Emily Gould is a talented young writer. Here are my thoughts on her first novel, Friendship. “What are your grandest aspirations?” That’s a question on a job application that stymies one of the main characters, Bev, near the very beginning of Gould’s book. If it challenges Bev, it animates Friendship. The question hangs around in the back […]
Continue reading →Were this someone’s attempt at a Tom Friedman parody account, rather than the actual synopsis of an actual Tom Friedman essay, I’d call it cliched and uninspired. This human has passed through parody and gone out the other side. He is a parody wormhole, which the scientists of the future might exploit to permit faster-than-light […]
Continue reading →Above is the image that the august Atlantic has chosen to run alongside an article by David Frum, the Axis-of-Evil coining, unhinged former George W. Bush speechwriter. The headline is “Russia Has Become Dangerous Again.” Illustrating Russia’s danger, apparently, is such a confusing endeavor that you end up with a graphic depicting a German philosopher and economist who […]
Continue reading →If you have a time capsule to fill, you could do a lot worse than to print out some of the crowing about a woman Thor and a black Captain America. The glee with which these changes have been met, contrasted with the bleak state of structural change and economic justice, will tell you pretty […]
Continue reading →You know I don’t know, at this point, how anyone could be surprised by the results of Sweden’s voucher system. We are now several decades into the modern education reform movement. Its history is a litany of failure, of vast promises and pathetic returns, of constantly over-promising and under-delivering. The charter school Deion Sanders started […]
Continue reading →Danielle Kurtzleben reflects on the myth of the STEM shortage and its analytic problems: [I]t’s not necessarily that there aren’t enough science and math scholars out there; it’s that there aren’t enough people out there with the particular skills the job market needs right now. Spending four years doing biology experiments is no guarantee for […]
Continue reading →So here’s some bile from commenter Dawn Kwicksoat that is one part common, one part unique: And you guys… we have to stop arguing by telling others what the believe instead of arguing with what they actually believe. It’s useless and destructive. I guess when you use a different internet handle at other locales, this […]
Continue reading →So to continue with my complaints about how, in a world where nuance is dead, we’re unable to tell the truth, here’s a piece from Gawker’s Dayna Evans going after Vine star and moron Nash Grier for an ugly video in which he says the word “fag” and suggests that HIV/AIDS is “a gay thing.” […]
Continue reading →I’ve been thinking about pointing this out, off and on, for awhile now, but then David Brooks goes and lays it out so directly I can’t help myself. I’ve argued in the past that journalists and pundits, in general, don’t respect academics and teachers. Some people disagree. What’s much more clear, however, is that whether […]
Continue reading →I have seen now some dozen people share this ProPublica map, about the use of restraining holds on school children, on various social networks and websites. It makes me sad, because this issue is sad. But the kind of reactions that are being provoked also make me sad, because they demonstrate the ways in which […]
Continue reading →