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Responses to questions about education.

April 8, 2012

“Future Parent and possibly Teacher…15 years from now” e-mailed a series of questions. Here are some brief responses: “Where do you see us standing in terms of education quality 15 years from now?” It’ll be better at some schools, worse at others, and roughly the same at still others. There will still be the traditional [...]

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April Fools.

April 1, 2012

I woke up this morning to learn that someone thought that this April Fools’ Day, it would be just hilarious to create a fake Facebook account for my “slightly younger” brother and send me a friend request and message. I haven’t spoken to Vic in almost seven years, so naturally my heart leapt and I [...]

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QFT.

March 31, 2012

I have a new favorite quote about teaching. It comes from Glenn Reynolds of blogging and law-professoring fame: It is not compassionate to allow your students to learn less than they should. –Instapundit.com, March 25, 2011. There may be some quibbling over the precise meaning of “should,” especially given the practice of shoving kids into [...]

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“People hate what it’s safe to hate.”

March 25, 2012

So today I was reading this blog post about the recent rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. (The blog post is a comment on this op-ed from ynetnews.com.) A comment on the blog post struck me enough that I had to pass it along. The comment comes from someone with the handle “Prologue.” Here goes: When [...]

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On libertarianism.

March 24, 2012

An anonymous reader e-mailed, “Your thoughts on Libertarianism and the growing movement especially amongst young people?” I’ve written several posts that address libertarian ideas in some fashion. I’m not going to list them all here, but you’re welcome to dig around for them. I recommend starting by entering “libertarian” or “libertarianism” in the search box. [...]

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Happier news.

March 21, 2012

Since the Fates seem to be frowning on my place of employ this week, I thought I’d share some happier news. 1. I had some good visits with friends and family this spring break, which included seeing my niece for the first time. 2. On Monday, three different babies called me “Uncle Dom,” or at [...]

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Perhaps I missed the point.

March 14, 2012

In all the hullabaloo about (1) requiring religious organizations to purchase insurance plans that cover contraceptives, (2) requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives in the insurance plans that they provide to religious organizations– which is, like, completely different from Item 1– (3) whether a particular Presidential candidate would attempt to ban contraceptives, (4) whether a [...]

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On Ayn Rand.

March 10, 2012

An anonymous reader asked, “What do you think of Ayn Rand? I recently read Atlas Shrugged and wanted to hear what you think.” From what I’ve seen and read of her interviews, she seemed like an unpleasant-enough person that she’d cast almost anything I wrote about her as foolish, ignorant, infantile, malicious, stupid, or some [...]

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On Wallerstein.

March 4, 2012

A few days ago I was asked to watch and presumably comment on an interview with Immanuel Wallerstein about capitalism and the debt crisis. Here’s part one. Here’s part two. Here’s part three. Wallerstein had some interesting things to say about the long-run stability of systems, but I would probably disagree with most of his [...]

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2012 Resolution #10.

February 28, 2012

In my “Resolutions for 2012,” #10 was “I shall make a 10th resolution before February 29th, 2012.” I now have one. After doing a bit of cleaning and reorganizing ’round the house this weekend, it occurred to me that roughly 82% of the total mass of my house is books. In fact, two of the [...]

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Questionnaire 9.

February 27, 2012

Here’s another twofer. The first batch comes from a website called Marc and Angel Hack Life: THESE QUESTIONS HAVE NO RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWERS. BECAUSE SOMETIMES ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS IS THE ANSWER. 1. HOW OLD WOULD YOU BE IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW HOW OLD YOU ARE? My current age. Not knowing one’s age does [...]

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