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James Marsh's new documentary, Project Nim , sensibly takes as a settled matter that the efforts to teach the chimpanzee known as "Nim Chimpsky" to sign did not result in evidence that chimpanzees could generate sentences or otherwise had much in the way of linguistic ability.  That's not what the film is about, though it makes this point in passing. It is, though, a fascinating film.  And for me, it resonated with last year's must-see, Inside Job .  Both films document the prominence of the social and behavioral sciences in "our society" -- which I might specifiy, albeit inelegantly, as mass society with a dominant (if now tottering) professional-managerial class. In any event, that professional-managerial class has attained and continues to attain its status through education, and as a result, it has provided material support for both higher education and a variety of research activities over the last century or more, roughly-speaking. In this re...

The Republican "establishment" is flailing around in search of some way to raise the debt ceiling, given the refusal of rank-and-file Republicans in the House to vote for any increase in it unless they get a significiant reduction in the federal deficit  without any increases in tax revenues (which is to say, unless they get a significant reduction in the federal government, or more precisely the non-military aspect of the federal government). We thus have Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offering an absurdly convoluted plan to let the President raise the debt ceiling on his own, along with a NY Times  op-ed piece advocating raising the debt ceiling authored by a politcal crony of George W. Bush.   (In an earler and less partisan era, we would have been presented with a photo-op of former presidents, "from both parties," lined up at the White House to express their unanimous support for raising the debt ceili...

David Leonard, in today's NY Times , has a deceptively straight-forward piece about the debate over the debt ceiling, in which he states that the US cannot (i) maintain its social welfare programs, (ii) continue to have the world's biggest military, and (iii) also have distinctly low rates of taxation.  Something among those three, he tells us, has to give. What's important about Leonard's essay is that he recognizes that there is a trade-off among these  three elements--military spending, social welfare spending, and taxation--and not just the latter two. By contrast, the negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders in recent weeks, and the public debate as well, have proceeded as if the trade-off is only between social welfare spending and taxation--with there being almost no mention of military spending. Thus, even as Democrats in Congress have protested against any cuts in s...