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Oh, Dan, Dan, Dan. In drug trials, researchers give a control group of participants a placebo (or a pill with no medical effect) because it is understood that just doing something can have an effect on people’s symptoms, or at least their perception of their symptoms. In most cases, the effect is small, which is why…
Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the school-shooting story in Oxford, Michigan, is that it shouldn’t have happened at all, judging from details provided by Tim Meads in the Daily Wire: The morning of the attack, school administrators met with the boy’s parents and showed them disturbing notes found that day indicating the boy was willing…
Wherever you look to find your bogeymen or whether you support some individual or organization or oppose it, modern society absolutely requires you to keep an eye out for the nudging that Joel Kotkin describes: Nudging grew out of research into behavioural economics, and was popularised in Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s 2008 book, Nudge.…
Judging by social media comments, mainstream media types have been thrilled to hear from NPR that people are dying with COVID-19 at a higher rate in Trump-supporting counties across the United States. Of course, substantive analysis would require many more caveats than our social-media-driven culture tends to address. As the article concedes, the analysis does…
We’ve reached the point that an obvious, relatively mild head cold that peters away over a weekend can keep a child out of school for days. Testing sites in Rhode Island are saying it can take up to 72 hours to get results from COVID tests. Pharmacies are a day out for appointments, with who-knows-how-long…
At least that’s how some health professionals are seeing it: Dr. Omar Hamada on Dec. 1 said that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 may provide natural immunity without inducing severe illness, as the symptoms so far resemble more of a “mild, common cold” in South Africa. In an interview with NTD’s “Capitol Report,” the emergency…
Trinity Rep’s open letter in response to a mostly positive review of A Christmas Carol in the Providence Journal isn’t just thinned skinned; it’s chillingly fascist.
In the middle of the Sixteenth Century, St. Francis Xavier wrote to his friend, St. Ignatius of Loyola, of his experience ministering to Christians in India: We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the Christian religion a few years ago. No Portuguese live here, the country is so utterly barren and…
You’ve probably heard the mainstream media claim that we’re facing the Omicron variant (which may represent the merger of COVID with the common cold) because greedy, racist Westerners were refusing to share their vaccines with Africa. Drew Holden and Aaron Sibarium suggest in the Washington Free Beacon that this analysis is all wrong: In fact, several…
Political observers in Rhode Island shouldn’t be surprised by this announcement from Rhode Island House Minority Leader Blake Filippi: Representing the People of Charlestown, Block Island, South Kingstown and Westerly is the best job, one which I hope to continue in the years ahead. I look forward to helping the Republican nominee for Governor, and…
