November 2013 Harper's Index

Date on which John Kerry called the crisis in Syria “our Munich moment” : 9/7/2013

On which Lyndon Johnson said that what “we learned . . . at Munich” committed us to intervention in Vietnam : 7/28/1965

Number of times the NSA violated court orders or internal rules on surveillance in 2011 : 2,776

Minimum amount venture-capital firms have invested in cybersecurity start-ups in the past two years : $1,600,000,000

Amount raised in March by Endgame, a company developing surveillance technology for private use : $23,000,000

October 2013 Harper's Index

Rank of “Jesus” and “Mohammed,” respectively, among the Wikipedia articles with the most editorial changes : 8,3

Rank of “George W. Bush” : 1

Projected height, in feet, of a Saudi skyscraper, financed by the bin Laden family, that will be the tallest in the world : 3,281

Cost of a U.S. command center completed last November in Afghanistan’s Helmand province : $34,000,000

Number of days it has been used : 0

Catching up on Breaking Bad

vulture.com

If you haven't watched Breaking Bad but want to know what everyone is talking about, here are twenty things you should know about the series.

Taste Test, Junot Diaz

newyorker.com

Working on a retreat for this weekend, I find myself wanting to talk about Junot Diaz' short story, "The Cheater's Guide to Love."  (I'm circling around themes involving Jung, mid life crises, lower back pain, and happiness . . . perhaps more later).  It's a short story in Diaz' new collection, This is How You Lose Her.

The Brief Life of Oscar Wao is the first thing I read from Diaz, a beautiful, aching novel.  And if you want a taste test to see whether Diaz is worth reading, try this interview in the New Yorker.  There were about three different places in the interview where I thought, "I should take fifteen minutes to really absorb the richness of this."

New Businesses Want Downtown Lofts, Not Office Parks with Parking Lots

Fickr/David Basulto

This is Pinterest's new headquarters in San Fran.  Richard Florida explains here why lots of new businesses are moving to loft spaces like this, in dense, pedestrian neighborhoods like this.

If great loft space is what a business needs, and would trade "densely populated area with amazing night life" for . . . "cheap" - then I've got some buildings I want to show you in downtown Fort Scott, KS.

Why "Confidence" Isn't a Good Leadership Indicator

hbr.org

If you've ever had to deal with a confident but incompetent male leader, this post explains why it happens so often.  Plus, this article makes interesting use of both Freud and Sheryl Sanders.  Bonus.

So Much for Progress: Anti-Science Bias Remains Strong As Ever

NASA/Getty Images

About thirty years ago, just under half of all American adults believed Genesis requires a rejection of evolutionary theory.  Today, the number is . . . basically the same.  Here's the lament from a disappointed scientist.

And here's a follow up round table about why "creationism" is so controversial.