* “How many American atheists are there really?” The question is not that interesting in and of itself but the methodology is fascinating, hilarious, and worthy of Kahneman and Tversky!
* (Possibly NSFW): “American Apparel’s Creative Director Explains the ‘Made in Bangladesh’ Campaign: Iris Alonzo on the controversial advertisement’s mission.” Improbable!
* (Also conceivably NSFW): Sex letters from famous authors, including Joyce, Proust, and others.
* “I Am Cancer,” on another angle of the eviction system; see also Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted.
* Japan shows the way to affordable mega cities.
* “The Arrogance of Blue America,” overstated to be sure but also not the usual.
* “2017 Could Prove to Be a Turning Point for Plug-In Hybrids;” this is extremely important news because plug-in hybrids are an easy bridge between gas- and electric-powered cars.
* “Canada fought the war on science. Here’s how scientists won.” Oddly (maybe? or “normally”), people trust individual stories and anecdotes more than data.
* “Colleges Think Women Having Sex Is Dangerous. Laura Kipnis Says They’re Wrong.”
* The books that made writers want to write.
* “College students aren’t the enemies of free speech,” which ought to be pretty obvious, except:
Part of what’s going on here could come down to preference intensity and opportunity. By which I mean that college students who are in favor of expanding restrictions on free speech might feel relatively more strongly about it than do their pro-free-speech peers, and they have highly visible opportunities to express those views by attempting to no-platform speakers they don’t like, or responding assertively to instances of perceived administrator insensitivity.
In other words, a noisy minority may get all the press—as I wrote in “Ninety-five percent of people are fine — but it’s that last five percent.” Don’t mistake the minority for the whole!
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