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Journalists: Stop Rolling Over For Your Detractors
Journalism is an important institution in the free world. Few dispute this. Journalism is an important institution in America, too; one so valuable that the framers of our Constitution chose to codify the freedom of the press in the First Amendment ( Read more... ) -
Self-Employment and Taxes: anybody know how that works?
2010 might turn out to be the first year I actually make more than $400 over the course of the year by doing freelance writing. There's a possibility that I will earn considerably more than that if I decide I want to go all-out and do it full time, but that's probably not going to happen ( Read more... ) -
Healthcare Reform Post-Mortem: What Happened, and Where we Are Now
Two comments; first: Yeah! We did it! Change!
And then: what the hell happened?We had a popular new Democratic president with outstanding rhetorical skills, elected with the biggest percentage of voters in 20 years - largely on plans to reform healthcare - allied by the biggest Democratic majority in congress since 1976 - and in spite of that it ( Read more... ) -
The Current Debate over American Education is Classist
You can't convince me how you believe in the potential of kids from low-income, failing schools, and then in the same breath argue that people who grew up in those schools are bad candidates to be teachers.
But that's what a recent article in Newsweek seems to do, in a discussion of the need to fire teachers whose students underperform, and the ( Read more... ) -
J.K. Rowling Explains the Benefit of Failure
I was inspired by this video where J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter - who was living off of government welfare when she wrote her first book - explains the benefit of personal failure and disadvantage.
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.
I've often had mixed feelings about academia, which seems to, ( Read more... ) -
Obama's First State of the Union Address: A Great Start for 2010
If you are viewing this entry from Facebook, click "view original post" at bottom of the page to see the poll as it is included on livejournal ( Read more... ) -
Young People Stayed Home in Massachusetts on Tuedsay
Yesterday I made the claim that the electorate that sent Republican Scott Brown to the Senate in Massachusets must have looked very different from the electorate that sent Barack Obama to the White House in 2008; the collection of voters that went to the polls was much older and more conservative than what Massachusetts normally looks like ( Read more... ) -
Take a Breath, Folks: Brown's Victory is Not Disaster for Democrats
There is a lot of sensationalism in the media right now, especially among progressives. That is because a Republican, Scott Brown, just won the remainder of Ted Kennedy's senate term in sparkling-blue Massachusetts in a special election yesterday. The narrative is reading: Democrats Failing, America Tilts to the Right; electorate punishes ( Read more... ) -
How Harry Reid Could Keep his Senate Seat
Cross posted to On One Hand
It's not looking good for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who is up for re-election in November despite polls that show him trailing major potential Republican candidates ( Read more... ) -
Confession: I Have a Farm on Farmville
Cross-posted to On One HandI used to reflexively put all my friends' application items on "hide" when they showed up on my Facebook news feed. That included annoying, meaningless notifications like "Christina could use some help fertilizing her crops!" or "Dan found a baby calf on his FarmVille, will you give it a home ( Read more... )