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We are living in the age of the technocrats. In business, Big Data, and the Big Brains who can parse it, rule. In government, the technocrats are on top, too. From Washington to Frankfurt to Rome, technocrats have stepped in where politicians feared to tread, rescuing economies, or at least propping them up

the familiar pleas for common sense and a centrist approach, free from the taint of ideology, usually boil down to a call to put the technocrats in charge.

Technocrats have a lot to recommend them. We do, after all, live in the age of Big Data, and ignoring it or not being able to use it is a sure path to either bankruptcy or humiliation

Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea* one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?* In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea?

what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?

If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.

This lens makes you more likely to share the distinct strands of libertarianism that are blossoming in this fragmenting age: the deep suspicion of authority, the strong belief that hierarchies and organizations are suspect, the fervent devotion to transparency, the assumption that individual preference should be supreme.

Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good.

We have vastly over-privatized, and in the process lost control over swaths of important policy areas while allowing unaccountable and even outlaw behavior to expand.

And we have created areas where crony capitalism can meet crony government to create crony corruption that cheats all taxpayers.

we can hark back to the last set of outrageous and scandalous privatized behaviors -- the privatization of war, with the sharp proliferation of private contractors sent to Iraq and Afghanistan who operated outside the restraints of the U.S. military, the common conventions of behavior in war, and the laws of the countries in which they operated

Bush and Obama have built infrastructure any devil would lust after. Behold the items on an aspiring tyrant's checklist that they've provided their successors:A precedent that allows the president to kill citizens in secret without prior judicial or legislative reviewThe power to detain prisoners indefinitely without charges or trialOngoing warrantless surveillance on millions of Americans accused of no wrongdoing, converted into a permanent database so that data of innocents spied upon in 2007 can be accessed in 2027Using ethnic profiling to choose the targets of secret spying, as the NYPD did with John Brennan's blessingNormalizing situations in which the law itself is secret -- and whatever mischief is hiding in those secret interpretationsThe permissibility of droning to death people whose identities are not even known to those doing the killingThe ability to collect DNA swabs of people who have been arrested even if they haven't been convicted of anythingA torture program that could be restarted with an executive order

we're allowing ourselves to become a nation of men, not laws. Illegal spying? Torture? Violating the War Powers Resolution and the convention that mandates investigating past torture? No matter. Just intone that your priority is keeping America safe.

This isn't a argument about how tyranny is inevitable. It is an attempt to grab America by the shoulders, give it a good shake, and say: Yes, it could happen here, with enough historical amnesia, carelessness, and bad luck. We're not special. Our voters won't always pick good men and women to represent us.

check this section out from the study he cites: Marijuana intoxication can cause distorted perceptions, impaired coordination, difficulty with thinking and problem solving, and problems with learning and memory. Research has shown that, in chronic users, marijuana's adverse impact on learning and memory can last for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off. As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day may be functioning at a suboptimal intellectual level all of the time.

At what point could this not be said of alcohol as well? And yet alcohol is far more addictive, far more related to social problems and violence, and daily drinking of large amounts can be dreadful for the liver (see graph above).

There's also what the study does not analyze: the whole point of marijuana use is to disrupt settled ways of thinking and feeling, to offer a respite, like alcohol, from the deadliness of doing. But for  reasons we don't quite yet understand, marijuana, like other essentially harmless drugs in moderation, can prompt imaginative breakthroughs, creative serendipity, deeper personal understanding, and greater social empathy and connection.

“The Gatekeepers,” a new documentary by the Israeli director Dror Moreh, consists of interviews with six men, all of them retired, most of them bald, one of them a grandfatherly type, well into his 80s, in suspenders and a plaid shirt. They reminisce about past triumphs and frustrations, but Mr. Moreh’s amazing, upsetting film, which opens Monday for a weeklong awards-qualifying run in advance of a wider release next year, is the opposite of nostalgic. It is hard to imagine a movie about the Middle East that could be more timely, more painfully urgent, more challenging to conventional wisdom on all sides of the conflict.

“The Gatekeepers” is in part a history of post-’67 Israel, in which familiar events are revisited from an unusual and fascinating perspective. The leaders of Shin Bet, who answer directly to the prime minister, are not part of the country’s military command structure. Nor, because of the clandestine nature of the agency, are they visibly part of the Israeli political establishment, though they sometimes function as public scapegoats when politicians make mistakes. What is most astonishing about the interviews Mr. Moreh has recorded is how candid and critical these six spymasters are, inflecting their stories with pointed, sometimes devastating assessments of the failings of successive governments.

In many ways mobile devices belong more to the dying PC model than to the real future of computing.

I’m talking about a diffuse and invisible network embedded in our surroundings. Chips and sensors are finding their way into clothing, personal accessories, and more

The next wave of computing devices will be different because they won’t wait for our instructions. They will feel more like natural extensions of what we do in our lives. The hardware and software technologies behind this ubiquitous-computing model will become the focus of a radically changed computing industry.

Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals

“The death of a baby is our daily bread,” said Dr. Osleidy Camejo, a surgeon in the nation’s capital, Caracas, referring to the toll from Venezuela’s collapsing hospitals.

It is just part of a larger unraveling here that has become so severe it has prompted President Nicolás Maduro to impose a state of emergency and has raised fears of a government collapse.

there is a meaningful chance that 2016 could begin a retreat of the United States from the mix of economic policies and the global engagement that U.S. businesses have regarded for decades as central to their success — unless business leaders can move decisively to redefine their goals as harmonious with those of working- and middle-class families.

The key question is how we rise up in more muscular defense of the interests of U.S. workers and industries without doing permanent damage to our economy. We must also demonstrate that government can function and that business can be a constructive partner to it.

every generation, we seem to witness an election that startles us, triggering tectonic shocks that change our politics and policies for decades to come. This could be one of those elections. Very much like the realignment revealed by the vote in Britain to leave the European Union, U.S. politics might be transforming into a debate less between right and left and more between those voters who are advantaged by globalization and those who are not.

The Evolution of 'Like'

It’s under this view of language—as something becoming rather than being, a film rather than a photo, in motion rather than at rest—that we should consider the way young people use (drum roll, please) like.

So today’s like did not spring mysteriously from a crowd on the margins of unusual mind-set and then somehow jump the rails from them into the general population. The seeds of the modern like lay among ordinary people; the Beatniks may not even have played a significant role in what happened later. The point is that like transformed from something occasional into something more regular.

It misunderstands a new media world in which every story, and source, is at risk of being discredited, not by argument but by sheer force.

During the months I spent talking to partisan Facebook page operators for a magazine article this year, it became clear that while the ecosystem contained easily identifiable and intentional fabrication, it contained much, much more of something else.

I recall a conversation with a fact checker about how to describe a story, posted on a pro-Trump website and promoted on a pro-Trump Facebook page — and, incidentally, copied from another pro-Trump site by overseas contractors. It tried to cast suspicion on Khizr Khan, the father of a slain American soldier, who had spoken out against Donald J. Trump.

Bernie Sanders Could Replace President Trump With Little-Known Loophole Read this article and then share with your friends.

There will be many people who clicked share on this post because of its headline. They may not even click to open the story. They will never actually read these words. Ironically these are the folks who need to hear it the most.

If we could all take these simple steps our society would be a better place. We all have opinions and leanings. There is nothing wrong with that but could we at least all come from a starting point based on facts and reality?

Republican lawmakers in Arizona are pushing to prohibit school courses and events that promote ethnic studies and social justice, with legislation that critics say broadly targets academic freedom and students of color.

The newly introduced bill – which seeks to build on an existing GOP-backed law that banned a Mexican American studies class – marks the latest attack in academia on activism and research centered on marginalized groups. Some opponents said the proposal is part of a national trend, tied to the election of Donald Trump, of lawmakers working to suppress progressive organizations and protests.

The bill, from state representative Bob Thorpe, would prohibit “courses, classes, events and activities” in public schools that promote “social justice toward a race, gender, religion, political affiliation, social class or other class of people”. Courses and events that are “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or advocate “solidarity” based on ethnicity, race, religion or gender would also be banned.

Introducing some of the Revolution's principal figures.

the presidency is for the most part a pre-defined role in a larger political drama—a niche that can be occupied by different people with different goals and characters, and used by them to their different ends while largely keeping its shape.

Trump’s way of speaking about his vision and intentions suggests his case will be different. He did not really run to occupy the presidency as it exists, and does not seem to think of himself as stepping now into a role he is obliged to carry out.

He ran to disrupt a broken system, and to be himself but with more power and authority.

In many cases, 'fake news', the latest manufactured outrage, functions as a kind of ideational pornography, ideas and claims that excite people's political feelings, desires and fears and create feelings of connection with kindred political spirits.

some of you probably read the tour de force article in The Washington Post about the son of Stormfront founder Don Black's son Derek Black and how he left the world of white supremacist ideologues he'd been groomed to lead. Black's story is a complex one. But clearly entering a somewhat liberal college environment and leaving the self-reinforcing, echo-chamber of white supremacy he'd been raised in was the predicate for questioning and ultimate leaving that world.

political craziness, political decisions we find inane or abhorrent are not mainly being driven by "fake news" - eliminating "fake news" if such a thing were really possible wouldn't end it

Laptops at best reduce education to the clackety-clack of transcribing lectures on shiny screens and, at worst, provide students with a constant escape from whatever is hard, challenging or uncomfortable about learning.

Lawyers can acquire hallmark precision only through repeated exercises of concentration. It does happen on occasion that a client loses millions of dollars over a misplaced comma or period.Once, a senior associate for whom I was working berated me for such a mistake and said, “Getting these things right is the easy part, and if you can’t get that right, what does it say about your ability to analyze the law properly?” I learned my lesson

Students need two skills to succeed as lawyers and as professionals: listening and communicating

There are mainstream Republicans who are opting out, more than people may realize. The Stop Trump Movement boasts some major players in the GOP scene, people like Mitt Romney, George Will, Erick Erickson, David Brooks and Glenn Beck to name just a few. 

The more valiant among them take the threat of Trump seriously and are willing to admit the truth, such as Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal who told Fareed Zakaria over the weekend:

It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this “ethnic conservatism or populism” be so decisively rebuked that the Republican party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way shape or form.

Brexit will be the defining issue of Mrs May’s premiership. It cannot just be cordoned off. Moreover, its success depends not just on how it is perceived at home, and how it goes down in the Conservative Party, but what it actually achieves. On that front, the prime minister has appointed the wrong people.

The new foreign secretary is clever, worldly and magnetic, as I argued in my recent profile of him. Personally he is likeable. But he is also gaffe-prone and the progenitor of a series of undiplomatic comments about other peoples. Much more damning: he is unscrupulous, unserious and poorly organised. His leadership campaign failed not because he lacked the potential to go all the way, but because he struggled with basic daily tasks. Michael Gove only plunged the dagger twixt the former mayor’s shoulder blades because he had been driven to exasperation by Mr Johnson’s forgetfulness and lack of preparation (rumour has it he had written barely a third of his announcement speech by the early hours of the day he was due to give it).

Brexit, believe it or not, is about more than opinion polls and Tory traumas. It is about Britain’s future: a future that will turn not on the doubtful willingness of foreign governments to bend over backwards to tolerate British demands, but on the ability of the government in London to persuade them of its case and reconcile the desires of the British electorate with those of EU27 electorates. Brexiteers do not like to admit it, but whether or not Britain gets a deal that will satisfy its population and rein in the populist surge in the country is largely a function of that ability.