Justin Katz
I’ve always thought it too obvious to be a blindspot that opponents of abstinence education behave as if a quick course or two ought to do the trick if such an approach were going to work at all. As I’ve said before, the cultural movement of which such people are a part does not really…
House/building painting isn’t a very difficult job. I don’t say this disparagingly; working in construction, I’m certainly aware of aspects of the professional painter’s job that require skill and patience that I myself often lack (or have little interest in developing). That painting tasks exist for which one is well advised to hire an experienced…
It’s amazing enough that Cranston firefighters can retire after twenty years at any age, but this is stunning: Once retired, retirees continue to receive extra pay each year for longevity bonuses and extra pay for 15 holidays! So, they get longevity bonuses for a job that they no longer do, as well as holiday pay…
Suppose you had a variety of tasks, none of them highly specialized, for which you wished to hire workers. Of the several people whom you interview, one declares that he can do everything himself, provided you sign a contract to that effect. Now, do you expect him to offer an hourly rate that is: Substantially…
Andrew suggested to Jim Hummel, on this morning’s On the Record, that the Democrats in the General Assembly are, in some sense, biding their time until they manage to place another Democrat in the Governor’s chair. I’m not so sure the Democrats are (or should be) desirous of such a visible monopoly on Rhode Island…
I don’t often link to videogames around here, although they’re in plentiful supply on the Internet, but I’ve come across one that might be worth some of your idle time (assuming you have some): DayMare Town. It’s a puzzle, in essence, and the atmosphere is of a hand-drawn Poe sketch (perhaps best experienced at night).…
Keep an eye out for my piece in the Providence Journal today, “Lynch: Rhode Island’s Activist General?,” which addresses Attorney General Patrick Lynch’s response to an op-ed by Joseph Cavanagh and Lincoln Oliphant, objecting to Lynch’s finding that Rhode Island would recognize same-sex marriages from Massachusetts. The heart of the matter is that those pushing…
Mark Patinkin’s recent piece, “18 Things To See In R.I. Before You Die,” highlights one of the ways in which a small place like Rhode Island can grab you: When people talk about places (or events) around the state, you’re likely to have something to add to the conversation. For example, the second thing on…
On the spot… after a trial… whatever. I don’t think a 5% reduction is worth taking the step of granting a police officer with a tube the power of judge, jury, and executioner. If we’re serious about curtailing drunk driving, let’s not revoke licenses at all, or at least without multiple warnings (unless death or…
Contra the dogged rhetoric of the president’s domestic nemeses, the Big Lie of the war in Iraq has been the insistent obliviousness to the arguments on which the war was founded. The case for the war consisted of three mutually supportive notions, and all have largely been borne out — with the complications attendant to…