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Johns Hopkins is an early example: A new working paper from Johns Hopkins University’s “Studies in Applied Economics” institute claims that COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by a variety of governments worldwide had “little to no effect” on COVID-19 mortality. The study, conducted by three professors from around the world, also found that lockdowns “imposed enormous economic…
Don’t miss the fact that this was published in The Atlantic by a senior fellow at the progressive Brookings Institution, Shadi Hamid: The racial disparities in COVID outcomes are a matter of record, but to suggest that race causes these negative outcomes is a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. This is how facts,…
Granted, I’ve been falling behind lately, but it still surprised me when some of the other participants in a class I attended last week brought up the compounding effects of the massive trucker convoy taking place over weeks in Canada to protest vaccine mandates. As Russell Brand notes in the video below, following the news…
Writing for J&S Transportation, Travis Van Slooten tries to understand why Americans have moved during the pandemic. To start with, though, we should probably think about why they have not: A lot of attention has been focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected moving trends in the U.S. While some use terms like exodus when…
Jon Miltimore explains why Dolores Umbridge is the best character in the Harry Potter books (as distinct from his favorite character). She’s an archetype, and unfortunately, our society is becoming more archetypal, these days, so to speak: Like Dolores Umbridge, Australian leaders (and Lemon) apparently see no problem in using force for the greater good, including using…
I notice, here and there around social media, that the Trump derangement inexplicably continues. He truly is the face on the screen for a daily two-minute hate. One wonders about the degree to which it’s a deliberate decoy from news like this: A new court filing by special counsel John Durham reveals that Department of…
Brown sociology professor Hilary LevyFriedman presents us with an interesting philosophical and sociological question: Like, seriously: “Not a single kid has died in a mass reading, yet they’re banning books instead of guns.” As far as I can tell, the quoted text is an uncited retweet of BlackKnight10k, whose deep insight has had a healthy…
We just got in from the whole family shoveling snow, with some drifts up to three-and-a-half feet. Here’s the recovery formula: Six ounces of mid-roast Starbucks espresso out of the machine Mix in a shot (or so…) of Mister Katz’s Rock & Rye whisky Put on Miles Davis Kind of Blue Light a candle Choose to…
As I’ve been finishing off some chores while catching up with podcasts during the blizzard, a thought that’s been forming for a while struck home very clearly. In general, we’ve got two approaches to understanding our existence: top-down and bottom-up. Top down is more concerned with meaning and teleological understandings of purpose. From this approach,…
Going through links I’d flagged for comment, I came across a Fox News article by Danielle Wallace after Winsome Sears — “the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia’s history” — won her campaign for lieutenant governor: [She] attributed her victory to voters being sick of seeing Black and White people pitted against…