And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market- …. (from the poem, Perfection Wasted)
Archive for January 2009
John Updike, 1932-2009
January 28, 2009One State Solution
January 23, 2009As hard as it may seem to give Muammar Qaddafi credit for anything at all he’s right in his op ed remarks about the Israel Palestine conflict. The solution is. as he argues, a single state. Anything else including the American favored two state solution would not bring an end to the conflict. And as [...]
Who and What we are.
January 11, 2009Steven Pinker writing above behavioral genetics in today’s, January 11, NYTimes Magazine says this: “Behavioral genetics has repeatedly found that the “shared environment” — everything that siblings growing up in the same home have in common, including their parents, their neighborhood, their home, their peer group and their school — has less of an influence [...]
Defeated Peoples
January 10, 2009“The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” (Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002)
Charters alive and well in Boston
January 8, 2009A new study demonstrates that Boston charter schools significantly outperform Pilot Schools as well as the city’s traditional schools. The study examined state standardized test scores for students of similar backgrounds over a four-year period. In particular Boston Pilot school proponents, because of the “ambiguous or disconcerting results” posted by the Pilots in the study, [...]
The unintended consequences of anger
January 4, 2009I read today about Israel’s ground incursion into the Gaza Strip. Now remember that the total land area of Gaza, as well as the size of the population, are about the same as the area and population of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Will the Israel ground forces be able, as the air forces were not, to stop [...]
A ‘Chinese’ work ethic in American inner cities
January 3, 2009KIPP schools are “no excuses” public charter schools mostly for disadvantaged kids from impoverished neighborhoods of our inner cities. In regard to raising kids’ achievement in class the KIPP program of tough love, including longer school days and a shorter summer vacations, has been enormously successful. Malcolm Gladwell in his new book, the Outliers, sees [...]
On the importance of hard work
January 3, 2009“No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich. (Malcolm Gladwell citing a Chinese aphorism in Outliers, 2008)
“the economy grows at night when the government is asleep”
January 2, 2009Forever we have been asking ourselves where to draw the line between allowing free reign to individuals in order to promote innovation and growth, and establishing strong central governments in order to insure structure, discipline, security, and an expanding bundle of entitlements. Russia’s answer turned out to be incorrect, as did those of most failed [...]
Public Health and Public Education
January 1, 2009Here’s a question no one is asking. Which, public health or public education, should receive the lion’s share of tax payers’ dollars? Or are the education of our children and young people and the health care of our citizens equally important, equally deserving of our resources? Frame the question in anyway you like. Should my [...]
