This seems pretty basic: even primates watch each other and copy (or, if you will, "ape") each other, so when one monkey figures out how to improve a potato by dipping it in salt water, the whole gang follows suit.

We copy each other to learn and to improve - it's one of the things that makes us human, because we're a lot better at it than chimps.

It's time to overhaul copyright law

Bundled against the cold, the businessman made his way down the steps. Coming toward him in blue mittens was a middle-aged woman.

"Do you know that we're going to take a stroll this weekend?" she whispered, using the latest euphemism for the unofficial protests that have unnerved authorities in Shanghai over the past month.

He nodded.

Behind her, protest banners streamed from the windows of high-rise apartment blocks, signs of middle-class discontent over a planned extension of the city's magnetic levitation, or maglev, train through residential neighborhoods.

The couple checked to make sure no plainclothes police were nearby and discussed where security forces had been posted in recent days. "Did you take any photos?" the man asked. Yes, she said, promising to send them to him so he could post the evidence online.

Shanghai's Middle Class Launches Quiet, Meticulous Revolt

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Andrew McAfee, in a follow-up to The Problem with the Legal Profession, from a year ago:

Two recent articles in the New York Times caught my eye. The first, by Lisa Belkin in the January 24 ThursdayStyles section, was titled "Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms." This article builds on an earlier one by Alex Williams in the Times chronicling the declining prestige of law as a career. Belkin’s article describes a number of radical (by the profession’s historical standards, anyway) steps taken by many law firms in order to make them better places to work, especially for bright young people.

These steps include a move away from the traditional laserlike focus on billable hours as the desideratum for a lawyer who wants to rise within the firm. Some law firms, according to the article, have done away the concept of billable hours altogether.

Have you seen Michael Clayton?

In the “Ocean’s” franchise and earlier movies, Clooney played guys who were on top of everything. He’s very intelligent, and it’s easy enough for him to point his chin, glare, and tell people off. But in “Syriana” and now in “Michael Clayton” he has done something more interesting: he’s playing clever guys who lack the killer instinct, who have some strain of personal honor that holds them back from simply winning. People in and outside Michael’s firm keep condescending to him, but he’s forty-five years old and broke, and he’s not a man who can afford to lose his temper, even if he wanted to. He has to deflect other people’s contempt into a strategy of survival. Gilroy has a sardonic, rather than a melodramatic, view of life: Michael will never be an anti-pollution crusader like Julia Roberts’s Erin Brockovich or John Travolta’s lawyer in “A Civil Action.” The fixer is hardly shocked to discover that the world is corrupt; he has just had enough of it.

Signs In the Times: The End of Billable Hours

WebPath, my experimental XPath 2.0 engine in Python is now an open source project with a liberal BSD license. I originally developed this during a Yahoo! Hack Day, and now I get to announce it during another Hack Day. Seems appropriate.

The focus of WebPath was rapid development and providing an experimental platform. There remains tons of potential work left to do on it…watch this space for continued discussion. I’d like to call out special thanks to the Yahoo! management for supporting me on this, and to Douglas Crockford for turning me on to Top Down Operator Precedence parsers. Have a look at the code. You might be pleasantly surprised at how small and simple a basic XPath 2 engine can be. So, who’s up for some XPath hacking?

WebPath wants to be free (BSD licensed, specifically)

Hendrik Hertzberg:

Obama’s Democratic critics worry that his soaring rhetoric of reconciliation is naïve. But, as Mark Schmitt has argued in The American Prospect, Obama’s national-unity pitch should be viewed as a tactic as well as an ideal. It might lengthen his coattails, helping Democratic candidates for the House and the Senate in marginally red districts and states. It would not protect him from attack, of course, but it would enable him to fire back from the high ground. And, as a new President elected with a not quite filibuster-proof Senate, he would be in a better position to peel off the handful of Republican senators he would need to make meaningful legislative progress than someone who started from a defensive crouch. Hillary Clinton would make a competent, knowledgeable, and responsible President. Barack Obama just might make a transformative one.

The Spat

In this new world, who is to say that the party’s superdelegates would still vote as the reliable instruments of the Democratic establishment? And even if they did, who is to say that other Democrats would tolerate a nomination brokered by a bunch of insiders? In the blog age, such events would likely turn the party upside down.

...

None of us know where politics is headed after this campaign, as one American moment passes and another begins. John Kennedy ushered in the generation of American leaders born after 1900, and his short presidency made possible a prolonged progressive era and, ultimately, the Reaganesque reaction to it. Gary Hart imploded, but his generational rebellion against liberal orthodoxy and his embrace of a modern economy — Hart and his brethren were known as the “Atari Democrats” — led directly to Clintonism. Similarly, even should Obama fail, he will be followed by reinforcements in both parties, an invading army of Gen-Xers who grew up amid the bitterness and polarity of boomer politics but who never quite understood why. It may take four years, or another four after that, but the door is now ajar. And history tells you that all the delegates in the world — super or not — won’t be able to slam it shut.

Back-Room Choices

1. The Female Thing
2. Mind the Gender Gap
3. Race Matters—and Class, Too
4. Winning Women Isn’t the Same as Winning
5. Besides, Women Keep an Open Mind
6. What About the Middle Ground?
7. The Gap That Matters
8. What Makes Women Tune Out
9. Pride and Prejudice
10. XX Marks the Spot
11. When Sisterhood Is Power
12. More Sense Than Sensibility
13. It Does Take a Village
14. Or a Cybervillage
15. The Political Is Personal
16. By the Numbers

SINCE 1964, more women have voted than men have, and since 1980, they have voted at higher percentages: 54 percent of voters in the 2004 presidential election were female. If women care less about politics than men do, why do they bother? In one recent study, women said that they vote to protect their interest. Whereas men said they vote because they enjoy politics. To a campaign strategist, the female vote — if you can get it — must look like the Chinese market does to an entrepreneur. Only a modest percentage has to want your product, and you’ll succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

See also: Where Did All Those Gorgeous Russians Come From?

16 Ways of Looking at a Female Voter

The surge's successes and limits are both plainly visible on al-Kindy today. A well-stocked pharmacy has reopened. A new cell-phone store selling the latest in high-tech gadgets opened in December. A trickle of shoppers moved along the sidewalks on a recent chilly morning as a grocer, who asked that his name not be used, surveyed the local business climate. "Things are improving slightly," he said. "But not as much as we hoped." Indeed, if al-Kindy is coming back, it is doing so slowly, unevenly—and only with a lot of well-armed help. Sandbagged checkpoints stand at either end of al-Kindy, manned by Iraqi soldiers with machine guns. Iraqi police in body armor prowl back alleys and side streets to intercept would-be car bombers. U.S. military officials often point visitors to al-Kindy Street as a metaphor for what is working—and what remains undone. "We still have some work to do," says Lieut. General Ray Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq. "I tell everybody we've opened a window. There's a level of security now that would allow [Iraqi politicians] to take advantage of this window in time, pass the key legislation to bring Iraq together so they can move forward. Are they going to do that? In my mind, we don't know."

One year and 937 U.S. fatalities later, the surge is a fragile and limited success, an operation that has helped stabilize the capital and its surroundings but has yet to spark the political gains that could set the stage for a larger American withdrawal. As a result of improving security in Iraq, the war no longer is the most pressing issue in the presidential campaign, having been supplanted by the faltering U.S. economy. Voters still oppose the war by nearly 2 to 1, but Democrats sense the issue could be less galvanizing as troops begin to return home. Republicans who supported the surge, like Arizona Senator John McCain, have been trying out tiny victory laps lately, but because the hard-won stability could reverse itself, both parties are proceeding carefully. Interviews with top officials in Baghdad and Washington and on-the-ground assessments by Time reporters in Iraq reveal why the surge has produced real gains—but also why the war still has the capacity to cause collateral damage half a world away.

Why the Surge Worked - TIME