Linkdump for April 11th
¶ by Rob Friesel-
at TechCrunch:
He [Peter Theil] thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary. “If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?” he says. “It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.”
"Consider the source," and all that; but of the bits I skimmed through already, I'd call it though-provoking and timely.
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at BoingBoing:
Sharia Law says a Muslim man can have four wives, but it comes with conditions. You can have four wives IF you love, care for, and treat them all equally. Up to, and including, having houses for each of them. ¶ The Koran is trying to make a point here, Hassan says, and it's not that having four wives is awesome. Instead, you're to understand that it's impossible to be that fair to multiple spouses at once, and thus, understand why you should only have one. This interpretation is common, he says.
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at Tor.com:
I don’t understand why there is an insistence across the board that all of these places must be the product of a fever dream. Magic is magic. You can’t pare it down with clever tricks of the mind and a mild concussion. These stories are only as powerful as our belief in them. It seems a shame to try and convince your core audience otherwise.
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