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The Atlantic Home todaysDate();Tuesday, February 8, 2011Tuesday, February 8, 2011 Go Follow the Atlantic » Politics Presented by When Ronald Reagan Endorsed Ron Paul Joshua Green Epitaph for the DLC Marc Ambinder A Hard Time Raising Concerns About Egypt Chris Good Business Presented by Could a Hybrid Mortgage System Work? Daniel Indiviglio Fighting Bias in Academia Megan McArdle The Tech Revolution For Seniors Derek Thompson Culture Presented By 'Tiger Mother' Creates a New World Order James Fallows Justin Bieber: Daydream Believer James Parker <!-- /li

these questions tend to overlook the way IQ tests are designed. As a neuropsychologist who has administered hundreds of these measures, I can tell you that their structures reflect a deeply embedded bias toward intelligence as a function of reading skills

The Atlantic Home todaysDate();Sunday, December 12, 2010Sunday, December 12, 2010 Go Follow the Atlantic » atlanticPrintlayoutnavigation()Politics Presented ByBack to the Gold Standard? Joshua GreenSenate Dems Lose Vote on 'Don't Ask' RepealMegan Scully &amp; Dan FriedmanA Primary Challenge to Obama? Marc Ambinder Business Presented byif (typeof window.dartOrd == 'undefined') {window.dartOrd = ('000000000' + Math.ceil(Math.random()*1000000000).toString()).slice(-9);}jsProperties = 'TheAtlanticOnline/channel_business;pos=navlogo;sz=88x31,215x64;tile=1';document.write('');if( $(".adNavlogo").html().search("grey.gif") != -1 ){$(".adNavlogo").hide();}Will the Economy Get Jobs for Christmas?Daniel Indiviglio27 Key Facts About US ExportsDerek ThompsonThe Last StimulusDerek Thompson Culture Presented ByThe 10 Biggest Sports Stories of 2010Eleanor Barkhorn and Kevin Fallon al

at the force behind all that exists actually intervened in the consciousness of humankind in the form of a man so saturated in godliness that merely being near him healed people of the weight of the world's sins.

the use of social media as both a tool in conflict and a shaper of it, tracking how online chatter has begun to intersect with real-life violence in dozens of armed confrontations around the globe.

ISIS is a prime example...and many others are successfully taking cues from the ISIS playbook.

Many of the new connections in the coming years will be concentrated in regions most susceptible to violence and conflict.

More 5inShare Email Print A defendant in the Atlanta Public Schools case turns herself in at the Fulton County Jail on April 2. (David Goldman/AP) Earlier this week at The Atlantic, Emily Richmond asked whether high-stakes testing caused the Atlanta schools cheating scandal. The answer, I would argue, is yes... just not in the way you might think. Tests don't cause unethical behavior. But they did cause the Atlanta cheating scandal, and they are doing damage to the teaching profession. The argument that tests do not cause unethical behavior is fairly straightforward, and has been articulated by a number of writers. Jonathan Chait quite correctly points out that unethical behavior occurs in virtually all professions -- and that it occurs particularly when there are clear incentives to succeed. Incentivizing any field increases the impetus to cheat. Suppose journalism worked the way teaching traditionally had. You get hired at a newspaper, and your advancement and pay are dictated almost entirely by your years on the job, with almost no chance of either becoming a star or of getting fired for incompetence. Then imagine journalists changed that and instituted the current system, where you can get really successful if your bosses like you or be fired if they don't. You could look around and see scandal after scandal -- phone hacking! Jayson Blair! NBC's exploding truck! Janet Cooke! Stephen Glass! -- that could plausibly be attributed to this frightening new world in which journalists had an incentive to cheat in order to get ahead. It holds true of any field. If Major League Baseball instituted tenure, and maybe used tee-ball rules where you can't keep score and everybody gets a chance to hit, it could stamp out steroid use. Students have been cheating on tests forever -- massive, systematic cheating, you could say. Why? Because they have an incentive to do well. Give teachers and administrators an incentive for their students to do well, and more of them will cheat. For Chait, then, teaching has just been made more like journalism or baseball; it has gone from an incentiveless occupation to one with incentives.

Chait refers to violations of journalistic ethics -- like the phone-hacking scandal -- and suggests they are analogous to Major-League steroid use, and that both are similar to teachers (or students) cheating on tests. But is phone hacking "cheating"

Phone hacking was, then, not an example of cheating. It was a violation of professional ethics. And those ethics are not arbitrarily imposed, but are intrinsic to the practice of journalism as a profession committed to public service and to truth.

Most of the 360 or so North Atlantic right whales alive today bear scars from entanglements in fishing gear and collisions with speeding ships and, according to a new study, they are much smaller than they should be.

they are much smaller than they should be.

suggests that human-induced stressors, primarily entanglements, are stunting the growth of North Atlantic right whales, reducing their chances of reproductive success and increasing their chances of dying.

For many years, Rosen has been&nbsp;a leading critic of what he calls The View From Nowhere, or the&nbsp;conceit that journalists bring no prior commitments to their work. On&nbsp;his long-running blog, PressThink, he's advocated for "The View From&nbsp;Somewhere"—an effort by journalists to be transparent about their priors, whether ideological or otherwise.&nbsp; Rosen is just one of several voices who'll shape NewCo. Still, the new venture may well be a practical test of his View from Somewhere theory of journalism. I chatted with Rosen about some questions he'll face.&nbsp;

The View from Nowhere won’t be a requirement for our journalists. Nor will a single ideology prevail. NewCo itself will have a view of the world: Accountability journalism, exposing abuses of power, revealing injustices will no doubt be part of it. Under that banner many “views from somewhere” can fit.

The way "objectivity" evolves historically is out of something much more defensible and interesting, which is in that phrase "Of No Party or Clique." That's the founders of The Atlantic saying they want to be independent of party politics. They don't claim to have no politics, do they? They simply say: We're not the voice of an existing faction or coalition. But they're also not the Voice of God.

Atlantic.displayRandomElement('#header li.business .sponsored-dropdown-item'); Derek Thompson - Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for the website. More Derek has also written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. All Posts RSS feed Share Share on facebook Share on linkedin Share on twitter « Previous Thompson Email Print Close function plusOneCallback () { $(document).trigger('share'); } $(document).ready(function() { var iframeUrl = "\/ad\/thanks-iframe\/TheAtlanticOnline\/channel_business;src=blog;by=derek-thompson;title=the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices;pos=sharing;sz=640x480,336x280,300x250"; var toolsClicked = false; $('#toolsTop').click(function() { toolsClicked = 'top'; }); $('#toolsBottom').click(function() { toolsClicked = 'bottom'; }); $('#thanksForSharing a.hide').click(function() { $('#thanksForSharing').hide(); }); var onShareClickHandler = function() { var top = parseInt($(this).css('top').replace(/px/, ''), 10); toolsClicked = (top > 600) ? 'bottom' : 'top'; }; var onIframeReady = function(iframe) { var win = iframe.contentWindow; // Don't show the box if there's no ad in it if (win.$('.ad').children().length == 1) { return; } var visibleAds = win.$('.ad').filter(function() { return !($(this).css('display') == 'none'); }); if (visibleAds.length == 0) { // Ad is hidden, so don't show return; } if (win.$('.ad').hasClass('adNotLoaded')) { // Ad failed to load so don't show return; } $('#thanksForSharing').css('display', 'block'); var top; if(toolsClicked == 'bottom' && $('#toolsBottom').length) { top = $('#toolsBottom')[0].offsetTop + $('#toolsBottom').height() - 310; } else { top = $('#toolsTop')[0].offsetTop + $('#toolsTop').height() + 10; } $('#thanksForSharing').css('left', (-$('#toolsTop').offset().left + 60) + 'px'); $('#thanksForSharing').css('top', top + 'px'); }; var onShare = function() { // Close "Share successful!" AddThis plugin popup if (window._atw && window._atw.clb && $('#at15s:visible').length) { _atw.clb(); } if (iframeUrl == null) { return; } $('#thanksForSharingIframe').attr('src', "\/ad\/thanks-iframe\/TheAtlanticOnline\/channel_business;src=blog;by=derek-thompson;title=the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices;pos=sharing;sz=640x480,336x280,300x250"); $('#thanksForSharingIframe').load(function() { var iframe = this; var win = iframe.contentWindow; if (win.loaded) { onIframeReady(iframe); } else { win.$(iframe.contentDocument).ready(function() { onIframeReady(iframe); }) } }); }; if (window.addthis) { addthis.addEventListener('addthis.ready', function() { $('.articleTools .share').mouseover(function() { $('#at15s').unbind('click', onShareClickHandler); $('#at15s').bind('click', onShareClickHandler); }); }); addthis.addEventListener('addthis.menu.share', function(evt) { onShare(); }); } // This 'share' event is used for testing, so one can call // $(document).trigger('share') to get the thank you for // sharing box to appear. $(document).bind('share', function(event) { onShare(); }); if (!window.FB || (window.FB && !window.FB._apiKey)) { // Hook into the fbAsyncInit function and register our listener there var oldFbAsyncInit = (window.fbAsyncInit) ? window.fbAsyncInit : (function() { }); window.fbAsyncInit = function() { oldFbAsyncInit(); FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { // to hide the facebook comments box $('#facebookLike span.fb_edge_comment_widget').hide(); onShare(); }); }; } else if (window.FB) { FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { // to hide the facebook comments box $('#facebookLike span.fb_edge_comment_widget').hide(); onShare(); }); } }); The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices By Derek Thompson he

First, making a choice is physically exhausting, literally, so that somebody forced to make a number of decisions in a row is likely to get lazy and dumb.

Second, having too many choices can make us less likely to come to a conclusion. In a famous study of the so-called "paradox of choice", psychologists Mark Lepper and Sheena Iyengar found that customers presented with six jam varieties were more likely to buy one than customers offered a choice of 24.

Listening closely to Tegan and Sara, the twin musicians enjoying unprecedented popularity two decades into their career due to 2013’s irresistible Heartthrob, can offer the kind of satisfaction that comes from solving a logic puzzle. Listening less closely can offer the same satisfaction great pop music always does. They bring a scientist’s rigor and an editor’s clarity to the stereotypically mushy topic of love, as well as, lately, to the synth-pop template they’ve helped repopularize on radio. Their trick is conveying lots of information—melodic, rhythmic, and lyrical—while maintaining simplicity and elegance.

The first track, “That Girl,” sets the album’s bittersweet tone in a very cool way. It’s about considering who you’ve become and not liking what you find—an extremely Tegan and Sara concept in that it’s less a demonstration of emotions that it’s a demonstration of thinking about emotions.

The vocals are moving enough to have worked nearly acapella.

one theme emerges from the media coverage of people's relationships with our current set of technologies: Consumers want digital willpower. App designers in touch with the latest trends in behavioral modification--nudging, the quantified self, and gamification--and good old-fashioned financial incentive manipulation, are tackling weakness of will. They're harnessing the power of payouts, cognitive biases, social networking, and biofeedback. The quantified self becomes the programmable self.

the trend still has multiple interesting dimensions

Individuals are turning ever more aspects of their lives into managerial problems that require technological solutions. We have access to an ever-increasing array of free and inexpensive technologies that harness incredible computational power that effectively allows us to self-police behavior everywhere we go. As pervasiveness expands, so does trust.

Friday's effort strikes us as a pretty smart, if overdue, campaign strategy to try to make a mark on a term that has undoubtedly entered the lexicon, whether the campaign likes it or not.

why shouldn't they use "Obamacare" to describe the bill? There's nothing immediately or obviously pejorative in the word. In fact, given the bill's very long actual name, we're kind of appreciative for an easily recognized alternative. The problem for Democrats is that conservatives really effectively claimed the term and attached it in the public's mind with negative sentiment. As Kiran Moodley wrote in a piece for The Atlantic last year on the term, conservatives, through repetition, were able to link the idea to &nbsp;government intrusion and the larger Obama agenda. "Obamacare" became more than an innocent shorthand: It became a rallying cry.

The first time I can remember feeling like I didn’t exist, I was 15. I was sitting on a train and all of a sudden I felt like I’d been dropped into someone else’s body. My memories, experiences, and feelings—the things that make up my intrinsic sense of “me-ness”—projected across my mind like phantasmagoria, but I felt like they belonged to someone else. Like I was experiencing life in the third person.

It’s characterized by a pervasive and disturbing sense of unreality in both the experience of self (called “depersonalization”) and one’s surroundings (known as “derealization”); accounts of it are surreal, obscure, shrouded in terms like “unreality” and “dream,” but they’re often conveyed with an almost incongruous lucidity.

It’s not a psychotic condition; the sufferers are aware that what they’re perceiving is unusual. “We call it an ‘as if’ disorder. People say they feel as if they’re in a movie, as if they’re a robot,” Medford says.

“The Case for Reparations,” Coates’ 16,000-word cover story for The Atlantic, where he is a national correspondent. Published online in May, it was a close look at housing discrimination, such as redlining, that was really about the need for America to take a brutally honest look in the mirror and acknowledge its deep racial divisions.

The story broke a single-day traffic record for a magazine story on The Atlantic’s website, and in its wake, Politico named him to its list of 50 thinkers changing American politics

Coates believes that if there is an answer to contemporary racism, it lies in confronting the pas

Peterson is traveling the English-speaking world in order to spread the message of this core conviction: that the way to fix what ails Western societies is a psychological project, targeted at helping individuals to get their lives in order, not a sociological project that seeks to improve society through politics, or popular culture, or by focusing on class, racial, or gender identity.

the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-sponsored by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, was an anomaly in this series of public appearances: a gathering largely populated by people—Democrats and centrist Republicans, corporate leaders, academics, millionaire philanthropists, journalists—invested in the contrary proposition, that the way to fix what ails society is a sociological project, one that effects change by focusing on politics, or changing popular culture, or spurring technological advances, or investing more in diversity and inclusiveness.

Many of its attendees, like many journalists, are most interested in Peterson as a political figure at the center of controversies

After moving last month against Barack Obama’s efforts to limit fossil fuel exploration and combat climate change, President Trump will complete his effort to overturn environmental policy this week, signing two executive orders to expand offshore drilling and roll back conservation on public lands.

The president is then expected to follow up on Friday with another executive order aimed at opening up protected waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans to offshore drilling.

Friday’s order is also expected to call for the lifting of a permanent ban on drilling in an area including many of those same waters — a measure Mr. Obama issued in December 2016 in a last-ditch effort to protect his environmental legacy from his drilling-enthusiast successor.

Many American families are in the political situation that the Watterses find themselves in, even if most families don’t work out their differences on TV. According to a survey conducted a year ago by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic, 39 percent of Americans said some political diversity exists within their family. And an ABC News survey found that the 2016 campaign made family relationships and friendships more tense for a roughly similar percentage of Americans.

My colleague Ashley Fetters wrote earlier this year about how family members might discuss their conflicting political views. Suggestions included “abandon[ing] the idea of winning an argument or convincing other people of the wrongness of their positions” and “deliberately distanc[ing] themselves from the full platform of policy positions supported by their chosen political party and instead examin[ing] each issue individually.

Padilla laid out an indictment of his field. “If one were intentionally to design a discipline whose institutional organs and gatekeeping protocols were explicitly aimed at disavowing the legitimate status of scholars of color,” he said, “one could not do better than what classics has done.”

Padilla believes that classics is so entangled with white supremacy as to be inseparable from it. “Far from being extrinsic to the study of Greco-Roman antiquity,” he has written, “the production of whiteness turns on closer examination to reside in the very marrows of classics.”

Rather than kowtowing to criticism, Williams said, “maybe we should start defending our discipline.” She protested that it was imperative to stand up for the classics as the political, literary and philosophical foundation of European and American culture: “It’s Western civilization. It matters because it’s the West.” Hadn’t classics given us the concepts of liberty, equality and democracy?

Had the doctoring been done by someone from the insurer, as Ariely implied? There didn’t seem to be a way to dispute that contention, and the company itself wasn’t saying much. Then, last week, NPR’s Planet Money delivered a scoop: The company, called The Hartford, informed the show that it had finally tracked down the raw numbers that were provided to Ariely—and that the data had been “manipulated inappropriately” in the published study.

The analysis of insurance data from The Hartford appeared as “Experiment 3” in the paper. On the preceding page, an analysis of a different dataset—the one linked to Gino—was written up as “Experiment 1.” The scientists who say they discovered issues with both experiments—Leif Nelson, Uri Simonsohn, and Joe Simmons—dubbed the apparent double fraud a “clusterfake.” When I spoke with the scientific-misconduct investigator and Atlantic contributor James Heathers, he had his own way of describing it: “This is some kind of mad, fraudulent unicorn.”

When they set about reviewing Ariely’s work on the 2012 paper, a few quirks in the car-insurance data tipped them off that something might be amiss. Some entries were in one font, some in another. Some were rounded to the nearest 500 or 1,000; some were not. But the detail that really caught their attention was the distribution of recorded values. With such a dataset, you’d expect to see the numbers fall in a bell curve—most entries bunched up near the mean, and the rest dispersed along the tapering extremes. But the data that Ariely said he’d gotten from the insurance company did not form a bell curve; the distribution was completely flat. Clients were just as likely to have claimed that they’d driven 1,000 miles as 10,000 or 50,000 miles. It’s “hard to know what the distribution of miles driven should look like in those data,” the scientists wrote. “It is not hard, however, to know what it should not look like.”

For the first time in 50 years, the directors of the IB are collaborating with schools to create an updated version of the qualification taken by 16 to 19-year-olds as an alternative to A-levels

A cohort of 20 pupils at UWC will drop a third of the traditional subjects usually studied within the IB. Instead they will spend 300 hours, over two years of study, on the new areas. Forms of assessment have yet to be finalised but there will be no exams on these subjects.

Learning will be project-based, collaborative and designed to tackle “multiple global crises” around the world. IB says it is creating the new qualification because there is a growing disconnect between the education children are receiving and the education they need.

Americans once expected politicians to carry themselves with a seriousness that indicated their ability and willingness to tackle problems, whether poverty or war, that were too difficult for the rest of us. We elected such people not because we wanted them to be like us but because we hoped that they were better than us: smarter, tougher, and capable of being leaders and role models.

ven some of the most flawed people we elevated to high office at least pretended to be better people, and thus were capable of inspiring us to be a better nation.

Today, we no longer expect or even want our politicians to be better than we are.