Robert Wright

NYTimes.com Highlights Bloggingheads Video Featuring Mark Schmitt

Communications — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:47:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Mark Schmitt, of the New America Foundation, and Megan McArdle, of The Atlantic, discuss whether vouchers are the answer to public education's problems. Please click here for a link to the video on NYTimes.com. For Schmitt andMcArdle's complete conversation, please follow this link to Bloggingheads.tv, where they also cover inequality, taxation, and gentrification.

Bloggingheads.tv, the video site where policy analysts, bloggers, and other pundits argue about politics and policy, was co-founded by New America Senior Fellow Robert Wright. The New York Times recently partnered with Bloggingheads.tv to excerpt “diavlogs” on NYTimes.com.

Planet of the Apes

Articles — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:27:00 -0400

This week the mystery deepened: Why no space aliens?

On Tuesday, scientists reported finding the most “Earthlike” planet ever, Gliese 581c. Its sun is cooler than ours, but also closer, so Gliese is in that climatic comfort zone conducive to water -- hence to life, hence to evolution, hence to intelligent beings with advanced technology. Yet they never phone.

It’s actually a serious question, long pondered by sci-fi types. Since a civilization whose technological evolution was ahead of ours by even a few centuries could contact us from far, far away (and certainly from Gliese, a mere 20 light-years away), what… more

The Neocon Paradox

Articles — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:34:00 -0400

Neoconservatives have been airing an explanation for the failure of the Iraq war that’s so obvious you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself: the war wasn’t neoconservative enough.

Last week Richard Perle, on The Charlie Rose Show, echoed what his fellow neocon John Bolton told the BBC last month: We should have turned Iraq over to the Iraqis much sooner. Then, presumably, the power of democracy to blossom pronto in even nutrient-depleted soil -- the neocon elan vital -- would have kicked in.

Nice try, but they’re just digging themselves in deeper. They’re highlighting a paradox within the neocon game… more

Why Darwinism Isn't Depressing

Articles — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 03:41:00 -0400

Scientists have discovered that love is truth.

Granted, no scientist has put it quite like that. In fact, when scientists talk about love -- the neurochemistry, the evolutionary origins -- they make it sound unlovely.

More broadly, our growing grasp of the biology behind our thoughts and feelings has some people downhearted. One commentator recently acknowledged the ascendancy of the Darwinian paradigm with a sigh: "Evolution doesn't really lead to anything outside itself."

Cheer up! Despair is a plausible response to news that our loftiest feelings boil down to genetic self-interest, but genetic self-interest actually turns out to be our salvation. The selfishness… more

E-Mail and Prozac

adminn — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:23:00 -0400

I have a theory: the more e-mail there is, the more Prozac there will be, and the more Prozac there is, the more e-mail there will be. Maybe I should explain.

Twenty millenniums ago, communication was simple. Utterances were usefully accompanied by nonverbal cues: tone of voice, facial expression, nudging your fellow hunter-gatherer in the ribs upon reaching a punch line.

Twenty years ago, communication was still pretty simple. Much of it was by phone -- no nudging, true, but intonation could help distinguish, say, wry irony from bitter resentment. Plus, when you asked a question, the answer came in… more

Shock Talk Without Apologies

Articles — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 17:57:00 -0400

There has to be an Imus event every once in a while. Ethnicity being the volatile thing it is, gratuitously inflammatory remarks have to be discouraged, so bounds of acceptable speech have to be clarified. Clarity comes when, inevitably, someone oversteps and gets slapped down.

Maybe this particular boundary could have been clarified with less punishment, given how abjectly Don Imus has apologized. Still, there had to be a price, and, compared with the prices paid in some multiethnic societies (remember Yugoslavia?), this is a bargain.

But is America’s machinery for stigmatizing bigotry really working coherently?

If social harmony is the… more

Making The U.N. Look Good

Articles — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:11:00 -0400

The United Nations. Among mainstream American political thinkers, those three words elicit reactions that run the gamut from deep antipathy to less deep antipathy. O.K., I’m overstating the case. Many liberals will go all the way to deep ambivalence, and some venture further.

Still, even defenders of the institution can’t seem to start a defense of it without half-apologizing and ritually reciting its structural flaws.

Today I’ll break new ground by saving the recitation of flaws for last. First, let’s celebrate an underacknowledged feat. During a crucial phase of history -- the run-up to the Iraq war -- the United… more

An Easter Sermon

Articles — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:23:00 -0400

Jesus knew viral marketing.

In the Gospel of Mark, the disciple John complains that nondisciples are selling bootlegged copies of Jesus’ miraculous powers. ‘‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Jesus tells John to quit obsessing about the intellectual property and to focus on getting the brand out. ‘‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” Jesus adds, ‘‘Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Fast-forward two… more

My Life in the Army

Articles — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:34:00 -0400

In one sense, I was well positioned to enjoy the summer of love. In 1969, I was living in San Francisco, epicenter of hippiedom, antiwar fervor and utopian hope for perpetual peace.

Circumstances kept me from sharing the spirit. The part of San Francisco I lived in was the Presidio, which was then a military base. I was 12, and my father was an Army officer. I remember my family once driving toward the Presidio’s Lombard Street gate past tens of thousands of protesters who seemed to think my father was part of a very bad outfit.

I was sure they… more

How We Make Life-and-Death Decisions

Articles — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:52:00 -0500

"Morality is more properly felt than judged of; though this feeling or sentiment is commonly so soft and gentle, that we are apt to confound it with an idea."-- David Hume, Scottish philosopher

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When it came to moral "reasoning," David Hume emphasized the quotation marks. We like to think our views on right and wrong are rational, he said, but ultimately they are grounded in emotion.

Philosophers have argued over this claim for a quarter of a millennium without resolution. Time’s up! Now scientists armed with brain scanners are stepping in to settle the matter. So far it looks… more