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Jathan Sadowski disputes the emerging conventional wisdom that everyone should learn computer programming:

The problem is elevating coding to the level of a required or necessary ability. I believe that is a recipe for further technologically induced stratification. Before jumping on the everybody-must-code bandwagon, we have to look at the larger, societal effects — or else risk running headlong into an even wider inequality gap.

For instance, the burden of adding coding to curricula ignores the fact that the English literacy rate in America is still abysmal: 45 million U.S. adults are “functionally illiterate” and “read below a 5th grade level,” according to data gathered by the Literacy Project Foundation. Almost half of all Americans read “so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels.” The reading proficiency of Americans is much lower than most other developed countries, and it’s declining. We have enough trouble raising English literacy rates, let alone increasing basic computer literacy: the ability to effectively use computers to, say, access programs or log onto the internet. Throwing coding literacy into the mix means further divvying up scarce resources. Teaching code is expensive. It requires more computers and trained teachers, which many cash-strapped schools don’t have the luxury of providing.

Jeff Wise explores the growing trend of parents hiring computer science tutors for their kids:

For most people, software programming’s social cachet falls somewhere between that of tax preparation and autism. But it’s catching fire among forward-thinking New York parents like Katie’s, who see it as endowing their children both with a strategically valuable skill and a habit for IQ-multiplying intellectual rigor. According to WyzAnt, an online tutoring marketplace, demand for computer-science tutors in New York City has doubled each of the past two years. And if one Silicon Alley–backed initiative pans out, within a decade every public-school kid in the city will have access to coding, up from a couple of thousand. …

Despite the moribund national jobs market, software positions go begging. By 2020, the industry expects to have a million more positions than it can fill. Nine out of ten U.S. high schools don’t offer computer programming, and fewer than one college student in 40 graduates with a degree in the field.

We’ll soon see:

On Monday, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed papers suing the state of New York for the emancipation of a privately owned chimpanzee named Tommy. They plan to file two more suits on behalf of another privately owned chimp named Kiko, and a pair of research chimps called Hercules and Leo.

The group uses the legal argument of habeas corpus, which requires a person under detention to be brought before a court, especially to end unlawful imprisonment. It was notably used by the antislavery movement to define human beings as legal persons, not legal property. Chimpanzees, because of their awareness of self and of passing time, should also have rights to bodily liberty, the group argues.

Ben Richmond digs into the case:

The group’s essential argument is that a chimpanzee can be recognized as “legal person” without biologically being a person. Just as corporations can be people under the Fourteenth Amendment, “legal personality may be granted to entities other than individual human beings, e.g. a group of human beings, a fund, an idol.” The memorandum of law for Tommy’s case cites a case in New Zealand where the Whanganui River Iwi was designated as a legal person, as well as two separate examples from India where a mosque and an idol were granted legal personhood. If Tommy can be recognized as a legal person then, the case argues, he deserves to be set free under the common law writ of habeas corpus, unless the owner of Santa’s Hitching Post, a tourist attraction where Tommy is kept, can prove that “their imprisonment of Tommy is legally sufficient.”

Bryan Walsh calls the suit “potentially revolutionary” from a legal perspective:

Habeas corpus allows someone being held captive to seek relief by having a judge force his captors to explain why he is being held. It’s frequently used in cases alleging unlawful imprisonment, including those of detainees in Guantánamo. The lawsuit makes reference to a famous 1772 English case that dealt with an American slave named James Somerset, who had escaped from his owner in London, been recaptured and was set to be returned from slavery. … With testimonials from experts like Jane Goodall, [the suit] makes the case that chimpanzees have qualities that allow them to have the very basic legal right not to be imprisoned. It’s not that chimpanzees are the legal equivalent of human beings. Rather, the court filing – obtained by James Gorman at the New York Times – argues that chimpanzees are enslaved, and that the courts already recognize that slavery is wrong

Michael Todd adds:

“Personhood” is a big step beyond just calling for an end, say, to animal experimentation or pigeon shoots.

A lot of observers, including some in the animal rights movement itself, see it as quixotic or loaded with a raft of unintended, and potentially unwelcome, consequences. But we already know that corporations are people, possibly even having rights like freedom of religion, so what might have once seemed absurd now merely seems a stretch.

Elie Mystal sees the logic:

Whatever you think of the cognitive abilities and emotions of chimps, I think we can all agree that they are different from, say, chairs. They’re different from cars. Treating these animals as mere property is simply wrong. We do, of course, have a class of persons in this country who don’t have maximum rights but are more than mere property. They’re called “children,” and most of them have considerably less intelligence than a chimpanzee. So there is precedent for extending legal protection to “human-like” creatures who throw poop and change the channel during the last two minutes of a football game.

But Stephen Bainbridge isn’t buying it:

The problem, I believe, is that attempts to define the debate in moral or philosophical terms ignores the basic fact that the rationale for corporate personhood sounds in neither. Instead, it is based on practicality and utility. Put another way, we treat the corporation as a legal person because doing so has proven to be a highly efficient way for real people to organize their business activities and to vindicate their rights. Put yet another way, we treat the corporation as a legal person because it is a nexus of contracts between real persons. Which is something no animal can ever be.

Either way, the stakes are high:

If NhRP is successful in New York, it could be a significant step toward upending millennia of law defining animals as property and could set off a “chain reaction” that could bleed over to other jurisdictions, says Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and a proponent of focusing on animal welfare rather than animal rights. “But if they lose it could be a significant step backward for the movement. They’re playing with fire.”

(Photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images)

Neetzan Zimmerman, formerly of The Daily What, dwarfs the traffic of all other Gawker bloggers:

Farhad Manjoo profiles the aficionado:

Mr. Zimmerman is a 32-year-old editor at the news-and-entertainment site Gawker, where he’s responsible for posting “viral” content—videos, photos, crazy local news stories—that readers can’t resist sharing with everyone they know. “Mom Fined $140 Every Day Until She Circumcises Her Child” or “Black Man Arrested Dozens of Times for ‘Trespassing’ While At Work.” With his posts generating more than 30 million page views a month, Mr. Zimmerman may be the most popular blogger working on the Web today.

Indeed, Mr. Zimmerman earns traffic so reliably that it’s tempting to dismiss him as an automaton who simply posts every sensational news story that comes along, or as a mere “aggregator” who doesn’t contribute anything original to journalism. But that take misses Mr. Zimmerman’s skill. He posts only about a dozen items a day. Almost every one becomes a big traffic hit—an astonishing rate of success. I’ve worked on the Web for years, and I still have trouble predicting which of my stories will be hits and which will appeal only to my mom. Mr. Zimmerman has somehow cracked the code.

His secret, he says, is a deep connection to his audience’s evolving, irreducibly human, primal sensibilities. Usually within a few seconds of seeing an item, Mr. Zimmerman can sense whether it’s destined to become a viral story. “I guess you could call it intuition,” he says.

Ezra draws lessons from Zimmerman’s success. Among them:

The traffic potential of the social Web is far beyond what most media sites recognize. We all might think we understand Facebook and Twitter’s power to drive traffic. But it turns out that when you actually create content specifically meant for those networks –particularly Facebook – they drive vastly more traffic than ever seemed possible.

Another:

Publishers need to spend a lot more time thinking about how to package non-social content to give it the best chance on the social Web. This is the one that I’m a bit obsessed with. Newspapers and magazines put tremendous effort into producing hard-hitting reports and beautiful long reads and then basically just hope that they take off socially. The tools they use are, for the most part, the same tools they’ve always used: Headlines and press releases, and nowadays they’ll push articles through their Facebook and Twitter accounts, too.

But they’re not routinely creating visual — much less video — promotions for their best content, even though that kind of content does much better socially.

But Facebook looks like it is going to make Zimmerman’s job harder:

Our surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favorite sports team or shared interests, to the latest meme. Starting soon, we’ll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile. This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently.

Ezra considers the implications of this development.

Joseph Carens, author of The Ethics of Immigration, questions the morality of deportation:

I ask people, “Do you think the way the world is organized is really fair?” Well, one of the ways in which it’s unfair is that states are given this right to control who gets in and who cannot get in. That’s key to the ability to have some very rich states and a lot of very poor states, because if the rich states didn’t have that control, then people would move from the poor states to the rich states. And that’s exactly what the people in the rich states are worried about.

So you have to ask, “How is this fair?” I think it’s not fair. I don’t think the solution to that is to have all these people moving, because most people would rather live in the society where they’re born. And they would stay there if the opportunities were adequate. The real point is that we have an obligation to make the world more equal, to lower the disparity. There are a variety of ways to do that, and immigration would be one component.

But I think in a just world there wouldn’t be any need for immigration controls.

There could be open borders, and it wouldn’t be a big threat, because most people don’t want to move. Europe has open borders within Europe, and there’s a very low rate of movement. Very few European citizens live outside the state where they’re citizens. Who wants to move to a place where they don’t know anybody or can’t speak the language? People in Greece or Spain might try to move now because things are so desperate, but normally people aren’t going to move for just a minor advantage.

Speaking of immigration within the EU, Massie wishes Brits were capable of a real conversation on the topic:

Almost no-one, not even the relative handful of people truly in favour of open borders, claims there is no downside – or potential downside – to immigration. Most people acknowledge that there are circumstances or places in which it can cause some difficulties. It is not daft to think that population growth can sometimes, in some places, place additional stress on public services. Nor is it reprehensible to think that some immigrants are better placed to thrive in Britain than others or that some are less likely to assimilate or make a valuable contribution to life in this country.

But it is possible to note that – even, if you prefer, to concede that – and still conclude that the right to move anywhere within the European Union is one of the greatest expansions of human liberty we – that is, Europeans –  have enjoyed in recent decades. It is an achievement that should not be cast aside lightly, far less with great force.

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Tristan McConnell and Nick Loomis consider the connection, specifically in the Sahel, a region just south of the Sahara:

“Climate change plays two roles,” says [energy efficiency company] Opower’s [Drew] Sloan. “When you and your family have been living off the same land for generations and all of a sudden that becomes impossible, the first impact is relocation. But there’s a limited amount of land in the world so we’re going to see more and more skirmish zones. … Second, climate change makes people feel small and helpless, and Islamic fundamentalists have been very good at turning helplessness and despair into anger and action. If you give someone who feels small a gun, they stop feeling small,” he adds. Sloan is a former US Army soldier. “If you give them a direction to point that gun they stop feeling helpless.”

[UC Berkeley scholar Marshall] Burke, a resource economist, is more cautious.

He says the evidence does not yet suggest direct cause-and-effect links between climate change and specific conflicts, but that climate change increases the likelihood of conflict in general. “Years of bad climate — in particular, years of unusually hot temperatures or extreme rainfall — substantially increases the likelihood that many different types of conflict might occur,” says Burke. “We cannot say definitively that changes in climate are what has caused the growing conflict across the Sahel but the types of climate change we’ve seen are on average associated with higher rates of conflict.” …

[Burke] also sees glimmers of hope. “There are many other factors that also affect conflict, and many of these things are improving: countries are getting a little wealthier, and developing better institutions. Whether these improvements will outweigh the negative effects of climate change, I don’t think we know yet.”

If you’re all, “WTF is an #UNselfie?” … well, educate yourself. #GivingTuesday pic.twitter.com/2EFWFHd7Vo

— Upworthy (@Upworthy) December 3, 2013

Giving Tuesday is on its way to becoming America’s newest holiday tradition:

Already more than 3,400 nonprofits and companies have agreed to push the idea of donating to charity on December 3, and organizers predict the effort will easily attract more than 5,000 participants, double the number of organizations involved last year in promoting charitable donations just after the high-profile shopping days Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Many nonprofits that participated in Giving Tuesday last year say they raised much more that day than they typically do on a day in early December. For instance, nonprofits that raise money through Network for Good, which processes online gifts, reported a 155-percent increase in donations on Giving Tuesday compared with the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in 2011. 

Eileen Heisman of the National Philanthropic Trust says the holiday is a win-win for businesses and charities:

The leaders of these organizations immediately got the concept that the philanthropic community stood to benefit by converging on a day like this, in the same way that retailers (even though they compete aggressively) all take part in and benefit from Black Friday. With every project, they are spreading the word through their networks, and the connection to #GivingTuesday becomes more valuable. At the same time, they appreciated that their participation did not require them to spend on messaging over and above what they had been planning. Because the timing and tagline of #GivingTuesday can easily be incorporated into existing campaigns, even thinly-stretched charities can use it to refresh their message and increase awareness.

Laura Flanders concedes that “whenever haves help have-nots, that’s worthy of praise,” but adds “when massive global corporations want praise too, I get a little queasy”:

Take Verizon. For Giving Tuesday, the Verizon Foundation says it will contribute to three large nonprofits as directed by the votes of Verizon workers. The company calls it giving back and “giving voice” to employees. Call me cynical, but I bet most Verizon workers would have preferred more voice and fewer givebacks in their contracts. Over the last decade Verizon’s forced concessions on everything from wages to pensions to job security and the right to organize. Giving Tuesday’s nice, but Verizon workers give back every day.

Meanwhile, Kelly Kleiman offers a practical suggestion: “Next year will the powers that be who created this quasi-holiday please consider scheduling it before, and not after, Black Friday, Small-Business Saturday, Football-Wagering Sunday and Cyber Monday?”

Before Thanksgiving, everyone’s in the mood to think about things they should be thankful for: the perfect mood from which to give generously. Before Thanksgiving, most people are at home in their regular lives and regular schedules, not packing or unpacking or sitting in airport lounges fretting. Before Thanksgiving, people have eaten normally instead of excessively and therefore will find it easier to believe that other people don’t have enough. There’s nothing like a full stomach to eradicate thoughts of others’ hunger.

In Bangkok, protests that began over a week ago demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra turned violent over the weekend. Joshua Keating explains the origins of the protests and points out a curious anomaly:

Thailand’s political predicament appears to contradict the longstanding idea in political science that as populations become wealthier and more educated, they will become more democratic. In Thailand, the wealthy, urban middle class are perhaps the least supportive of democracy. It’s not the only place where this seems to be the case.

Steve Herman notes that Thai democracy “has long been fragile here with the military conducting 18 coups since the end of absolute monarchy rule in 1932.” Jay Ulfelder considers why certain countries are prone to coups:

The most informative factors in thinking about coup risk are a country’s wealth, its form of government, and the recent occurrence of coup activity.

Coup attempts very rarely happen in countries that are rich, either fully dictatorial or fully democratic, and have no coup activity in the recent past. Almost all coup attempts, successful or failed, occur in countries that are relatively poor and have political regimes that mix features of autocracy and democracy. These mixed regimes are especially susceptible to coups when politics within them is sharply polarized, as it has been in Thailand for nearly a decade now.

Bruce Einhorn adds that, with the anti-government forces pressing for the military to step in, the current standoff could end the same way:

Pimpaka Nichgaroon, head of research for Thanachart Securities in Bangkok, warns that the current unrest could end as it often does in Thailand, with the generals intervening. Chances of a military coup are now 50-50, according to Pimpaka. The anti-Yingluck forces “want some kind of national unity government to help reform the political system before the country has a new election,” she wrote in a report published yesterday. However, that kind of regime change is unlikely “without some kind of military intervention or a coup, a risk we see rising from only 5% a month ago to a 50% probability now.”

A reader writes:

While I truly despise the parents who followed Kimmel’s Halloween candy prank, I have to disagree with Sam Harris, who only lied to his kid once.  I’m sorry, but I really did enjoy maintaining the fantasy of Santa Claus for my child.  It was not only a lot of fun, but it provided great motivation when her behavior threatened to go to the dark side.  Heck, I expanded the concept to include “Kenny the Birthday Kangaroo” who shared files with Santa.  My best friend claimed to have Santa’s cell phone number on speed dial to report any last minute misbehavior.  The Tooth Fairy paid ransom for teeth in both of our homes.

Those are all lies, and our children trust us. But it’s not the act of lying; it’s the intent behind the lie that determines if our children trust us.  Our children know we would not harm them or cause them unnecessary pain (unlike the children who were tortured about candy so their parents could get a few minutes of fame). That’s what trust is about.

Another:

My wife once told our oldest son a good one.

When he was around 3, we went to Kauai for vacation and he discovered Fruit Loops at the hotel’s breakfast buffet.  He fell in love and would make a beeline for them every morning.  His mom and I weren’t happy about all of that sugar, but let it go as we were only there a week & hoped he would forget about it as soon as he stopped getting his breakfast at a buffet.  Wrong.  The first morning back home in Seattle, he started getting a little belligerent about wanting Fruit Loops.  After a few minutes of firm no’s and trying to reason with him, he was still insisting.  So she told him that unfortunately they were a regional food available only in Hawaii.  He thought about it for a few seconds and that was it.  He calmed down and ate his normal breakfast without further complaint.  I thought it was genius.

Another differs:

I hated being patronized as a kid and always try to “keep it real” with kids. Judaism is my favorite Abrahamic religion because, in addition to revering scholarship and devoting a holiday to all-night Talmudic study, they avoid the Christian tendency to turn religious holidays into occasions for inventing impossible narratives (a flying fat man and a giant bunny delivering toys and candy respectively) and misleading children into believing them.

David Auerbach assesses the current state of Healthcare.gov:

The report says little about what work is ahead of the engineering team, but at least one graph suggests there’s some ways to go:

Aside from confirming that it took the administration until early November just to start making significant progress on functionality fixes, the graph also indicates that engineers are still frantically fixing the site. If the site were anywhere near stability, you would expect the number of fixes to start to level off close to the administration’s self-imposed Nov. 30, signaling that they were ramping down crisis mode and making fewer fixes per day. But it doesn’t, indicating that they are still in the hump of this bug-fixing graph:

Suderman worries that fixing these bugs will prevent the rest of Healthcare.gov from being built properly:

With 30 to 40 percent of the site, including critical insurer payment systems, yet to be completed and tested, you can bet these problems will continue. Not only because it clearly takes longer than expected to excise flaws from the system, but because lingering problems with the portion that’s already been built will take time and energy away from constructing and testing the portions of the system that have yet to be put in place. The administration delayed the Spanish language version of site from its initial planned opening, and just last week announced that the federally run small business exchange that was supposed to open last month would be postponed by a year. The team working on Obamacare is already reported to be working around the clock on repairs; even if they don’t burn out from the weeks of long hours, it’s inevitable that building additional functionality and putting it through the paces will fall by the wayside if the existing troubles aren’t fixed.

Update from a reader:

In this post, the data regards bug fixes per day. To understand the stability of the site, however, you need to know how many new bugs are found per day (by end-users and QA staff). If their bug backlog was at 600 on November 1, and no other bugs have been filed, then the fix rate will drop off drastically in a week or two. If their bug backlog is still at 600, however, then the bug-fix trend line could continue to rise for months to come.  To get a true understanding of the stability of the web site, we need to see open bugs over time and/or bugs filed over time.