Atrios

Repetition
What Daniel Hallin (via Jay Rosen) called the Sphere of Legitimate Controversy seems to be changing. Since Serious People don't acknowledge dirty hippies, it's hard to know whether we've had anything to do with that.

yes, repetition.

Atrios again

Merit  
Ezra picks some highlights of a speech by Helicopter Ben to Princeton graduates. 

The concept of success leads me to consider so-called meritocracies and their implications. We have been taught that meritocratic institutions and societies are fair. Putting aside the reality that no system, including our own, is really entirely meritocratic, meritocracies may be fairer and more efficient than some alternatives. But fair in an absolute sense? Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate–these are the folks who reap the largest rewards.

As if Duncan Black or Ezra Klein would have defended that argument 12 years ago.

And Bertram likes Robert Hughes.

"So what Brasilia became in less than 20 years wasn't the city of tomorrow at all. It was yesterday's science fiction. Nothing dates faster than people's fantasies about the future.
This is what you get when perfectly decent, intelligent and talented men start thinking in terms of space, rather than place, and about single, rather than multiple meanings."

Always the anger of the committed, even as the commitment changes.
Consistently unaware of what and where they were in the past; unable to understand themselves, or change.