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Daily Bafflements
September 08, 2014
• “We didn’t know when the last time was that somebody introduced a new course into high school,” Gates told Andrew Ross Sorkin in a New York Times Magazine article about Gates’s efforts to change how history is taught in American high schools. ...

Grassroots and Astroturf School Reform
September 05, 2014
If you were asked to list the great leaders of education reform in America, would many of the names belong to people who achieved riches and fame in some other field? What nascent education reformers Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, and Mark Zuckerberg all have in ...

Daily Bafflements
September 05, 2014
• The fast-food strike spread to over 150 cities yesterday, and hundreds of protesters were arrested, including a congresswoman from Wisconsin. • Here is a totally bonkers corporate songbook from IBM in 1937, with “hymnals” that deifty the corporate leaders. ...

The Specter of Snapchat
September 04, 2014
There is a peaceful mutiny swelling in the world of images today, roiling on smartphones, in the pockets of passersby. For now, it travels inconspicuously under the sign of a faceless ghost—that logo for the international communications phenomenon called Snapchat. A leader in ...

Daily Bafflements
September 04, 2014
• Washington City Paper today has a very comprehensive guide to D.C. etiquette, including such entries as “How to Offer—and Ask for—Marijuana at a Party” and “Go Ahead, Ask Someone What He or She Does for a Living When You’ve Just Met,” and, of ...

This Just In: “Responsible Consumption” is Bogus
September 03, 2014
“Are environmental and social problems such as global warming and poverty the result of inadequate governmental regulations or does the burden fall on our failure as consumers to make better consumption choices?” Thus begins a very earnest press release about a study ...

The Rise of the Benevolent Data Pillage
September 03, 2014
While alerting the next-of-kin and helping make funeral arrangements are thought to be the primary responsibilities of a person who has recently lost a friend, the deletion of the deceased’s online browsing history has lately earned a place among them. It is one of the kindest ...

Daily Bafflements
September 03, 2014
• “Hofstadter definitely does not see anti-intellectualism as the corrupting serpent in the American Eden. Instead, as he demonstrates, it has been deeply ingrained in the national culture from the very beginning.” – Nicholas Lemann gives Richard ...

Monopolies and Kindly Octopi
September 02, 2014
When is a monopoly a monopoly, and when is it rather a kindly octopus? I know of one example of what economists call a “pure” monopoly first hand, on an all-too-regular basis. It is Systembolaget, the state-run liquor store in Sweden, where I live. There are over four ...

Daily Bafflements
September 02, 2014
• We’ve all heard about how the changes in the music industry are going to be okay for artists in the end. Check out “20 Artists Who Make a Killing Off of T-shirt Sales.” • Here’s a sobering post-Labor-Day reminder that our ...

Labor Day Reading from The Baffler
August 29, 2014
Happy Friday, all! If you find yourself with some extra time over this long Labor Day weekend, why not take a moment to think about the reason for the season? These classic salvos from The Baffler all happen to be from issue 9 of The Baffler, a labor-themed issue we published in ...

The Perpetual Sales Pitch
August 29, 2014
A farmer grows fruit, a carpenter builds a chair. The fruit is fresh or foul, the chair sturdy or flimsy. Either way, the marketplace decides. Relative quality is apparent: the slickest of salesmen will have trouble selling rotten apples if there is decent fruit to be had ...