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Given the dramatic way in which my tastes and my morality have changed in the last 20 years, I expected (when I finally got around to watching it) that I’d appreciate the dark artistry of the D.C. movie, Joker, even as I was repelled by its nihilistic framing. As dark art (so to speak), it…
As government officials and the mainstream media debate whether to insist that the people they rule wear masks wherever we go, the constantly growing burden of regulations on the healthcare industry seems never to come into question.
Perhaps no aspect of the public health response to COVID has increased my skepticism more than the insane and dogged practice of ignoring the immunity that people can gain from having and recovering from COVID-19. Whether researchers conclude that it is insufficient, too brief, or whatever, credibility required that it be treated as a real…
Attitudes like this, from former Providence Journal reporter and University of Connecticut journalism professor Mike Stanton fascinate me. Commenting on Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee’s hesitance to impose a statewide mask mandate, Stanton writes: Yes, poor leadership. Because it’s contrary to what the doctors & experts recommend. I went to PPAC the other night; they required…
There he is again. Marc Parlange is in the Boston Globe stumping for the Democrats’ biggest legislative priority with “Build Back Better can pull Rhode Island out of the pandemic — if we invest in the Blue Economy.” Why did the University of Rhode Island hire a lobbyist and ideologue instead of a leader? Yeah, sure, the…
Robert VerBruggen’s response is perfect to a chart showing how the average disposable income in most European countries is poverty by U.S. standards: This is why people love using “relative” poverty measures. It’s basically dividing by how awesome America is, to make America look un-awesome. The mind-blowing thing is that most European countries could easily…
The headline that the Providence Journal gave to Mark Patinkin’s latest column puts things in a useful context: “It’s just a cold, right? I thought a booster made me invulnerable — but I got COVID.” If we step back a pace and look at things objectively, we might indeed wonder what makes COVID something other than…
This suggestion from Nicole Solas has stayed near the top of my “to post” list for a month because it gets to an important strategic discussion too often rushed through on the Rhode Island right. Nicole retweeted the picture used as the featured image of this post, which was posted by Kara. The “thank you”…
Back in October, a report from the BBC caught the attention of the trans movement because it conveyed the experience of lesbians who’d felt pressured into straight sex with trans-women (i.e., men presenting themselves as women): One woman described her dates with trans-women as conversion therapy: “I knew I wasn’t attracted to them but internalised…
Is it just me or do the people who support mask mandates seem deliberately to be avoiding the points that those in opposition are actually making? At some point after my post responding to his call for a statewide mask mandate, Boston Globe reporter and columnist Dan McGowan tweeted a link to the CDC’s (incredibly one-sided)…