The New York Times has a habit of publishing these loathsome little profile articles that either belie the paper’s liberal reputation, or are a stealthy attempt to bring about the Red Revolution by stoking class hatred. These generally take the form of profile stories about wealthy suburbanites in Westchester County or Connecticut, who have more […]
Category: Class Issues
Physics Can Fix This
One of the NCAA pools I’m in has a copy of Obama’s bracket entered, and the last I checked, I’m a couple of games up on him. This means I’m as qualified as anyone else to offer a plan to fix the financial crisis, and I have just the plan we need. On the question […]
Class and College
Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau offers a provocative comment on class and higher education: Today (OK, yesterday, but I didn’t really sleep on the plane, so it’s still yesterday, or tomorrow is also today, or something) a friend offered (without necessarily endorsing) the theory that one reason why we try to get everyone to go […]
Why “Clean Coal” Matters
Back before things went pear-shaped this weekend, Jonathan Zasloff had a good post about why “clean coal” is important: I think it’s terrific that the Coen Brothers are making funny, effective ads against relying on “clean coal” as part of the US energy program. But I worry that the clean energy community is really missing […]
Don’t Let the Door Hit You in the Ass
The big news of the day from the world of politics is that President Obama plans to cap executive pay at banks that take bailout money in the next round of emergency cash payments. This is not popular with the executive class: “That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly […]
Sports, Test Scores, and the Difference Between Science and Journalism
Inside Higher Ed has an article on athletics and admissions based on an investigative report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The report compares the SAT scores of football and basketball players to those of other students, but what it really highlights is the difference between science and journalism. The basis of the report is pretty simple: […]
Teachers, Quarterbacks, and Markets
Will Wilkinson has some comments about an article by Malcolm Gladwell from The New Yorker. I basically agree with him about Gladwell, but I’m bothered by the last paragraph: Now, there’s no point in saying things that will make your readers think you are an evilcrazy person, so I can understand why Gladwell wastes words […]
Bailouts Explained
As always, if you want penetrating analysis of the news, you need to go to a comedian. Jon Stewart explains why Congress is willing to bail out Wall Street, but not Detroit: The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c Autoerotic Explanation Barack Obama InterviewJohn McCain Interview Sarah Palin VideoFunny Election Video […]
What’s the Matter With Your Definitions?
Over at Slate, Daniel Gross has a really dumb piece on rich people voting for Obama “against their own economic interest”. There are many dumb things about this article, starting with the fact that it doesn’t even attempt to answer the question in its title, but the main thing that’s dumb is the framing of […]
The Visual Display of Political Information
The closing narrative of the McCain campaign is apparently going to be “Obama’s a pinko commie socialist who wants to raise your taxes,” which means it’s time for all good liberals to bust out the graphs to show why this is false. Well, graph, singular. You know the one: I don’t remember who first posted […]