for the people of the future to witness. Not that it’s anything new.

* Trove of Kafka Documents Must Be Released, Israeli Judge Rules. You can pick them up at the Castle…

Monday Morning Links

* Bérubé: Why I Resigned the Paterno Chair. I saw some snark about this on Twitter, but I found it an interesting take on the current situation at Penn State, and was personally scandalized to learn that the NCAA punted on the UNC scandal. If they have jurisdiction over wide-ranging criminal conspiracies, actual academic malfeasance seems like a no-brainer…

* EU flexes that Nobel Peace Prize muscle.

* Memory is not such a cure-all. On the contrary, many of the great political crimes of recent history were committed in large part in the name of memory. The difference between memory and grudge is not always clean. Memories can hold you back, they can be a terrible burden, even an illness. Yes, memory—hallowed memory—can be a kind of disease. Via MeFi.

* In interviews, however, consultants to both campaigns said they had bought demographic data from companies that study details like voters’ shopping histories, gambling tendencies, interest in get-rich-quick schemes, dating preferences and financial problems. The campaigns themselves, according to campaign employees, have examined voters’ online exchanges and social networks to see what they care about and whom they know. They have also authorized tests to see if, say, a phone call from a distant cousin or a new friend would be more likely to prompt the urge to cast a ballot. Maybe you guys could just try being good at governing for a while and see if that gets you any votes.

* G.O.P. Fighting Libertarian’s Spot on the Ballot. Or you could just try being good at governing for a while…

* Obama winning the all-important babysitter index.

* How to debate a liar. My expectation is that Obama will take up something very much like this strategy in tomorrow’s debate, perhaps beginning with an opening statement that recalls the lies advanced in the last one.

* And it looks to me like David Cameron is flirting with breaking up the UK for short-term partisan advantage. Really makes the American right look like a bunch of amateurs…

Simple Solutions to Big Problems

Can something be done to prevent lying in Presidential debates? I have a simple suggestion that will greatly reduce the opportunity for lies, admitting that nothing can eradicate them completely: The moderator’s key questions on the issues should be released to the candidates and the public 48 hours in advance of the debates.

Friday Night Links

* So the Romney campaign is imploding earlier than scheduled. Mitt Romney’s unnecessary lie. MeFi. Josh Marshall says we’ll know the story’s really turned when the former chair of the McCain campaign says release the tax records.

* The grammar news is that Dr. Elaine Stotko, from the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University, and her student, Margaret Troyer, have discovered that school children in Baltimore are using the slang word yo as a gender-neutral singular pronoun.

* Dan Harmon talks to Marc Maron on Attack of the Show about what the hell happened.

* In Hell, “We Shall Be Free”: On Breaking Bad. 

At the heart of the social critique is a question of responsibility for “evil” and where to locate it (even though, of course, none of the series refer to “God” or any religious tradition at all). In The Wire, the responsibility lies with the “game” — the logic of the streets, the logic of politics, the “social facts” that weave an all-encompassing, interconnected web. The Sopranos suggests that the locus of responsibility lies in the unconscious of Tony Soprano; its explanation of “evil” is at heart Freudian. Mad Menlargely evades this question; its driving philosophy has little to do with “moralistic” questions of human responsibility but rather the individual’s abiding unhappiness, and how modern capitalism intensifies it. (That a group of libertarians recently threw a “Mad Men” themed party, unironically championing Don Draper as a hero of better times when corporations weren’t “ashamed” of themselves, only underscores the slippery-ness of Mad Men, the manipulability of its message. That, or these particular libertarians don’t know how to read.)

Within this quartet, Breaking Bad is most similar to The Wire, and indeed is its twin and mirror image. While The Wire explored how the drug trade decimated black urban America, Breaking Bad looks at how drugs infiltrate the other half: suburban white America. A unifying, coherent philosophy is possessed by each, and both execute it propulsively and faithfully. David Simon likened The Wire to a Greek tragedy, by which he meant that sociology is an omnipotent, merciless god that twirls with the fate of mortals. In Breaking Bad the villain is not sociology, but a human being; what destroys the mortals is not a system, but a fellow mortal. This is a human-centered vision of the origin of evil. It is Old Testament at its core.

* Just Another Princess Movie.

* What Terry Sullivan’s Reinstatement at U. Va Really Tells Us about the Future of Higher Ed.

* The headline reads, “Daniel Tosh Reportedly Scrambling to Find Non-Rape Joke Before New Show Premieres Today.” This story gets worse the deeper you go.

* World War Z fiasco watch: Brad Pitt refuses to speak to the director.

* Should the Nittany Lions get the NCAA “death penalty”? What a horrible mess.

* Is Amazon really going to launch same-day delivery? Sorry, Mom and Pop, but this doesn’t look good.

* And the “worst idea ever put forth by anyone, ever” contest has been reopened in light of the forthcoming Twins sequel.

Tuesday Night

* The machine that runs the roulette tables in Vegas so you always lose is on the fritz.

* So it turns out Switzerland is rigged to explode if anything bad happens. The more you know!

* Elite New York publishing empire: no more elites!

In our pay-to-play society, many of those toward the bottom of the educational pyramid are getting fleeced; others, though, are getting a leg up. Because it’s callous and unreasonable to ask the disadvantaged to decline opportunities to advance, subverting credentialism must start at the top. What would happen to the price of a bachelor’s degree if the 42,000 high school valedictorians graduating this spring banded together and refused to go to college? And is it too much to ask the Democratic Party to refrain from running any candidate for national office who holds a degree from an Ivy League school?

Then there are our own credentials. Che Guevara once declared that the duty of intellectuals was to commit suicide as a class; a more modest suggestion along the same lines is for the credentialed to join the uncredentialed in shredding the diplomas that paper over the undemocratic infrastructure of American life. A master’s degree, we might find, burns brighter than a draft card.

Yeah, that’ll solve it.

* The Romney 2012 campaign will be a big test for the national news media. Is it possible to stonewall and lie shamelessly throughout an entire presidential election campaign without being called on it in a significantly damaging way?

* To repeat: I resign. I want no part of this ongoing fiasco. More UVA here and here.

* A quick Fringe tease: John Noble told reporters that the final season will pretty much all take place in 2036 — with the occasional flashback or bit of “found footage” to fill in the tragic events of the present day.

* Don’t believe the hype! Arts Graduates Are Generally Satisfied, Employed.

* And In Focus goes to China.

Sunday Night!

* Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Arrests 6-Year-Old Undocumented Immigrant. Five years too late if you ask me! Freedom! Etc!

* I know that this is exactly the reverse of what everyone expects, so let me repeat it. The business-school types on the Board favor a system that cuts funds from profitable departments and funnels that money to less profitable ones.

* In a move union officials immediately branded as unethical, Duquesne University on Friday filed a motion with the National Labor Relations Board challenging its jurisdiction over the university and its labor affairs, saying Duquesne is a religious institution and therefore exempt from NLRB oversight. Yeah, that checks out.

* Everybody knows Mitt Romney went to law school. What this stump speech presupposes is… maybe he didn’t? Updated story says he was misquoted. Cheerfully withdrawn!

* And Ruth Bader Ginsberg wants to tease you. Is tomorrow the day?

Everything Is Sad on Tuesday Night

* Oh, Carolina, you’re better than this. Durham County results: For 22359 (30%), Against 51591 (70%).

* But perhaps that’s not depressing enough for you tonight.

“I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote,” Peterson says. “We should’ve never turned this over to women. And these women are voting in the wrong people. They’re voting in people who are evil who agrees with them who’re gonna take us down this pathway of destruction.”

* My new city becomes ground zero for the Walker recall.

* Gay Teen Who Fired Stun Gun in the Air to Scare Away Menacing Bullies Expelled from School. True confession: When I was thirteen I hid a kitchen knife by the front door in case some other kids followed me home from the bus stop like they’d promised they would. I was hopeless, alone, and didn’t know what else to do.

Schools that defend bullies and punish their victims make me want to homeschool my kid.

* A Maurice Sendak profile. Spiegelman and Sendak.

* Atrios has your news from 2022.

The last time the an administration did the supposedly responsible thing, the fiscal “hawks” suddenly decided that the worst possible thing was no longer a deficit, but a surplus, and that therefore it was necessary to have massive tax cuts for rich people.

And they will, of course, do it again.

Nobody cares about the deficit. Those who claim to the most care the least.

* The Comics Crier: 36 Pages of Comics That Aren’t Comic.

* Hardt and Negri have a new electronic pamphlet out on occupation and encampment. So does Chomsky.

* When Illness Makes a Spouse a Stranger.

* The Politics of Competitive Board Gaming Amongst Friends.

* “Spoiler,” a police procedural that takes place post-zombie apocalypse.

* And Paul F. Tompkins has a new web series on what appears to be the world’s worst website. Check it out anyway.

Wednesday Night Links

* George Zimmerman in custody, charged with second degree murder.

* Dinosaur Times: probably a lot less fun than you think.

* Neal Kirby remembers his father, Jack.

* The Port Huron Statement at 50. Warning: this is primarily about the compromised second draft.

* The Fraiser theme song explained. Finally.

* Bad polling news for Romney in North Carolina, Colorado, and pretty much everywhere else. Who could have predicted that aggressively alienating 51% of the voting population would have turned out so badly?

* Tough primary season for God: Every candidate he encouraged to run has dropped out.

* Chris Christie lied about the Hudson Tunnel project he unilaterally canceled? Say it ain’t so!

* The headline reads, “National Review Fires Another Racist Writer.”

* Uncompromising Photos Expose Juvenile Detention in America. Just heartwrenching. Below: A 12-year-old in his cell at the Harrison County Juvenile Detention Center in Biloxi, Mississippi. The window has been boarded up from the outside. The facility is operated by Mississippi Security Police, a private company. In 1982, a fire killed 27 prisoners and an ensuing lawsuit against the authorities forced them to reduce their population to maintain an 8:1 inmate to staff ratio.