It’s a gorgeous day in western Indiana today so I decided to bike to the Tippecanoe Battlefield. It’s about 7 miles from my house, which is nothing for a serious biker. But then I’m far from a serious biker. I pedaled my three speed out there. It’s up River Road, which would be nice except […]
Continue reading →Someone called Jonah Shepp at the Dish says that, in this piece where I criticized Reihan Salam for his wrong and insulting piece on public school funding, I “lost it.” Honey, if you think that’s me losing it…. Look: read Salam’s piece. Then read mine. Reihan Salam’s piece was far, far more aggressive and insulting […]
Continue reading →Do you want to know how material, structural solutions to our racial inequalities become part of the vague, useless “conversation about race” that we have been having and talking about having for years and years? When a piece advocating those material, structural solutions is misrepresented as just another salvo in that conversation about race– by those praising […]
Continue reading →Via Alexis Madrigal, this piece by Beau Cronin on what it means to say a machine “thinks like a brain” is required reading, particularly if you enjoyed my Bloggingheads chat with Alexis. (You haven’t watched it yet? What are you waiting for?) This piece by Tressie McMillan Cottom on the economic limits of education and […]
Continue reading →It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s long piece making the case for reparations, which you should really find time to read in full. It’s interesting, though: I’m not that interested on the question that tends to stoke the most controversy about this issue, the moral claims of descendants […]
Continue reading →Steve Hyden, writing at the True North of the American Middlebrow: “But an album that the majority of pop fans will have no interest in hearing (in part because it’s been rigged to turn those people off) can never be meaningful.” Once again: it’s not the “snobs” who close doors and forbid some kinds of […]
Continue reading →Reihan Salam is a very popular guy with other professional political writers, so I am risking opprobrium in criticizing a piece he wrote about education. But it needs to be said: this is an awful piece that marries broad ignorance about its subject matter to the condescending Slate house style. Salam: Say you were given […]
Continue reading →So for awhile now some readers have asked me to set up an automated Twitter feed to tweet out my new posts, I guess because the RSS feed age sort of died off with Google Reader. Since I aim to please, I’ve finally figured out how to do so. (I think.) It’s here. I set […]
Continue reading →In his latest gem-encrusted masterpiece, Tom Friedman takes aim at a basic mathematical concept when he declares that”average is over.” He then proceeds to demonstrate that he doesn’t understand how averages work. I’ve been arguing for a while now that “average is over.” It has to be when every boss has cheaper, easier, faster access […]
Continue reading →So in response to this Michelle Goldberg interview with Vox, I want to point you in the direction of this piece I wrote awhile back. To put it simply: Goldberg is simply incorrect about who the people expressing “anti-liberal” sentiment are, and in fact, they are far more a part of the Clintonite triangulation lineage […]
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