Written

Woonsocket and Cumberland map

Divisiveness and falsehood taint even feel-good student stories.

By Justin Katz | June 15, 2022 |

Stories like this, by Kavontae Smalls in the Atlanta Black Star, should be a more prominent part of local news, giving us all an opportunity to acknowledge and admire the achievements of those with whom we share a corner of the world.  Woonsocket sophomore Mariam Kaba has been awarded a $25,000 scholarship and given $1 million to…

A water drop and ripples

Social justice wokism is a means for elite self-righteousness.

By Justin Katz | June 14, 2022 |

To live in the shoreline suburbs of Rhode Island is periodically to encounter raw evidence that progressivism has gained its purchase here, at least in part, as a way for some of the most privileged people in human history to feel themselves even more superior while assuaging their own guilt by accusing those who are…

Theodore Gericault, Heroic Landscape with Fishermen

The smart set needs to ponder the value of historical limitations.

By Justin Katz | June 14, 2022 |

An episode of the High Noon podcast featuring Oren Cass brought to mind a point relevant to my break from social media. Cass is, in some respects, a contrarian in conservative circles, expressing some healthy skepticism against the free-market bent of the Right (a bent, to be clear, toward which I definitively incline).  The assumptions of…

A girl on her phone in a digital stream

We’re putting aside social media for the summer.

By Justin Katz | June 14, 2022 |

Sometimes the commentary on social media gives one the impression of an alternate reality. At the highest level, social media is a world of information, which means it can be entirely abstract.  You can say or imagine anything, and the more you live apart from tangible reality, the less what you say and imagine has…

A masked figure shushes silence

Redefined “tolerance” in Foster-Glocester is the marker of civil rights lost.

By Justin Katz | June 13, 2022 |

The totalitarian Communist language of administrators in the Foster-Glocester school district is reason for concern about the direction in which our country is headed: Several students at Ponaganset High School brought “anti-tolerant” flags to school following a celebration of Pride Month. In an emailed statement to The Journal, district leaders said there had been an…

A water drop and ripples

A Wildly Disproportionate High School Top 10.

By Justin Katz | June 11, 2022 |

I just came across listings of the top 10 students from three Rhode Island high schools’ graduating classes.  At two of them, nine out of 10 of the students are girls. Being generally against inferring bias based on disproportionate outcomes, I’m certainly open to the possibility that two nearby schools both having only a single…

A water drop and ripples

We live in the world of “Doh!”

By Justin Katz | June 10, 2022 |

You may have seen this image on social media offered as evidence that Fox News is just propaganda: In combination with other similar observations, this is why I’ve been feeling down today. People are actually insisting that the single television news outlet not promoting the same content as all the others is the one spreading…

Pickpocketing in Oliver Twist

Providence’s pension obligation bond shows how civics know-how can be worse than useless to an ignorant population.

By Justin Katz | June 9, 2022 |

A handful of very active people who don’t understand how a policy works can do a great deal of damage, which is an outcome we should be discouraging rather than encouraging.

A water drop and ripples

McConaughey is just in the wrong venue.

By Justin Katz | June 8, 2022 |

Gun-control advocates are very pleased with the speech that actor Matthew McConaughey made from the White House podium, but as is typical, people tend not to look beyond agreement to important secondary considerations. By his choice to be a national activist on this issue, rather than a state one, McConaughey blurred his core issue in…

A water drop and ripples

A tip for a few moments’ distraction.

By Justin Katz | June 8, 2022 |

Wordle is good, but Quordle is better.