You’ve probably heard of them:  make a pillowcase dress, or two or two hundred, and Little Dresses for Africa will see to it that they’re shipped off to African orphan girls who would otherwise be wearing tattered, ragged clothing. And I know that many of these projects fall into the category of “well intentioned but not actually helpful.”  The clothing that gets deposited in the bins int he grocery store parking lots, if it’s not enough for the thrift stores... Read more

Here’s a thought which I’m trying to flesh out, typing a little bit now, and hopefully more later: I’ve been reading more about the firing of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, and in particular looking at the comment sections of articles, and this is what is clear to me:   In my mind, gay marriage is not an issue that stands alone, but connects to a larger issue of what the point of marriage is, or, specifically, of government recognition of... Read more

Well, what is there to say, really? As has been reported in multiple places (see, among others, this Reuters report) Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich “resigned” from the job, a month into the position, subsequent to protests by gay rights groups, because, during the campaign for Proposition 8 (you remember that one, right?  it banned gay marriage in California, until a judge overturned it, the state refused to defend it, and the Supreme Court ruled that no individuals had “standing”... Read more

So after months and months of renewal notices, my 3-year subscription to The Economist has lapsed.  And holy smokers! (to put it politely) is it expensive, more so than I had remembered, with rates ranging from $1.99 to $3.04 an issue, depending on subscription type, compared to Time Magazine’s $30 a year.  (I was curious what the difference in cover price at the newsstand was, but I couldn’t find this in a quick google search.) Am I going to switch... Read more

That was the topic of a click-bait Slate article, ” Tax the Childless; We should slash taxes on parents by jacking them up for nonparents,” which inspired a NYT Room for Debate debate. The gist of the initial argument is something we’ve all seen before:  parents bear a double burden, not only paying Social Security taxes for today’s elderly, but doing the hard, and costly, work of producing the next generation, who will, someday, provide the labor force to take... Read more

That’s the accusation of this article in The Progressive, as linked to by Best of the Web Today. They report, President Obama just went to Flanders Field in Belgium to pay homage to those who lost their lives in World War I.  But rather than use the occasion to point out the idiotic hideousness of that war, he whitewashed it, praising “the profound sacrifice they made so that we might stand here today.”    He saluted their “willingness to fight,... Read more

This was something I was thinking about the other day (another topic that I don’t really have the ability to research, sadly):  at some point, we lost our way with respect to the way we think about housing.  We (that is, the Experts) all cheer when home prices go up, and tell us that for most Americans, the equity in their homes is the lion’s share of their wealth (or is it the value of the home, without regard to... Read more

Last of the rough drafts to finish up for tonight! The pro-immigration lobby, and pro-immigration* researchers, tell us that there’s no reason to fear large-scale immigration from Mexico because their children will assimilate just as seamlessly as generations past.  Anti-immigration types will dispute this, and say that there are a number of factors that make the current situation different than the past:  the proximity to Mexico reinforcing ties; the prevalence of Spanish, both in government services and day-to-day interactions (“press... Read more

Third post that’s been sitting as a draft for a while. You’ve all seen this, right?  Articles in various sites showing, as in this example, “The Ten Dumbest Common Core Problems.”  Or the kid whose math paper, while correct, fails to use “friendly numbers.”  Or other flaky examples of Common Core math that tries to get kids to learn a convoluted process to find a result, rather than plain ol’ borrowing, or carrying the one, or traditional methods of long... Read more

Unfinished post #2.   It’s a two-fer. This is what I’d like to see happen with college sports. Imagine that, somehow, the revenue-generating college sports become de facto minor league teams, sponsored by the colleges but with paid athletes who may or may not choose to take classes in the off-season either at that college or at a nearby community college.  Colleges don’t have to maintain the pretense that these players are students, the government can collect the now-lost tax... Read more