Ripple
I believe in humanity’s ability to adapt and recover, but it typically comes at the expense of a lot of waste and pain. I’m increasingly worried that we’ve cheated younger generations of the ability to think. Not only are schools failing to teach it, but our emphasis on schooling has drawn many children and young…
When you chant “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea,” what those within Israel or externally supportive of the country hear is similar to what you would hear if a large group of conservatives marched in the street chanting: “White people will be free, from Bar Harbor to San D.” You would…
Step 1: Construct a simplistic narrative with obvious good guys and bad guys and a conclusion with which nobody reasonable could disagree. Step 2: Ensure that the “bad guys” can’t actually harm the people protesting. Step 3: Provide singsong, rhythmic slogans that sound innocuous, but that the intended opposition will understand as threatening. Step 4:…
Hamas executed a brutal sneak attack with no declaration of war against innocent people in their homes and at a music festival. The big complaint against Israel’s response, recently, has been that one day was not enough warning for people to evacuate an area they were planning to attack after a declaration of war. Which…
Dan McGowan notes that new standardized test scores are out for Rhode Island public schools, and they’re not good. Elsewhere, he finds a silver lining in the fact that English-language learners do better at English and are nearly caught up in math, but it seems like an indication of how poorly the schools are doing…
Nonetheless, it’s worth noting this mild corrective from Brown University’s Dr. Ashish Jha on Newsmakers, as summarized in a recent “Nesi’s Notes” column: “I think we all in public health could have done a better job of communicating with more humility about what we knew and didn’t know. There was a desire by some people to…
As people newly look up from their lives to wonder about the craziness with which we’re surrounded — from collegiate support for Hamas to economic ignorance to scientific illiteracy to an inability to grapple with logic — they should turn their gaze toward our schools. Consider this recent Boston Globe column from Dan McGowan: The state’s most…
True enough that it’s important to be skeptical of all reports, particularly the most horrific, at a time like this, but still… there is an air around some of those insisting that the story is not yet verified that implies if this story isn’t true, the whole atrocity is not that bad. Psychologically, they seem…
… the explanation might be more than silent discomfort with a faction of their tribe’s doing something nakedly evil. To progressives, this sort of thing must happen and is expected. Maybe they find it lamentable (or maybe not), but they see it as inevitable on the path to their vision of justice. Tom Holland argues,…
I ask because that looks pretty clearly to be what happens in the video attached to this tweet: Given some online interactions, I’m not even sure Democrat partisans are psychologically capable of seeing the kick — as if it’s one of those optical illusions that some people just don’t process. I suppose the best-case scenario…