We Say We Like Creativity, But We Actually Don’t

The Article: Inside the Box by Jessica Olien in Slate.

The Text: In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkers—creative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from Van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. Online job boards burst with ads recruiting “idea people” and “out of the box” thinkers. We are taught that our own creativity will be celebrated as well, and that if we have good ideas, we will succeed.

It’s all a lie. This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

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Georgia Republican Compares Pre-Existing Conditions To Insurance Fraud

To Ralph Hudgens, Commissioner of Insurance for the state of Georgia, individuals with pre-existing health conditions who seek insurance are just like reckless drivers who want collision insurance. By demonstrating this overt and offensive buffoonery, we can’t think of anywhere other than the GOP that Hudgens belongs.

Pope Francis On Free Markets

Pope Benedict who? Not even around for a year yet and he’s already becoming the world’s favorite pontiff. For his entire exhortation on the financial system, click here.

Why Public Universities Should Be Free

The Article: Public universities should be free by Aaron Brady in Al Jazeera.

The Text: Public education should be free. If it isn’t free, it isn’t public education.

This should not be a controversial assertion. This should be common sense. But Americans have forgotten what the “public” in “public education” actually means (or used to mean). The problem is that the word no longer has anything to refer to: This country’s public universities have been radically transformed. The change has happened so slowly and so gradually — bit by bit, cut by cut over half a century — that it can be seen really only in retrospect. But with just a small amount of historical perspective, the change is dramatic: public universities that once charged themselves to open their doors to all who could benefit by attending — that were, by definition, the public property of the entire state — have become something entirely different.

What we still call public universities would be more accurately described as state-controlled private universities — corporate entities that think and behave like businesses. Whereas there once was a public mission to educate the republic’s citizens, there is now the goal of satisfying the educational needs of the market, aided by PR departments that brand degrees as commodities and build consumer interest, always with an eye to the bottom line. And while public universities once sought to advance the industry of the state as a whole, with an eye to the common good, shortfalls in public funding have led to universities’ treating their research capacity as a source of primary fundraising, developing new technologies and products for the private sector, explicitly to raise the money they need to operate. Conflicts of interest are now commonplace.

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South Carolina Senator Talks Civil War To Preserve “Freedom”

Shit, we forgot. Is this 1860 or 2013? South Carolina state senator Lee Bright (ironic?) on how he is willing to “lay down his life” for liberty.