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A small liberal arts college was recently rocked to discover that a visiting lecture series was funded by the Koch Foundation. Whitman College, in rural Washington, hosts "The Classical Liberalism Lecture Series" each year, which is supposed to bring "more conservative ideas to campus." It was formerly funded by a private donor and then last year, it was funded by the Kochs, after the school applied for a grant from one of their foundations. But the story, as the student paper tells it, is confusing. It's all put together as "liberal college worried about conservatives on campus," basically, but that's not the real story at all. The story, from what we can tell, really goes like this: "There were no undesirable strings attached" to the grant money, says one professor—but then the faculty "perceived the [Charles G.] Koch foundation as overstepping its bounds." (Perceived!) Apparently, to be vaguely specific, that particular Koch Foundation "started wanting all sorts of other things, like student emails." Like what else? Oy, student newspapers! Love you, and here's some tips: demand a copy of the correspondence between the school and the Koch Foundation! Demand a copy of the school's grant paperwork! Ask the trustees and the school president to lay it out! This sort of vagueness is untenable.

Today's New York Observer editorial page, as always, does not disappoint, in the form of this editorial in praise of movies and TV filming in New York City. READ MORE

Morrissey's last album, 2009's "Years of Refusal," was so much better than it had to be—with at least three tracks that were actually terrific, A+ Morrissey material, and at least three more that were solidly really good. So the advance from his new album (which does not yet have a label??) is disappointing—he played three songs live on BBC Radio 2 last night and they were not so enjoyable! (Despite each of them having pretty terrific Morrissey titles.) Above is "The Kid's a Looker," the one I like best. Perhaps these songs will be formulated, in their final versions, into wonderfulness?

Journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis writes today about, well, the opposite of growing up gay in isolation? He has a Twinkie Defense, essentially, about growing up around too many gays: "Growing up a few minutes from the Castro didn’t make me gay—if anything, it made me less likely to see myself that way. I couldn’t relate to AIDS or leather chaps, both of which seemed to be afflicting many of the gay men I saw on the corner of Castro and Market, where, in middle school, I had to transfer buses on my way home from school." READ MORE

Former Radar editor Maer Roshan—along with his partners, Allison Floam (who built Microdialogue, which does consumer analysis, and also sells SunSak, which is "a round towel that transforms into a tote bag") and Joe Schrank (who runs a for-profit addiction recovery program)—have launched a website called The Fix, which covers the wild world of addiction in general and also has rehab reviews. In other new publication news, there is The Atavist, which (more slowly) publishes tablet and reader long-form nonfiction "singles" (that are not necessarily related to atavism).

There's a whole story that we're waiting to hear, and it may take a few decades (centuries?) to get in full. With the murky news that the CIA was bilked out of $20 million for hoax "terrorist-detecting software, software that the CIA suspected was fake for years before anything was done about it, it has to be asked: is the CIA actually not an immense, successful octopus diligently working to rearrange the order of the globe? Are they in fact just a bunch of ineffectual overpaid chumps, who were taken entirely by surprise by Tunisia, Egypt and Libya? Who are too busy using drones to shoot random "militants" in Pakistan to achieve any major goals in the rest of the world? (All the while staffing embassies with "contractors" who poorly promote "instability" ?) Is it really possible that the post-Cold War apparatus, which still costs taxpayers billions of dollars, was diverted entirely to bin-Laden-related issues, with little or at least unknown success over the last decade, therefore deprioritizing all other agendas? When you look back at their documents from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, you see a well-informed and active global intelligence network in action. In 40 years, will they be releasing just a few muddled cables related to Libya and Yemen? Or have all of the events of the last month been their doing? (Related: Prime Minster David Cameron is going to apologize for his country's paternalistic (at best!) role in propping up crappy regimes around the world.)

Laura Miller takes issue with National Novel Writing Month: her concern is that this is a symptom of the Culture of Narcissism™ and that it means none of these would-be writers reads, or at least, none of them will have time to read throughout the month of November. (Her argument is actually fairly complex, so it's worth reading for yourself; it's also vigorously rebutted elsewhere.) Apparently the world is plenty full of people who write but do not read? This has not been my experience but I have not met everyone, so I won't judge. She has further complaints: "I am not the first person to point out that 'writing a lot of crap' doesn't sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it is November." Oh, is it now. (Look, this is me, avoiding a stupid and obvious joke!) But seriously, how about a whole year of crap, cuz lemme tell you about that. Anyway: yeah, we probably should be rewarding book readers in some way! When I was a kid, the youngster who checked out the most books in a month got a little award. Hmm. Though I guess I don't really check out books from the library any more? But I sure do have a craving for awards. Maybe the Culture of Narcissism™ got me too.

"In the ’90s, when we were afraid of ‘selling out,’ we hated the gatekeepers, the mainstream corporate culture that assimilated and corrupted the underground. Now that the mainstream has fragmented, we see it as just another tool to get our message across, and our animosity has been forced to move on to another bugbear that is, like mass culture, ultimately a version of ourselves: the fake hipster."