The Economic and Cultural Divide in America

For most of the last century, wages in poorer parts of America rose faster than wages in richer places, as inventions were put to work in the hinterlands. After Henry Ford invented the Model T, for example, workers on assembly lines all over the Midwest built it. Now it’s just the opposite. Bright young people from all over America, typically with college degrees, are streaming into the talent hubs of America—where the sum of their capacities is far greater than they’d be separately. ...

 Old Movies are SJW Too

When people say they just want 'good stories' and no politics or 'SJW' issues in their entertainment-what they are saying is that when they were kids, they completely missed the subtext of every story, movie, comic book, etc they took in. These stories have always been political. Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, X-Men, Wonder Woman, on and on and on- these are Political / 'SJW' stories. And the message, if you were paying attention at all is one of inclusion...

 How the Civil War Changed Southern Evangelicalism

There is still today a Southern Baptist Church. More than a century and a half after the Civil War, and decades after the Methodists and Presbyterians reunited with their Yankee neighbors, America’s most powerful evangelical denomination remains defined, right down to the name over the door, by an 1845 split over slavery. Southern denominations faced enormous social and political pressure from plantation owners. Public expressions of dissent on the subject of slavery in the South were not ...

 Fall of Atlantis

"But the divine revenge overtook not long after those proud enterprises. For within less than the space of one hundred years, the great Atlantis was utterly lost and destroyed: not by a great earthquake, as your man saith; (for that whole tract is little subject to earthquakes;) but by a particular' deluge or inundation; those countries having, at this day, far greater rivers and far higher mountains to pour down waters, than any part of the old world. But it is true that the same inundation ...

 The Need for Moral Universals in Democracy

Working societies — if they are to endure, grow, and cohere, if they are to prosper, hang together, and really mature — need moral universals. Moral universals are simply things that people believe everyone should have. In the UK, those things — those moral universals — are healthcare and media and welfare. In Germany, they are healthcare and media and welfare and higher education. And so on. Moral universals anchor a society in a genuinely shared prosperity. Not just...

 Public Education as the Great Equity Equalizer

It has the potential to be a great equity equalizer, ensuring that all kids in America have an equal shot at success and a productive life. Because public education involves all kids, it has an opportunity to promote great diversity not only in the composition of its students but also in getting kids exposed to a wide array of different experiences, especially when schools throw open their classroom doors to learning about the world.

 America's Political Future Could Look Like France's

Consider what it would look like for America to follow the path of France, devolving toward a new two-party system which has on the one hand a center-left / technocratic party, full of elites with shared pedigrees of experience and education, and on the other a nativist right/populist party, which represents a constant reactive force to the dominant elite. In France, the École Nationale d’Administration produces the political elite. In America, we have a more diversified but still as domi...

 Risk of Childhood Kidnapping are Very Low

A generation ago 70 percent of children played outside; today the rate is down to 30 percent.209 In 2008 the nine-year-old son of the journalist Lenore Skenazy begged her to let him go home by himself on the New York subway. She agreed, and he made it home without incident. When she wrote about the vignette in a New York Sun column, she found herself at the center of a media frenzy in which she was dubbed “America’s Worst Mom.” (Sample headline: “Mom Lets 9-Year-Old Take Subway Home A...

 Phonetic Orthography in Spain and Italy

Fonetic spelling, in one form or another, has been, and is now, used by progressiv teachers in England and America as an introduction and an aid to the study of the current orthografy. Their experience is that children can spel correctly that is, fonetically the words they ar able to pronounce, as soon as they hav learnd the alfabet employd, and the principle of combining letters into sillables. In languages such as Italian and Spanish, that hav approximately fonetic alfabets, appro...

 Notes From the Cosmic Perspective

Culture is the things you do that you don’t notice. In Italy they have a pasta aisle. In America we have ready made cereal isle, Soft drink aisle. Culture of discovery doesn't last forever Backup mic display Bad seats people Periodic table flags Top countries of element discovery, noble gases Scientists on currency Franklin outwitted god - Lightning rod, discharge electrons 9/11 vs a golden age of islam Alhazen, optics, previously people thought sight was beaming, active 2/3 o...