2012’s biggest charlatan, Herman Cain, has suspended his presidential campaign.
Many things about Cain bothered me. His ignorance of foreign and domestic policy. His tax plan that cut taxes for the top 20% of earners and raised them for everyone else. His denials and lies about a pattern of sexual harassment.
But most offensive was the way he played the race card—using crude racial stereotypes to ingratiate himself with white Republicans, then crying racism when he was criticized for things that had nothing to do with race.
The media will likely ignore Cain now, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he should never have been taken as seriously as he was. On the other hand, since he achieved some prominence, it’s worth establishing the truth of his record…for the record.
Clayton Spencer, perhaps the most powerful woman at Harvard, is leaving the university to become president of Bates College.
Harvard magazine reports:
In her current role as vice president for policy, Spencer is responsible for developing strategic priorities for Harvard on behalf of the president, directs policy analysis, oversees the office of institutional research, oversees the management of the offices of the president and provost, manages numerous searches for deans and senior administrators, and serves as presidential liaison to the Council of Deans. (She is also a presidentially nominated member of the Harvard Magazine Inc. board of directors.)
Quite a portfolio.
Spencer was hugely influential but extremely secretive, the paradigm of the modern university bureaucrat, who shaped policy behind the scenes, whose influence was present in everything but fingerprints found on nothing. Spencer, who was trained in Washington, was a master of internal politics, smoothly making the transition from Larry Summers to Drew Faust by making herself indispensable.
She is credited with work on any number of issues, but I think the real Clayton Spencer story is the issues and events for which she’ll never get credited…
Like everyone else I know, I joined Spotify, paying $10 a month for a streaming jukebox with almost any song you could want to hear. It’s an incredible tool—do I really want to buy the Cure’s early, extremely dark album, Pornography? I’d better give it a listen first—but parts of it are creeping me out: mainly, the Facebook integration. When signing up, I found that Spotify automatically retrieved my Facebook information before I’d entered even my email address. I don’t like the idea of multiple platforms cross-accessing my data, so I went to Facebook and turned off the “platform sharing” that Facebook automatically turns on—only to find that the only way to join Spotify is by letting them access your Facebook info.
Creepy, in my opinion.
Then, of course, Spotify automatically displays what you’re listening to on your Facebook feed; you have to know that, and you have to know to go to “Preferences” to turn it off.
And now, as I try to log back in for the first time since joining yesterday, Spotify is showing me a prompt that automatically checks a box saying, “Show what I listen to on Facebook.” It’s grayed-out, so that it’s less noticeable than the text around it. Pretty heavy-handed.
And after I have logged back in, Spotify asks if I want to erase all the music on my iPod and replace it with songs from Spotify. Why would I want to do that? What does that do for me other than make me more dependent on maintaining my Spotify subscription?
If I sound suspicious, well, I am. I don’t see how Spotify can make money charging subscribers ten bucks a month….so where does the revenue come from?
Wonder what other folks think of Spotify…