Nathan Heller journals for Slate from the island in collapse.

via Preik

Speaking as a former negligent hiker in Washington state who had to be rescued, fine by me.

Malcolm Gladwell examines the differences between good and bad teachers and discovers that the only predictor of success in teaching is the actual teaching. He says that to improve American education, we must radically change how we find and train teachers, opening the door wide and evaluating ongoing real-world performance in the classroom. He claims that current hiring, salary structures, and tenure tracks must be altered to be similar to the financial industry.

They filed all of the proper forms.

Friends in Fitchburg and Andover tell of power outages, and farther to the north it is a mess, but here in Boston the weather is pleasant, the city is safe, and there is no ice to be seen.

Before him, no one understood how memory worked. Now we still don’t understand it, but we don’t understand it a lot better.

The previous worst single-year endowment loss was 12.2% in 1974. The loss — at least $8 billion — is larger than the actual endowments of every other US university but four. The bigger they are…

We shouldn’t throw good money after bad to prop-up companies failing from incompetence. Creative destruction is a powerful market force — the innovators rise to the top and take the place of stagnant companies.

The article seems to suggest, in a roundabout way, that many Democrats are wary of supporting a possibly unfixable American auto industry, but only Republicans will come out publicly against the plan. Starting in January, those fiscally conservative Democrats won’t have Republican cover anymore. I’m not sure that is a good thing.

“For 34 Years, Eugene Allen Carried White House Trays With Pride. Now There’s Even More Reason to Carry Himself That Way.” A touching story from the Washington Post.

“He was the greatest writer of his generation – and also its most tormented. In the wake of his tragic suicide, his friends and family reveal the lifelong struggle of a beautiful mind.” In Rolling Stone.

A profile of the creator of FiveThirtyEight, the sophisticated election statistics blog.

While three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry this week for their work with a jellyfish protein that allows researchers to monitor the functioning of cells, the discover of the protein, repeatedly denied funding for his work, eventually gave up on science and now drives a shuttle bus at a car dealership in Alabama.

So simple, so accurate, so funny.

An argument that this specific cancer has been so glamorized that very little attention is being focused on prevention, and that awareness of breast cancer is not leading to any corresponding increase in awareness of or funding towards prevention of other cancers. And, if I may ask, why no corresponding focus on, say, prostate cancer?

The notion of American exceptionalism too-strongly clouds or modern-day attitudes and expectations, especially on the right side of the political spectrum. We’ve had eight years of go-it-alone maverick policy making, and we’ve seen how American attitudes need to change to confront the challenges of the interconnected modern world.

Clive Thompson’s New York Times Magazine piece is notable for its thoroughness, straightforward explanations, and for using the awesome term “ambient awareness” to describe the sorts of online interactions that are so commonplace today. The powerful and evolving online social world has gone beyond the silly “social network” or “microblogging” conceit to become something far more: a way to keep in constant contact, a way to stay loosely connected to a larger social environment, and also a powerful tool for self-reflection and growth.