A clash between administrators and students at Yale went viral. Why that is unfortunate for all concerned. →

Viewed from the outside world, both the video and the op-ed can be distilled into that last sentence. It feeds into a narrative of free speech under assault on college campuses. And to put it gently, it’s a sentiment that did not instill much sympathy among most observers...

That said, I also find the outsize reaction to this campus contretemps — including my own tweet — to be troubling as well.

The problem is local knowledge. As Friedrich von Hayek observed 70 years ago, there is an awful lot of knowledge that is local in character, that cannot be culled from abstract principles or detached observers. What looks like free speech infringement at first glance can turn out to be something different the more one drills down. For one thing, the events of late last week were part of a larger chain of events at Yale beyond the e-mails that suggest a few obvious sources of frustration for minority students there in particular.

...

An additional problem that affects the current generation of college students even more is that it is so easy for these contretemps to balloon so quickly into national debates. That’s extremely unfortunate. One of the purposes of college is to articulate stupid arguments in stupid ways and then learn, through interactions with fellow students and professors, exactly how stupid they are. Anyone who thinks that the current generation of college students is uniquely stupid is either an amnesiac or willfully ignorant. As a professor with 20 years of experience, I can assure you that college students have been saying stupid things since the invention of college students.

It looks like a landslide for Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratic party in Myanmar’s historic election →

Thirty million people voted in Myanmar’s general election on Nov. 8, and as the results roll in it appears that Myanmar citizens overwhelmingly chose Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.

Not only the party expected to win the popular vote, according to early estimates, but it may have grabbed enough constituencies to form the government alone, which would allow it to bypass what might have been months of horse-trading and compromise with other parties to take control of the country. A decisive win for Suu Kyi’s party would be a resounding victory, after a huge 1990 election win was annulled by a military junta, and Suu Kyi placed on house arrest for years.

Richard Horsey: ‘It’s Very Clear the NLD Will Be the Largest Party’ →

So despite what the history books have recorded, the 1990 election was by no means free and fair. Most of the opposition leaders were under house arrest or in prison at that time. But of course, as we know, the result was heavily in favor of the NLD [National League for Democracy]. What that means is that the 2015 election could be the first relatively credible election since 1960, and, if all goes well, it will be the first transfer of power in Myanmar through an election since 1960. So that makes it a very big deal. It’s also the first election since 1990 where the opposition has participated nationwide.

The Displaced: Introduction →

Nearly 60 million people are currently displaced from their homes by war and persecution — more than at any time since World War II. Half are children.

How one of the most obese countries on earth took on the soda giants →

...In other words, excessive consumption of soda kills twice as many Mexicans as trade in the other kind of coke that Mexico is famous for.

Amazing story of grassroots groups fighting the soda industry's control of the Mexican government (including the health department).

The decline started slowly but accelerated: by December 2014, soda sales were down 12% from December 2013. And the drop was greatest among the poorest Mexicans – by December they were buying 17% less sweetened soda than the year before. (Terrazas was right – the tax does affect the poor disproportionately. But so does diabetes.) In September, Mexico’s national statistics institute released data on beverage consumption showing that Rivera’s findings actually slightly understated the soda tax’s success.

The battle continues. At the end of October, the lower house of Mexico’s congress, the chamber of deputies, passed an amendment that would have halved the tax for beverages with less sugar. But the political climate has now shifted; after the vote, all the parties scrambled to deny responsibility for watering down the tax – “The industry did it,” said one PRI deputy – and the senate quickly overturned the amendment.

The Effects of Surveillance on the Victims →

Constantly being on edge or "high alert" causes several psychological problems. We're moving into an age that could end the concept of privacy, entirely. Can we adapt? Do we want to?

Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice →

This has become common over the past several years, since it hasn't been challenged. Basically, it gives up our rights to sue companies in any meaningful way. They get to decide what's "fair" when they mess up.

On Page 5 of a credit card contract used by American Express, beneath an explainer on interest rates and late fees, past the details about annual membership, is a clause that most customers probably miss. If cardholders have a problem with their account, American Express explains, the company “may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration.”

Those nine words are at the center of a far-reaching power play orchestrated by American corporations, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

Transparency in the Intelligence Community →

On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Clapper announced a plan to implement a new set of transparency principles for the Intelligence Community. This is the latest in a series of Intelligence Community initiatives to disclose more information about how the agencies do business.

While the release of this “implementation plan” may seem at first blush to be a minor bureaucratic event, it is a welcome development for several reasons. It shows that the agencies are beginning to break a habit of reflexive secrecy. The difficulty of shedding institutional habits developed over the course of decades—if not centuries—should not be underestimated, and the plan released on Tuesday shows that the government is serious about taking on this challenge.

But what about more detailed rules and procedures? When do they reveal sources and methods? How much can the government tell the American public (and therefore everyone else in the world) about what type of information our agencies can and cannot collect and the sources from which they can and cannot collect it before legitimate targets can use that information to avoid surveillance altogether? These are not easy questions. The Intelligence Community undoubtedly hopes that its new transparency principles and implementation plan will help it strike the right balance.

There's a lot of work to do (and especially in a future where privacy is less possible)