I like the ACLU in theory, and I want young people to learn how to read, but stuff like this gives me the jeebies. I don’t mind special assistance requirements, but the “reasonably expected to enable the pupil to bring his or her reading skills to grade level within 12 months”? Yikes. Output-based rights freak me out.
Samsung flew some bloggers to a trade show and threatened to leave them there.
Texas and California are both looking at high speed rail, but in very different ways. I am personally a lot more comfortable with the Texas model, though I do have to concede that the California one is much more likely to actually get built.
While Obama and Romney criticize one another over the auto bailout, it’s worth noting that their plans weren’t all that different.
A look at the (some)Times-Picayne. The first major daily to stop being a daily.
New York is trying an output-based program to get juvenile delinquents on the right track. An experiment is going in Haiti with personal poverty coaches.
Derek Thompson writes more on our current baby bust.
Another reason why it’s insane to live in New York City.
Are big business in India insufficiently powerful?
The slut/stud gap is apparently closing.
Conservative publications need more articles like this. I took advantage of some airline miles and got subscriptions to both conservative and liberal magazines. The latter were better, by a mile. The former focus too intensely on the Go Team political ramifications of everything. So good on the Weekly Standard for running this, demonstrating the complexity over scoring political points.
According to a new report, Utah is the nation’s most generous state and red states are more generous than blue ones. Of course, this includes church donations. It would he helpful if it didn’t.
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While birth rates probably will pick up as the economy improves, they may not return to where they had been. For many women, especially those over 30, “later” has a way of unexpectedly turning into “never.”
Yeah, the liberal mags are better. Not sure why. I used to think that conservatives were just the paid or deluded puppets of Big Business. I don’t actually believe that anymore for normal people–I think there are ordinary people who actually hold conservative views about duty, honor, and the like–but I suspect the conservative belief in free enterprise leaves them too open to corruption by business interests, who are the main source of money these days.
Liberals have their own problems–a refusal to face reality among them.
The joke used to be that the Democrats were the evil party and the Republicans were the stupid party (and they get together to do stupid and evil things and that’s called bipartisanship). But I think it’s become the other way around.
While birth rates probably will pick up as the economy improves, they may not return to where they had been.
I think this is true (I also think there is an immigration component to the coming dearth).
SFG,
I think there’s a stronger argument to be made that the Democratic Party has embraced big business in some rather significant ways. Public employees excepted, I think they are to the working man was the GOP is to social conservatives. Every now and again they will find something they can give, but it’s usually hollow or something that only marginally affects a relatively small portion of the population (like the sweet GM-UAW deal).
I haven’t been able to flesh it out as I would like.
As for why the liberal magazines tend to be better, I think it’s related to the creative dearth on the right. Creativity for its own sake has become a partisan value.
reading
By definition, it is impossible to for all students to read at grade level.
baby bust
It is a natural consequence of people delaying adulthood. I don’t know why people want to get all of their ducks in a row BEFORE they marry, have children, etc. There will be plenty of time to get your ducks in a row. If you and your kids have to live in a 2 bedroom apartment for a few years, it’s fine.
Both parents should have an age starting with a 2 when they have their children. They should be DONE by the time they are 30. Instead, they don’t start until they are 30. In the old days, you would see a pregnant 35 year old, and you knew that there was a birth control failure, and there was a 7 and 5 year old at home already.
NYC
I agree. It’s enough that I live close enought where I can look at the 9/11 lights from my home once a year.
The slut/stud gap
Liberal propaganda. Remember, a master key opens many locks. A lock that is opened by many keys is a lousy lock.
The former focus too intensely on the Go Team political ramifications of everything.
This reminds me of my comment as to why most conservative talk radio is unlistenable. I mentioned Hannity in particular. FoxNews tried a version of The Daily Show that bombed terribly. They have another one now that airs at 3 am.
SFG: But I think it’s become the other way around.
As a card carrying Democrat, I can say without any doubt that we are the stupid party and they are the evil party.
Re: Kay Steiger: Yeah, sure, if you confront any fair minded person with a double standard, they are likely to say, well, okay, both men and women who sleep around are behaving badly. That’s not quite the same as actually inflicting the same social punishment. Men looking for wives and women looking for friends both shun promiscuous women, for self-interested reasons. It may be true (I think for self-interested reasons) that promiscuous men should likewise suffer. But neither men nor women actually put their own social capital at stake in meting out that punishment.
By definition, it is impossible to for all students to read at grade level.
Not if you define “grade level” low enough.
I don’t know why people want to get all of their ducks in a row BEFORE they marry, have children, etc.
I have come around to this point of view.
This reminds me of my comment as to why most conservative talk radio is unlistenable. I mentioned Hannity in particular. FoxNews tried a version of The Daily Show that bombed terribly. They have another one now that airs at 3 am.
I once conceived of an ideological counterpart to Colbert. I was about to say that the fact that this hasn’t actually been done when some ideologically uncommitted dope like myself can write the blueprint says a lot. Truth is, though, they’d screw it up if they tried. PJTV could actually be okay if they took just a little bit of the edge off. Instead, they keep putting more on.
Phi,
There is some truth to what is likely different facts on the ground. I’d still wager that this is progress compared to what the answers would have looked like 20 years ago. I also think that there have been some attitudinal changes towards men that get around. This is an area where we are likely to disagree.
Not if you define “grade level†low enough.
The problem is that people are woefully ignorant of statistics. By having everyone meet a named standard, you run into a Lake Wobegon problem. If the standard is so low as to be meaningless, then having the standard is just an exercise in making ourselves feel good about ourselves. Or we can be Orwellian and define “grade level” to mean “minimum standard”.
To use a sports analogy, someone (Asafa Powell) had to come last in the 100m dash in the Olympics. To give them all medals makes winning a medal meaningless.
ideological counterpart to Colbert…they’d screw it up if they tried
SWPLs have no sense of humor about themselves (look at the comments at the SWPL website for confirmation). Plus since the media skews liberal to begin with, a Colbert counterpart would have to be SO over-the-top as to not be believeable. The genius of Colbert is that there are people who think exactly as he does. He is the modern day Archie Bunker.
I’ve always thought of “grade level” as being a minimum. Possibly because I went to a schools where the lower end of my class was competitive with the median elsewhere.
SWPLs have no sense of humor about themselves (look at the comments at the SWPL website for confirmation).
Maybe, but the success of Portlandia suggests at least some sense of humor. I suspect you’re right that there would be a sense of “Hey, that’s not a thing! We don’t do that!” because only things that denigrate knuckledraggers are a thing.
Trumwill: You’re probably right. Both parties have been pretty much captured by Big Business. I happen to think the GOP’s never-raise-taxes-on-the-rich stance is dumb, and we don’t need to be attacking the deficit in the middle of a recession anyway. But I can see the other side. Certainly the Democrats’ ethnic grievance machine doesn’t bode well for white people over the long run.
I am sort of in agreement on taxes-on-the-rich, though (a) I think corporate taxes specifically actually ought to be lower than they are and (b) the notion that we’re going to dig ourselves out of this on “the rich” is… problematic.
As the near-rich (for now) I get a little uncomfortable with “raise taxes on the rich” because I’m like standing right next to them. When rich needs to be defined down to pay for things, well we have a relatively new car in the driveway and are socking away significant amounts of money for rainy days and retirement. “Nice savings account you have there, Will, imagine what the government could do with that money…”