Ripple

A water drop and ripples

Sometimes it’s unlucky to have been there to make a difference.

By Justin Katz | November 22, 2021 |

This morning, I wondered out  loud what the public narrative would have looked like had somebody taken action to stop the driver from plowing into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin yesterday. Writing about Kyle Rittenhouse, David Burkhead may provide a hint of the answer: “He shouldn’t have been there” is a stupid argument. As a…

A water drop and ripples

Bob Walsh’s view on $3,000 bonuses for government worker vaccination is a perfect example.

By Justin Katz | November 22, 2021 |

Bob Walsh, the head of the National Education Association of Rhode Island teachers union, perfectly illustrates the problem with so much insider thinking in the Ocean State with this comment: Perspective: If you supported the extra $600 per week that unemployed workers received during the pandemic but are critical of a $3000 stipend (less than…

A water drop and ripples

This may be the lyric that marks the turning of the tide.

By Justin Katz | November 20, 2021 |

“Am I the only one who quit singing along, Every time they play a Springsteen song.”     Hat tip Lara Logan.

A water drop and ripples

Do they really care about “a single powerful entity” having control?

By Justin Katz | November 20, 2021 |

Something about the way Ted Nesi puts this question about possible hospital mergers in Rhode Island strikes me as odd: Will Rhode Island and its residents be better off with roughly 80% of hospital services controlled by a single powerful entity? One wonders how many of the people who fear that “an institution so large…

A water drop and ripples

More Taxes on NatGas thanks to……

By Marc Comtois | November 19, 2021 |

As winter nears here in the Northeast, it sure is nice to know that part of the just-passed-the-House “Build Back Better” plan is a tax increase on natural gas. As  Eric Boehm of Reason reports: Buried inside the “Build Back Better” plan that cleared the House of Representatives on Friday morning is a new tax…

A water drop and ripples

Here’s more deliberately withheld context on Kenosha and Rittenhouse.

By Justin Katz | November 19, 2021 |

In keeping with my earlier post about being open to contextual details that may change how we ought to feel about events, note a bit of information from former New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles (about halfway down this page), concerning an article she wrote about the devastation to small businesses in Kenosha, which the paper’s editors…

A water drop and ripples

A mandate for algorithm-free social media might not be the answer.

By Justin Katz | November 19, 2021 |

I’m not sure this is the way to a solution: A bipartisan collective of House lawmakers introduced legislation on Nov. 9 that would require Big Tech providers such as Facebook and Google to allow users to opt-out of content selected by algorithms, providing additional transparency regarding content. The measure, dubbed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act…

A water drop and ripples

Unnecessary, ineffective vaccine payments to special interests is what government does.

By Justin Katz | November 19, 2021 |

Look, nobody should be surprised that Governor Dan McKee’s administration has apparently agreed to give members of state employees’ biggest labor union $3,000 for full vaccination status.  That’s how this works.  If you’re in the private sector, government gives you the choice of being vaccinated or losing your job.  If you’re in the public sector,…

A water drop and ripples

An unsurprising finding that social media is bad for your mental health.

By Justin Katz | November 18, 2021 |

Cal Newport describes an interesting natural experiment created by the way Facebook rolled out from one campus to the next: The authors of this paper connect a dataset containing the dates when Facebook was introduced to 775 different colleges with answers from seventeen consecutive waves of the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), a comprehensive and longstanding…

A water drop and ripples

One state’s child pornography is another state’s mental health aid.

By Justin Katz | November 18, 2021 |

In South Carolina, school districts and now the governor have taken parental concerns about explicit material in school libraries, as Matt McGregor reports for The Epoch Times: “It has come to my attention that public schools in South Carolina may be providing students with access—whether in school libraries, electronic databases, or both—to completely inappropriate books and…