Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will be speaking at Union tonight. This has provoked the predictable huffy reaction from the usual suspects, but I expect it will be an interesting event, and certainly better than David Horowitz or Pat Buchanan, who I’m told were the first two suggestions of the students pushing to invite a… Continue reading Questions for Mike Huckabee?
Category: Politics
Framing Stem Cells
With the “Vox Day” business winding down (one way or another), it’s time to unwind with something less contentious and controversial: Framing! No– seriously. Most of the really loud opponents have publically washed their hands of the whole topic, so I expect this will be relatively non-controversial. What could possibly go wrong? Anyway, Janet is… Continue reading Framing Stem Cells
Humorless Scold Smackdown
Inside Higher Ed notes in passing that several NCAA Presidents are complaining about alcohol advertising during the NCAA Tournament. The source for this is a study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest: According to CSPI’s analysis of broadcasts of the semifinal and championship basketball games, the NCAA is exceeding the limits on… Continue reading Humorless Scold Smackdown
Neil Lewis of the New York Times
The much-promised peer-reviewed research post is going to slip by another day, becuase I had forgotten about a talk by Neil Lewis last night on campus. Lewis is an alumnus of Union, and a writer for the Times best known for writing about the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he was speaking as… Continue reading Neil Lewis of the New York Times
The Cost of Not Framing
In the comments to yesterday’s post about framing, Damian offers a long comment that doesn’t actually contradict anything I said, but re-frames it in terms more complimentary to the Dawkins/ Myers side of things. I may deal with some of what he says over there (probably not today, though, as I have a class to… Continue reading The Cost of Not Framing
Science in the 21st Century
The Perimeter Institute will be hosting a workshop in September on “Science in the 21st Century“: Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars… Continue reading Science in the 21st Century
Social Class and Educational Access
Via Matt Yglesias, the Quick and the Ed offers an absolutely terrific article about the effect of class on access to college, using AJ Soprano as an example. On The Sopranos, AJ was a delinquent, who nevertheless got sent off to college because of the tireless efforts of his mother, and the family’s money. Drawing… Continue reading Social Class and Educational Access
The Framing Fracas
I really had intended for Tuesday’s dog pictures to be my only comment on the recent framing debacle (well, Monday’s expertise post was an oblique commentary on it, but nobody got that, which you can tell because the comments were civil and intelligent and interesting to read). But Chris Mooney is making a good-faith effort… Continue reading The Framing Fracas
Better Teachers Cost Money
Kevin Drum points to a report comparing international education systems from McKinsey and Company management consultants. The report (9.5 MB PDF) does double duty: it serves as a useful and important contribution to the study of education reform, and also as a case study in how to use PowerPoint to generate documents that are well… Continue reading Better Teachers Cost Money
Class and National Service
The Dean Dad posted an interesting article about “national service” programs yesterday. He’s against them, for class reasons: The message that national service programs send strikes me as dangerous. The implication seems to be that rich kids can just jump right into higher ed and start moving up the ladder, but the rest of us… Continue reading Class and National Service