"Because what I hadn’t known—this is my first time grading this exam—was that it doesn’t matter how well you write, or what you think. Here we spent the year reading books and emulating great writers, constructing leads that would make everyone want to read our work, developing a voice that would engage our readers, using our imaginations to make our work unique and important, and, most of all, being honest. And none of that matters. All that matters, it turns out, is that you cite two facts from the reading material in every answer. That gives you full credit. You can compose a “Gettysburg Address” for the 21st century on the apportioned lines in your test booklet, but if you’ve provided only one fact from the text you read in preparation, then you will earn only half credit. In your constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble, beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero."

"The goal is not to convert people to the other side. Rather, it is to overcome the mutual bewilderment and demonization that can happen when each side hears the arguments of the other. It is to get over the kind of assumption that anyone who holds those other positions must be stupid or evil."

"The Ryan plan, in other words, delivers to the older generation exactly what they’ve had all their lives—secure and predictable benefits—and to the next generation, more of what they’ve known—insecurity and risk. It’s hardly the first generational fight the GOP has started. The previous one was just last fall, when they campaigned for Medicare, and against the $500 billion in cuts (mostly by getting rid of the overgenerous subsidies to private insurers in an experimental program) passed as part of the Affordable Care Act. With an off-year electorate that was overwhelmingly older, they could put all their bets on the older side, knowing that seniors would see little benefit from the Affordable Care Act and were naturally worried about any change to the health system they enjoyed."

"Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is all about "small government" except when he isn't. Case in point: Walker has refused to defend a lawsuit aimed at killing a state law allowing same-sex partners to visit their partners in hospitals. Because, you know, the government should be in charge of who you have with you when you're sick or dying and need comfort, and Scott Walker knows better than you do and wants you to die alone and scared if you have the wrong sexuality."

IT'S OK TO BE TAKEI

"Most scholars understand the culture wars to have been ephemeral. I argue against that consensus. Although the culture wars were emotional, overstated, and often hyperbolic, they were not necessarily a proxy for more important developments. Rather, I contend that the culture wars are best understood as the terrain that allowed Americans in the 1980s and 1990s to acknowledge, if not accept, the transformations to American life wrought by the tumultuous developments of the 1960s and 1970s. Most explicitly, the culture wars granted Americans space to articulate new understandings of American life in the context of the altered landscapes of race, gender, and religion. Through the culture wars, Americans found new forms of solidarity in the face of an increasingly rudderless and fragmented culture that threw into doubt all foundations. I contend that the culture wars, then, are the defining narrative of postmodern America. "

"Fifteen years ago, it seemed to me that the Sokal Hoax was making that kind of deal impossible, deepening the “two cultures” divide and further estranging humanists from scientists. Now, I think it may have helped set the terms for an eventual rapprochement, leading both humanists and scientists to realize that the shared enemies of their enterprises are the religious fundamentalists who reject all knowledge that challenges their faith and the free-market fundamentalists whose policies will surely scorch the earth. "

"Or, as Ross Douthat put it in an op-ed yesterday:

This means that a culture war that's often seen as a clash between liberal elites and a conservative middle America looks more and more like a conflict within the educated class -- pitting Wheaton and Baylor against Brown and Bard, Redeemer Presbyterian Church against the 92nd Street Y, C. S. Lewis devotees against the Philip Pullman fan club."

The dawn of the 21st century saw the first US leadership that directly and deliberately undermined the basic source of our power and strength, as well as the health of the Middle Class.  The font from which we took IN so much wealth that we were able to uplift the world, through trade.

Can we believe this? Whether this parsimonious explanation is true -- that it was done deliberately -- or else the preposterous story that is believed by nearly everybody -- that such a perfect record of harm to the United States was wreaked unintentionally, out of staggeringly uniform and manic stupidity -- either way, the harm has been grievous. And it is ongoing.

But this deluded and criminally naive estimate could only move forward because pro journalists equate “we are not allowing ourselves to think politically” with a commitment to truth, fairness and informational integrity. That equation is false, its reasoning rotten. The American press simply has to wake up to the fact that it has enemies within the political culture. Why is this so hard to grasp? Agnew was one, and the children of Agnew are now many. Culture war and the paranoid style in American politics cannot operate without elites to rage against. A growing portion of the Republican coalition has thus incorporated into its day-to-day agenda an attack on the establishment press. That’s what being “committed to the destruction of the old media guard” means.

What does it mean to steal a lifestyle? To take up and use, without permission, a lifestyle that belongs to another?
Well, what does it mean to take up and use a lifestyle?

"I don't know about you, but for most of us "the best solution available in the market" is the one that costs the least and does what I want it to. If it's free, even better. Can we say "Google"?"

"One can only gesture broadly at the cavernous dioramas of fallacy and illogic on display here, but a good place to begin is with this column’s woeful opening assertion that the C. Wright Mills classic The Power Elite—published in 1956, the putative heyday of balmy aristocratic management of the investment economy—somehow chronicled the ongoing social dominance of WASP primogeniture. Mills did argue that old family fortunes continued to loom disproportionately over the country’s long-term wealth profile—but more important, he maintained that the defining structural features of the power elite arose from its mastery of the technocratic military state created in the first flush of the Cold War."

David Brin on experts and climate science - "Chris Mooney documents how relentless this agenda has been, in The Republican War on Science. Though, let's be fair. If films like Avatar are any indication, a variant of dour anti-scientific fever rages on the left, as well.

This is the context in which we should reconsider the Climate Change Denial Movement. While murky in its scientific assertions -- (some claim the Earth isn't warming, while others say the ice-free Arctic won't be any of our doing) -- the core contention remains remarkably consistent. It holds that the 99% of atmospheric scientists who believe in GCC are suborned, stupid, incompetent, conspiratorial or untrustworthy hacks."

"But that isn't the faux-narrative. Instead it boils down to "I hate smartypants." And it is thereupon understandable that (being human) the boffins are losing patience with the new Know Nothings."

"Finally, the senior NCO said that the private’s rifle was also something else; that because of the biblical quote on the ACOG gunsight it had been “spiritually transformed into the Fire Arm of Jesus Christ” and that we would be expected to kill every “haji” we could find with it. He said that if we were to run out of ammo, then the rifle would become the “spiritually transformed club of Jesus Christ” and that we should “bust open the head of every haji we find with it.’ “He said that Uncle Sam had seen fit not to give us a “pussy ‘Jewzzi’ (combination of the word ‘Jew’ and Israeli made weapon ‘Uzi’) but the “fire arm of Jesus Christ” and made specific mention of the biblical quotes on our gunsights. He said that the enemy no doubt had quotes from the Koran on their guns but that “our Lord is bigger than theirs because theirs is a fraud and an idol”."

"The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack."

"I can't tell you how bizarre it is to see arguments I used to hear coming from the mouths of Montana Freemen like LeRoy Schweitzer in the 1990s -- arguments that led to him embarking on an 81-day armed standoff with federal authorities, and resulting in him spending the rest of his natural life in a federal prison -- coming from supposedly mainstream talk-show hosts on Fox News only 13 years later."

"An even more striking thing, perhaps, emerges in this second graph, namely that revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales. (All the blue bars in the chart above represent revenues that go directly to artists. As you can see, the ‘blue total’ has risen noticeably.) This is mostly because of live revenues, but also because of the growing amount collected by the PRS on behalf of artists, which accounts for a much bigger chunk of industry revenues than most people realise."