Weekly Reads for 09 January 2014

This week’s interesting reads include looks at torture, the worst board games ever invented, the attack on Charlie Hebdo, climate change, and more. Enjoy–and read something interesting!

Can Jack Bauer Convince You to Torture? – – “In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be debating the effectiveness of torture. However, a study published last August suggests that demonstrations of torture’s effectiveness can, in fact, persuade people to support its use. In “If Torture Is Wrong
, What About 24?: Torture and the Hollywood Effect,” doctoral student Erin M. Kearns and associate professor Joseph K. Young, both at the School of Public Affairs at American University, showed clips of torture from the show 24 to research subjects in a laboratory environment.” Pacific Standard

The Worst Board Games Ever Invented | – “Last week, I dove into the data and design of Twilight Struggle — the best board game on the planet, according to the popular gaming site BoardGameGeek. I spoke with game’s designer, and tapped into a vast games database, to uncover what makes a game truly great. But enough of that. How about the worst games ever made? This question is a bit tricky. When we say “worst” — worst song, worst book, worst game — we usually consider factors other than just quality. It has to be a product with a certain amount of exposure in addition to being awful — a flop. That’s why the “worst” movie ever made is more likely to be considered “Gigli” than that awful student film I made in college.1 What we’re after are the terrible games that a significant number of people have played.” FiveThirtyEight

The Tao of the liberal arts – – “In this era when you can’t turn around in the education world without someone talking about science, technology, engineering and math, the liberal arts often get short shrift. Part of the reason is that people don’t fully understand what the liberal arts are and why they remain foundational to a real education. This post helps explain all of that.” The Washington Post

Obama’s Keystone veto threat is proof that climate activism works, no matter what the ‘insiders’ say | Bill McKibben | – “The fight against the XL pipeline began with indigenous people in Canada, and spread to ranchers along the pipeline route in places like Nebraska. And then, in the spring of 2011, when the climate scientist Jim Hansen pointed out the huge pool of carbon in the Canadian tar sands, the fight spread to those of us in the nascent climate movement. We had no real hope of stopping Keystone – as the National Journal poll indicated, this seemed the most done of deals – but we also had no real choice but to try.” The Guardian

The Attack on Charlie Hebdo – – “France, it will be said in the next days, has failed, in a profound way, when it comes to making sense of its own diversity. What will be strongly debated is the nature of that failure, and what its opposite might look like. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, will, inevitably, offer one set of answers, with her characteristic, glossy coat on her much uglier injunctions that often add up to the same thing. Who in France, and in other countries, whose policies and commitment to a free press were, again, targeted in the attack on Charlie Hebdo, is going to come forward with other, better answers? This is a dangerous moment for France, both in the frighteningly immediate sense—there are armed terrorists loose in the capital—and because the decisions that a nation makes at a time of terror are not always the best ones, for anybody.” The New Yorker

Dental care for poor children: Sarrell makes Medicaid and CHIP work. – “ne of the most shameful gaps in the American health care system involves the country’s poorest children. They can’t get basic dental treatment. It’s not that they don’t have insurance—many of them do. The problem is that dentists won’t treat them.” SLATE

Playing Dumb on Climate Change – “Moreover, while vigorously denying its relation to religion, modern science retains symbolic vestiges of prophetic tradition, so many scientists bend over backward to avoid these associations. A vast majority of scientists do not speak in public at all, and those who do typically speak in highly guarded, qualified terms. They often refuse to use the language of danger even when danger is precisely what they are talking about.” New York Times

Personality Matters More Than Intelligence at School | – “According to a new review of the link between personality and academic achievement, personality is a better way to predict success at school than intelligence as it’s usually measured, by traditional standardized tests. Arthur Poropat, of Griffith University in Australia, compared measurements of what psychologists call the “big five” personality traits — openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism — to academic scores, and found that the students who were rated higher in openness and conscientiousness tended to receive better grades.” The New Republic