Long Game

the conservative movement includes many people who are indifferent, if not hostile, to the liberty of foreigners, immigrants, drug users, gays and lesbians, women who want abortions, broadcasters, sex workers, criminal defendants, Muslims, publishers of pornography, atheists, and so forth....

Socially conscious games -- as well as educational ones that raise social issues -- have increasingly been making headlines.

But are kids and their parents paying attention? Apparently, they are. A 2008 Pew Internet & American Life Project study of 1,102 U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 found that 97 percent of them play some kind of digital game, with 44 percent saying they play games that teach them about "a problem in society." The games about the U.S. government have generated a significant following. Fifty-seven percent of students who played Do I Have a Right? -- one of the first free Web games iCivics released last yearin the classroom went on to play it, unprompted, at home. In addition, 550,000 unique players have played the three judicial branch games featured on Ourcourts.org more than 700,000 times, per iCivics.

These numbers have not gone unnoticed by philanthropic experts, especially with charitable giving taking a dip since the recession. But they don't want to reach adults only; they feel it's an opportunity to attract a younger audience, too.

CEOs may give it lip service to creativity, but their actions speak much louder than their words. Most (not all) workplaces punish creativity, and while that situation remains most schools will drill it out of kids as well.

What do Lady Gaga and the soldiers that stormed Normandy Beach have in common?

the language is constantly evolving, and all that. Newspapers like The Economist maintain a strict style guide less because of a priggish conservatism than because of the simple need for consistency among dozens or hundreds of writers.

Still, by making this out to be an issue of linguistic freedom versus dictatorship, I think Mr Carey skates over the fact that such debates are most often just a proxy for ad hominem attacks; in other words, when people criticise non-words, it's usually just a lazy way to criticise their users. The anti-George Bush crowd professed to hate how the former president mangled the English language, but secretly they loved it. When someone says "misunderestimated" and "unthaw", or confuses "authoritarian" with "authoritative", sniggering at it is a way to avoid the harder work of actually demonstrating that he doesn't know what he's talking about. Or, to repeat a quote from our stylebook that my colleague used only recently:Nobody needs to be described as silly: let your analysis show that he is.

I've had the huge pleasure of giving a talk at TED Global in Oxford, about the lessons games can teach us about engagement and about learning itself. The full video will be online in due course; until then, here's a summary of a few central points.

Illusionists Penn and Teller barely communicate outside work – but after 35 years together they still create the most beautiful shows on earth. Ahead of their first British performances for 16 years, Benjamin Secher went to Las Vegas to ask them how they do it .

Penn dominates the stage, pointing, spouting like an evangelist, encouraging us to see the big ideas behind the wizardry, plucking at his double bass, doing dangerous looking things with a nailgun, cracking jokes at the expense of Homeland Security or dispensing a running commentary on Teller’s sleights of hand. He also has a habit of giving away the tricks – before Teller’s red ball act, he declares “this is done with a thread!” – something he describes as “a kind of peace offering” to the audience but which some of the other magicians in Vegas see as a professional blasphemy. He couldn’t care less what they think. “I have always hated magic,” he says. “I have always hated the basic undercurrent of magic which Jerry Seinfeld put best when he said: 'All magic is “Here’s a quarter, now it’s gone. You’re a jerk. Now it’s back. You’re an idiot. Show’s over”.’ I never wanted to grow up to be a magician. It was never my goal.” He would rather have been a rock star, he says, but the business seemed already saturated with extraordinarily talented people. “So my thinking was, and I will say this outright, music is full of people I absolutely love. I don’t have a chance. They are all better than me. Magic has, ooh, nobody in it that I like.” He rocks back in his chair, cackling. “This is the field for me!”

"The creation, selection, promotion, and proliferation of numbers are … the stuff of politics," the editors write in their introduction. No debate lasts very long without a reference to data, and as the numbers boil their way into the argument, you must challenge them or be burned blind by them. The essays presented in Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts—about human trafficking, the Bosnian death count, the Darfur genocide, armed conflict, drugs, terrorism, and more—counsel exactly that sort of skepticism.

Often, the editors write, even the most rigorous-seeming statistics conceal squishy measurements. Inflated numbers are designed to create the sense that something must be done now. Depressed counts are intended to convince the recipients that the problem is too small to worry about. Whether it's body counts in Iraq or kilos of Colombian drugs, the creators and disseminators of the numbers usually have greater interest in their size than their veracity.

the drug bureaucracy spends extra billions to produce bigger numbers because the public associates "more" with "better."

The Misconception: If you stop engaging in a bad habit, the habit will gradually diminish until it disappears from your life. The Truth: Any time you quit something cold turkey, your brain will make a last-ditch effort to return you to your habit.

Recent reports in China’s state media suggest that some banks and state-owned companies are resisting the central government’s attempts to tighten control over the real estate sector. This calls attention to China’s ongoing difficulties in managing the economic recovery and points to internal debates in Beijing over how to best handle newly emergent economic challenges as the global recovery appears to be losing steam.

More Animals Are Dying, but the Causes Have Not Yet Been Determined More than 3,000 birds, sea turtles and dolphins have been found dead or debilitated in the gulf since the oil spill began. A majority of the dead were not visibly oiled, and officials have yet to determine why they died. But they have confirmed that many more animals are dying than during the same time period in previous years.

My friend Lilah has been encouraging me to listen to Louis C.K.'s stand up for months.
 "He talks about race all the time!"
 I could not, as when urged to do something someone says I will really like, I refuse to move (I pull on the leash like Lilah's dog does suddenly and for no apparent reason).

When a white man does something that black people have been doing for ages, he gets a lot of praise and overshadows the others. This is not news. Black comedians have been talking about race frankly and honestly for years. The attention Louis C.K. gets may anger some. He's doing the same thing we've been doing forever, he's just white. But his whiteness is exactly what's important. He is white. Blindingly white. Red headed and baldingly white. Everyday American white. One million of McCain/Palin supporters can even relate to. If this man, this man, talks about race and sexuality in a passionate, and unembarrassed way while maintaining his masculinity and humor all without a hint of self righteousness, maybe others will follow his lead. Maybe.

The saga of the missing Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared from Saudi Arabia last year while on pilgrimage to Mecca reached a critical stage Tuesday.

By mid-morning on the United States’ East Coast, Washington had issued its official response: Amiri came to the United States on his own accord and now wanted to leave. It’s significant that this is the first time the U.S. government acknowledged that the Iranian scientist was in the United States. These dramatic developments come in the wake of multiple YouTube videos featuring a man or men claiming to be Amiri and who made contradictory statements, including that he was happily studying in the United States.