Andrew Sprung has an epiphany in the shower:
Mulling therein the consensus that ‘you don’t raise taxes in a recession’ (or frail recovery), and the reality-based community’s corollary that you do raise taxes when faced with a structural deficit, I thought, why not index tax rates to GDP growth?
Fred Malek explains:
"I haven't talked to her in many months."
“There are politicians who don’t cheat on their wives, movie stars whose marriages don’t end in divorce, and professional athletes who aren’t womanizers, but a pro bodybuilder turned Hollywood star turned governor? Arnold Schwarzenegger never had a chance,” – Conor Friedersdorf.
Malcolm Jones interviews British philosopher John Gray:
"I'm not a believer, but I'm friendly to religion, partly because it goes with being human—it's an odd kind of humanism which is hostile to something which is so quintessentially human as religion." That said, "I'm very opposed to investing science with the needs and requirements of religion. I'm equally opposed to the tendency within religion, which exists in things like creationism and intelligent design, to turn religion into a kind of pseudo-science. If you go back to St. Augustine or before, to the Jewish scholars who talk about these issues, they never regard the Genesis story as a theory. Augustine says explicitly that it should not be interpreted explicitly, that it's a way of accessing truths which can't really be formulated by the human mind in any rational way. It's a way of accessing mysterious features which will remain mysterious. So it was always seen right up to the rise of modern science—as a myth, not a theory. What these creationists are doing is retreating, they're accepting the view of religion promoted by scientific enemies of religion, and saying, no, we have got science and it's better than your science. Complete error."
Beautifully, powerfully put. Fundamentalism is not an outcrop of faith; it's what happens when real faith disappears. It is a neurosis, a coping mechanism and a category error – a sign of how deep the intellectual rot in Christianity has gone.
Gray, by the way, helped me tackle Oakeshott in my graduate school days and is one of the most provocative and intelligent theorists out there. "Straw Dogs" is a must-read, especially for those parts where one finds oneself in strenous disagreement.
From the Pentagon's slide show of Bob Gates' farewell tour:
Marine recruits learn martial arts while going through basic training at Parris Island, S.C., May 13, 2011. DOD photo by D. Myles Cullen.
An internet meme is born?
Poet Christian Bök explains his intent for inserting a poem, "The Xenotext", into strings of DNA in bacteria:
[The poem is] written in such a way that, when it's translated into this gene sequence, and then implanted, it can cause the organism it's implanted in to produce a viable protein in response – a protein that is itself a completely different poem. So I'm genetically engineering a bacterium that won't just archive my own text in its DNA, but also becomes a machine for writing a poem in response.
A reader writes:
I've attached a recently published clinical trial paper [pdf] on a new sleep therapy being developed by a company called Ventus. I find the concept to be an intriguingly simple yet ingenious solution to sleep apnea.
I have no idea how long till this will be marketed or whether it will ever be over-the-counter (FDA may think that increasing the pulmonary pressure this way may lead to more stress on the cardiac system). But if you have time, you should definitely take a look.
A brief overview of the EPAP:
According to the manufacturer, Provent uses a one-way valve that is placed over the nostrils at nighttime. The valve opens when you inhale, but partially closes during exhalation, creating positive pressure in the airway. Unlike CPAP, another device for treating sleep apnea, Provent does not use water or an electrical power source. It's also more portable.
I found the nostrils-only CPAP way too much pressure for my puny sinuses. But maybe this version can work more subtly.
A reader writes:
The thing that always pissed me off about G&T programs is that they pulled "gifted" students from core curriculums and gave them extra assistance on "advanced" curriculums. Students of every level benefit from extra-assistance. Focusing resources on those who have a greater chance of succeeding to begin with is akin to providing extra healthcare to healthy patients.
My mother-in-law fights this illogic today. She heads up our county's ESL and G&T programs. The school system is constantly taking funds from the English as a Second Language kids, but never touching the G&T programs. The programs are about socio-economic politics, not best-practices in education. Those in power preserve their benefits at the expense of those who really need assistance. But hey, allowing the smart kids to play chess twice a week is worth it, right?
Another writes:
Nothing you've posted from your readers explains how G&T started in the first place.
I went through middle school in the late sixties, and we were tracked, i.e., we spent our four non-elective academic subjects with the same students, all of generally equal intellectual ability. There were three sets of highest track students, and I was in one of them. The school district was an extremely rigorous, wealthy public district in suburban New Jersey.
Like many of your other readers, I was stunned and delighted to find myself in classes where, for the first time, everyone was on the same reading level and no one had discipline issues. I was amazed at the difference in the classroom, how liberating it was, and how invigorating. We all moved along at lightening pace, and we more or less demolished the grade-level curriculum.
By the 1970s, however, by which time I'd moved to suburban Boston, tracking was considered sinful. We had a curriculum director who declared in writing, and this is almost a direct quote, that segregating children by ability was as evil as segregating them by the color of their skin. No kidding. He was in the same crowd that wanted to expunge grammar from the curriculum because it wasn't "relevant." My personal answer to the ridiculous English classes I had to suffer was to take four years of Latin.
I finished high school in 1973, so I can't speak directly to G&T, but I suspect that the sort of attitude described above played a big role in the creation of de facto tracking of G&T classes in the 1970s. G&T starts in elementary school, so it's earlier tracking. I'm sure it's great for the kids who enjoy it; I'm not so sure that every school system should pay for it. It certainly seems to be at odds with the whole "inclusion" philosophy (and with one child in full-time special education, I could write a book on that).
Jonathan Bernstein asks why Pawlenty isn't "pulling away from the GOP field":
Looking at Nate Silver’s data, Mike Dukakis was an apparent longshot based on early polling, sitting at about 8%. At this point in the 1988 process, Democrats were generally unenthusiastic about the field, distracted by implausible nominees (most notably, Jesse Jackson), and looking for a late entry to save them. Dukakis just rolled along, doing the things that candidates need to be doing, and by the time the actual voting came along he basically had the thing locked up, even though it took a while to get it done.
The Dish 