Outgoing Times executive editor Bill Keller's Sunday magazine column (which this week, on the topic of how the potential prosecution of Rupert Murdoch is going to ruin things for the press in the rest of the world, is an appeal to probability inside a false dilemma inside an argument to moderation inside an appeal to consequences) will end in a month. Super-smart guy! Not a fan of the column! In any event, there's a punchline to the news of the column's end that you wouldn't want to miss. Keller is off soon to the increasingly bland and Andy Rooney-ish op-ed pages. READ MORE

"Here are two facts: (1) we now know from the new science of attention and the most recent findings in neuroscience that our brain is not, as was previously thought, an inheritance that come with all of its components fixed and certain; the brain is a learning organism and that means it is constantly changed by its environment, by what it experiences, by its interactions. But (2) except in B-horror movies ('The Brain that Wouldn't Die' or 'The Brain from Planet Arous' and so forth), the brain doesn't power itself and it doesn't power us. The brain R us. That is, what we experience our brain experiences." READ MORE

"He just rolled up and trolled. He went into a venue where people have elected to be, and told everyone that their presence there makes them stupid. He then laments that he did not receive more positive responses from within that forum itself."
—Well, yes, here you go. As someone said earlier today, if Times mag editor Hugo Lindgren really wanted to be a big man, he could probably kick it up a notch by firing his boss and columnist, Bill Keller.

It used to be, back in the day (AKA like, 2008? And 2009?) that you had to get someone to sneakily send you a cruddy iPhone shot of the Times newsroom on Pulitzer day. Now they tweet it themselves. IN ANY EVENT, Executive Editor Bill Keller still has all his hair, despite the long nights he spends tearing at it whilst writing his daily (kidding!) column for the Times mag, and the paper was not snubbed this year, with two Pulitzers, including one shared by the eminently worthy Ellen Barry, the best reporter ever. There's a little something else for almost everyone in these here Pulitzers, in fact! You've got your Globes, your Washington Posts, your LA Times, even your Wall Street Journals. It's the feel-good Pulitzers of the decade! (Well, except for the Miami Herald, who were finalists in the "Breaking News" category this year, which was then not given an award at all.) It's almost like they decided to spread the love amongst all the fabled giants of old. (In other news, Jennifer Egan won for fiction!)

Times executive editor Bill Keller weighs in, in full, on the paper's relationship with Julian Assange—such as it is, as he describes Assange as "arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial and oddly credulous." The relationship, well! Assange was pissed that the Times wouldn't throw a link to the Wikileaks website, and then he got too big for his britches. Oh, and then he started wearing "skinny suits." Unfortunately, Keller reads the Swedish sex charges against Assange rather glossily to my taste: "Two Swedish women filed police complaints claiming that Assange insisted on having sex without a condom; Sweden’s strict laws on nonconsensual sex categorize such behavior as rape." That is not really how I would describe their testimony. In any event, the Times makes much of its willingness to choose and redact Wikileaks data that might embarrass the government or private individuals who provided information. They agreed to not publish things "like a cable describing an intelligence-sharing program that took years to arrange and might be lost if exposed." Gosh that is intriguing! I sure would like to know more. Keller also makes an excellent case against the many popular stupid charges against the Times: "The journalists at The Times have a large and personal stake in the country’s security. We live and work in a city that has been tragically marked as a favorite terrorist target.... Moreover, The Times has nine staff correspondents assigned to the two wars still being waged in the wake of that attack, plus a rotating cast of photographers, visiting writers and scores of local stringers and support staff."

Tom Scocca: Keller of 'NYT' in Iran: 'The Iranians Watch Us Closely' READ MORE

I have emerged victorious from reading Lawrence Wright's Carlos Slim profile in this week's New Yorker. (The article is about the Mexican billionaire-mogul, in light of his financial entanglement with the New York Times.) Here are a few thoughts. READ MORE