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Category Archives: Commentary
Glass Half Full or Empty?
Here’s an intriguing case of how two journalists looked at the same data and led a story with completely different points of view. The basic story is that the company Bankrate did a survey of 1,000 people, asking whether they … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary
Tagged interpretation, journalism, spin
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Gondolas of Mars?
So you think that fake news is a 21st-century thing? Not hardly. People have been lying or–more to the present point–getting things wrong for centuries. An article on Five Thirty-Eight shares how an astronomer’s mistake through a telescope, seeing something … Continue reading
Is This Our Best Rhetoric?
What value does rhetoric have in the United States of 2016? When the Oxford dictionaries name “post-truth” as the word of the year, rhetoric’s place in the world should be obvious. It was by a very skillful use of the … Continue reading
How to Win a Super Bowl
I did not have a dog in the fight of Super Bowl XLIX (pronounced Ex-Ell-Eye-Ex). My only speck of preference lay in the fact that my wife’s bike sports Seahawks colors. But I did appreciate the fact that, as seems … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary
Tagged preparation, student success, study
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Why the liberal arts in general and English in particular are important. Reason #67
A recent study performed by the Council for Aid to Education, reported that fully 40% of four-year-college graduates performed at less than a proficient level in measures of critical thinking. The graph below displays the gloomy results of this survey. … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary
Tagged liberal arts, student success
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Misinformation and Its Spread
A long-time friend has been posting intriguing stuff on Facebook recently. Over the last couple of days, he’s been reposting items from a website designed to tell folks from the liberal side of the world what they want to hear … Continue reading
Are We Getting Stupider?
A cluster of studies suggest that average IQ has fallen in recent years after decades of steady increases. One explanation is the greater influence of youth culture and the decreased influence of older people on the young. Westerns have lost … Continue reading
The First “Horror-of-War” Movie?
Every generation, it seems, believes that the cinema of their time, in response to the war of their time, has invented the War-is-Hell movie. Before The Hurt Locker, before The Deer Hunter, before Rambo, before MASH, and before Catch 22, there was The Big Parade. Check … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary
Tagged cinema, Film, World War I
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Here’s a Cheery Little Look at the Future
If this doesn’t make you want to drop out of school and take up…I dunno, maybe jousting, then I’m not sure what will. Or maybe it ought to make you want to be an engineer or computer scientist.
Posted in Commentary
Tagged automation, jobs, robotics
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Obviously home schoolers are deprived of a meaningful education. This kid only knew something about art (rather than Marvel movies), could express it in a physical manner (rather than buying it), and could write capably about the experience (rather than … Continue reading →