Ripple

A water drop and ripples

Be great if we talked more about young’ns voting.

By Justin Katz | March 12, 2024 |

Letting 17-year-olds vote in primaries if they’ll be eligible to vote in the associated general elections is certainly reasonable, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t note a pair of conspicuous questions along the way. Firstly, why do Democrats seem always to want to expand voting toward the most manipulable constituencies? Secondly (and perhaps relatedly), why…

A water drop and ripples

Sometimes it’s the minor legislation (like weekly pay mandates) that is the most telling.

By Justin Katz | March 11, 2024 |

This legislation is hardly the most-pressing matter facing Rhode Island at the moment: Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III and Rep. Enrique George Sanchez are sponsoring legislation to require most businesses in Rhode Island to pay their employees weekly. Has either of these legislators ever had to make payroll for a business?  One suspects they simply…

A water drop and ripples

Vitalogy is a reminder of our need for adventure (at least for me).

By Justin Katz | March 6, 2024 |

Yesterday, I listened to Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy album all the way though for maybe the first time because it’s the 574th best-selling album, and I’m tracing that list from the top. The band’s prior recording, Vs., had been such a disappointment that I didn’t bother with its follow-up. Vs. came out while I was a…

A water drop and ripples

Plotting degree prices versus earnings 10-years later yields unexpected results in Rhode Island.

By Justin Katz | March 4, 2024 |

This is certainly not where I’d have placed the dots if somebody asked me to guess: That Rhode Island College is the least expensive, and doesn’t seem to produce a great effect isn’t a surprise.  Johnson & Whales, however, is surprising, and New England Institute of Technology is even more so, both in how expensive…

A water drop and ripples

What explains Rhode Island’s emissions increase?

By Justin Katz | March 4, 2024 |

The focus of the related article is explaining why the American Northwest was unique in the country in its increase in emissions from 2022 to 2023, but Rhode Island is a conspicuous red dot on Michael Thomas’s map: If accurate, this result shows “net zero” proclamations to be so much hot air, but what happened?…

A water drop and ripples

Bjorn Lomborg’s illustration of number cooking can’t be ignored.

By Justin Katz | March 1, 2024 |

Honestly, it looks like Lomborg has identified a typical example of the method of operations for alarmists with this tweet: As with economic numbers, environmental alarmism creates too much incentive of money and power for the numbers to be trusted.

A water drop and ripples

The scale of NYC’s banana-republicism is difficult for most people to fathom.

By Justin Katz | February 29, 2024 |

But Mark Steyn clarifies it with his usual panache: … one hears so much breezy chit-chat in America about appealing this and appealing that one takes one’s appellate rights for granted. Not so. In order to appeal, a losing party has to post a bond for the amount at issue. … This is no small…

A water drop and ripples

A few words on the viral video of girls dancing at a concert (or something).

By Justin Katz | February 29, 2024 |

I haven’t seen anybody outraged by this video. I have seen a lot of people displaying their moral superiority to the people who are supposedly outraged by it, though. For that reason, it seems like a good example of the way in which social media can social engineer movements by creating opportunities for communal opposition…

A water drop and ripples

One undeniable fact about the huge influx of illegal immigrants…

By Justin Katz | February 28, 2024 |

… is that we, the People, are being manipulated. Of course, we should be clear.  The contribution of illegal immigration is not the entire 3.8M, which also includes whatever increase there would have been, if any.  (Presumably, immigration could prove to had made up for what otherwise would have been a decrease.)  We also should…

A water drop and ripples

Progressives’ Valentines give a hint of life when everything’s political.

By Justin Katz | February 28, 2024 |

It seemed to be a mini-fad, this year, for progressives to post fake Valentines on social media that weren’t about love, but about their political positions.  This one, from RI Kids Count captures the distasteful feel with particular gusto: The tone is hard to miss, with its insinuation of superiority and assumption of bad-intent and/or…