The historic candidacy of Obama aside, the NY Times noted yesterday, in what it called “quiet political shifts,” that more and more black candidates are gaining ground in heavily white areas.

The columnists cite a study by Cambridge author Zoltan Hajnal, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. According to his figures, about 40 percent of Americans have lived in or near cities that have elected black mayors or in states with black governors.

Most black elected officials, however, still represent predominantly black communities. And Dr. Hajnal and other analysts say racial animosity toward black candidates still exists and may affect the results of local and national elections, including the race for president. But he said such feelings were declining.

“There’s a fair amount of experience out there among white voters now, and that has lessened the fears about black candidates.”

The full article >>

For the most part, they’re nonprofits. So can universities demonstrate their benefit to society?

A New York Times article yesterday reported on a meeting between university presidents and two members of Congress.

Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Peter Welch are both pushing the administrators to spend more of their endowment money to push down rising tuition costs.

Mission and Money: Understanding the University authors Burton Weisbrod, Evelyn Asch and Jeffrey Ballou contributed a report to this roundtable.

Read it below!

Don’t Mandate Minimum Payout Rates

Submitted to the United States Congress College Endowment Roundtable, September 8, 2008

It is comparatively easy to mandate minimum payouts from college and university endowments but much more difficult to ensure that such a mandate translates into more affordable undergraduate education. While we acknowledge the government’s right (and, indeed, responsibility) to examine whether nonprofit schools are providing socially valuable benefits that justify their favorable tax treatment, we also believe that the currently fashionable call for mandating minimum payout rates is a dangerous solution that is likely to do more harm than good. There are a number of reasons for this.

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I had never heard about this incident before.

The Beatles were booked for a 1965 concert in Israel, but organizers were denied permission to pay them (in foreign currency), canceling the show because “The Beatles have an insufficient artistic level and cannot add to the spiritual and cultural life of the youth in Israel.”

The Times reported yesterday on Paul McCartney’s upcoming concert, and the Israeli London embassy only apologized to McCartney and Starr last year.

Whoa.

The best part of the article:

The Hebrew name for the group printed on the tickets is also worth noting. The performers may have been universally known as the Beatles, but in Israel, then still trying earnestly to create a culture buffered from foreign words and influence, they were Hipushiot Haketzev, or the Beat Beetles (like the bugs).

The Full Article >>

The Times Editorial Observer featured Make Magazine’s Mister Jalopy today, who issues a simple request:

Please make it easier for us to tinker with your stuff.

Yes, many of us marvel at technological wonders, but others want to engage it, play with it, and even make it better.

Mister Jalopy’s latest mission is taking the Maker mentality to manufacturers, urging them to make products that consumers can easily maintain, repair, repurpose or even reinvent.

…

“I really want companies to start thinking about shared innovation,” he said, “to realize that they’re not selling to customers, but to collaborators.”

Collaborative development is certainly gaining foothold, and authors Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine are tireless advocates of extremely relaxed IP law. Wouldn’t it be great if our products were built so that they are inherently customizable? It would require a lot of public knowledge about product design, though hacked iPhones are a testament to how long secrets are kept.

Few newspaper pieces are so (ready for this one?) metatextual as this one about photograph manipulation.

Remember Iran’s swarms of test missiles? Remember how there were really only two? Does it matter anymore how many there were, since you saw an intimidating picture with a bunch of missiles?

Photoshop analysis by Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs

As it happens, seeing something is usually enough to ingrain it in your mind, even if you know that it is false.

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