Andrew Scurria, Sebastian Pellejero and Soma Biswas:

Puerto Rico’s long history of failing to pay its pension obligations is expected to haunt the U.S. territory even after its bankruptcy ends.

A proposed bankruptcy restructuring under consideration by a federal judge would end defined-benefit retirement programs covering tens of thousands of active teachers and judges in Puerto Rico. The pension benefits public employees have already earned would be honored when they retire, although current workers can’t accrue anything more.

Those measures would help close a roughly $55 billion gap between the retirement benefits owed to public servants in Puerto Rico and the funding set aside to pay them. Active teachers and judges are being shifted under the bankruptcy plan into defined-contribution retirement products akin to 401(k)s, ending the defined-benefit formulas in place when many of their careers began. Retirement ages would be increased, delaying when pensions can be tapped.

Fixing the pensions system in Puerto Rico will continue to burden both its employees and its shrinking base of taxpayers. The bankruptcy plan pays in full the defined benefits accrued over the past few decades, when politicians routinely dispensed pension enhancements and other retirement perks without the proper funding.

Dr. Amesh Adalja:

It was evident almost from day 1 that COVID-19, caused by an efficiently spreading respiratory virus with an animal host, was with us for good. The goal of the public health campaign was not to somehow return the virus magically to bats but to tame the virus and shift its spectrum of illness to the mild side — all the while acknowledging that there would always be a baseline number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

Biden faces series of minefields in coming year
Massive sewage spill closes beaches around Los Angeles
By repeatedly counseling the public with these facts early on and coupling it to actionable ways for people to learn how to develop the ability to COVID-19 risk calculate (e.g. get vaccinated, wear masks in high-risk situations, outdoors are safer than indoors, surface transmission is not common) the rise of omicron and the looming ubiquity of infections would not seem so startling.

Matt Taibbi:

However, much like the Hillary Clinton quote about “deplorables,” conventional wisdom after the “gaffe” soon hardened around the idea that what McAuliffe said wasn’t wrong at all. In fact, people like Hannah-Jones are now doubling down and applying to education the same formula that Democrats brought with disastrous results to a whole range of other issues in the Trump years, telling voters that they should get over themselves and learn to defer to “experts” and “expertise.”

This was a bad enough error in 2016 when neither Democrats nor traditional Republicans realized how furious the public was with “experts” on Wall Street who designed horrifically unequal bailouts, or “experts” on trade who promised technical retraining that never arrived to make up for NAFTA job josses, or Pentagon “experts” who promised we’d find WMDs in Iraq and be greeted as liberators there, and so on, and so on. Ignoring that drumbeat, and advising Hillary Clinton to run on her 25 years of “experience” as the ultimate Washington insider, won the Democratic Party leaders four years of Donald Trump. 

It was at least understandable how national pols could once believe the public valued their “professional” governance on foreign policy, trade, the economy, etc. Many of these matters probably shouldn’t be left to amateurs (although as has been revealed over and over of late, the lofty reputations of experts often turn out to be based mainly upon their fluidity with gibberish occupational jargon), and disaster probably would ensue if your average neophyte was suddenly asked to revamp, say, the laws governing securities clearing. 

But parenting? For good reason, there’s no parent anywhere who believes that any “expert” knows what’s better for their kids than they do. Parents of course will rush to seek out a medical expert when a child is sick, or has a learning disability, or is depressed, or mired in a hundred other dilemmas. Even through these inevitable terrifying crises of child rearing, however, all parents are alike in being animated by the absolute certainty — and they’re virtually always right in this — that no one loves their children more than they do, or worries about them more, or agonizes even a fraction as much over how best to shepherd them to adulthood happy and in one piece.

Related:

Behind the scenes, there must be HUGE battles going on between the various groups in the Democratic Party. If schools close down, Democrats will lose every election for the next ten years. 

I suspect that the Democrat leaders are making some deals that suburban schools stay open, because they can’t afford to lose the suburbs, but they’ll take the loss in the cities.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Cate Cadell:

China is turning a major part of its internal Internet-data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets, according to a Washington Post review of hundreds of Chinese bidding documents, contracts and company filings.

China maintains a countrywide network of government data surveillance services — called public opinion analysis software — that were developed over the past decade and are used domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive information online.

Committee to Unleash Prosperity

Well, just as we feared: the politicians learned NOTHING from the first rounds of Covid.

So now, with the holiday break over, and time to get kids back in the classroom, and after taxpayers shelled out about $190 billion in ransom payments to the teachers unions to get them to, you know, teach, 2,200 schools are closed today.

And guess what: they are almost all in blue states and blue cities.

Jonathan Turley:

Now Roberts appears to have responded. His report is striking in its measured and deliberative tone in comparison to the often reckless rhetoric of these politicians. He waited to address the year in review for his court and the 107 district and appeals courts across the country. However, he included the following lines that are clearly directed toward Congress and extreme Democratic groups like Demand Justice:

“Decisional independence is essential to due process, promoting impartial decision-making, free from political or other extraneous influence. The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co-equal branch of government.”

The criticism comes after new polling shows that Roberts is the most popular government official in the country, a fact that led some on the left to express almost apocalyptic alarm.

He is not the only justice who is speaking out to blunt the attacks on the Court. Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer chaffed at the claim that this is a “conservative” court and noted “The chief justice frequently speaks on this subject as well and says, no, no: we don’t look at our rulings from the point of view of our personal ideology.”

Justice Thomas criticized those who seem intent on diminishing the authority or respect for the Court: “the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference…They think you become like a politician. That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recently told an audience that “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”

Jaewon King:

Food prices are estimated to rise 5% in the first half of 2022, according to research firm IRI, though the level of increases will vary by grocers and regions.

Mondelez International Inc. MDLZ 0.55% said recently that it was raising prices across cookies, candy and other products sold in the U.S. by 6% to 7% starting in January. General Mills Inc. GIS 0.19% and Campbell Soup Co. CPB -0.32% said their price increases also would take effect in January. Kraft Heinz Co. KHC -0.14% told retailer customers that it would raise prices across many of its products including Jell-O pudding and Grey Poupon mustard, with some items going up as much as 20%, according to a memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The increases follow others that food manufacturers imposed in 2021, and are part of what businesses and economists call the highest inflation in decades. Higher wage, material and freight costs are prompting industries from manufacturing to retail to raise prices of goods, creating an environment in which some executives say they have room to charge more.

Jim Steele:

Having studied fire ecology for 30 years and knowing her published science, I could only believe she had been corrupted by the need to attract large amounts of funding, and these days that comes to those who blame the climate crisis. And here’s why I now hold that opinion so strongly.

Colorado’s Marshall Fire was a grassfire that happened with temperatures hovering around freezing. All fire experts and fire managers know grasses are 1-hour lag fuels. That means in dry conditions grasses can become flammable within hours. Attempting to link CO₂ global warming, she and other alarmists were now blaming the Boulder area’s grass flammability on the warm dry conditions from July through November. But dry conditions in the past months are totally irrelevant. Those months could have also been cold and wet, but just one day of dry conditions is all that is needed for grasses to burn.

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox:

California is suffering a major demographic reversal, one that threatens both the state’s economic future and the durability of its progressive model.

The numbers speak for themselves: The Golden State’s population has started declining for the first time, with new data from the state Department of Finance showing a population loss of 173,000 for the year ended July 1, 2021—a number that includes more than 56,500 pandemic related deaths, mostly of older Californians.

Net domestic migration hit a decade-long low, ballooning from a loss of 34,000 in 2012 to 277,000 in 2021. Over the last 10 years, California lost more than 1.625 million net domestic migrants—more than the population of Philadelphia. Altogether, 2.7 million more people—a population larger than the cities of San Francisco, San Diego and Anaheim combined—have moved to other states from California than the other way around over the last 20 years, and immigration is no longer making up the difference.

Many in the state’s media and political establishment insist that the demographic decline is a “myth” concocted by red-state haters. It’s not. The state that attracted America’s domestic migrants through the 20th century is losing millions of them in the 21st century.

This isn’t the Rust Belt of the 1970s, but the exodus out of the state and especially its metropolitan areas seems to be accelerating. From 2000 to 2020, Census Bureau estimates indicate that metro Los Angeles has lost 2.2 million net domestic migrants, metro San Francisco 400,000, metro San Diego 200,000 and metro San Jose 400,000—even as the rest of the state saw a net gain of 600,000.

Wall Street Journal:

This month the CTU asked its members if they’d support a district-wide return to remote learning. The survey also asked what actions they’d participate in to force the Chicago schools to improve health safety measures. Corey DeAngelis, a Cato Institute adjunct scholar who is also national director of research for the American Federation for Children, reported on Twitter that 91% of the union members who responded said they’d participate in a “remote work action”—that is, a strike—if the schools don’t pause in-classroom learning.

This is the same union that last December, in a now deleted tweet, declared that “the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.” Not that the Chicago public school system has covered itself in glory. This week it was forced to extend a deadline for returning Covid home tests after the local press ran photos of returned tests piled up at overflowing FedEx dropboxes.

Mr. Martinez says there will be no city-wide move to remote learning, and any switch will be done on a school and classroom basis. In nearly two years of living with Covid, surely we have learned that the cost in lost learning of keeping children at home is exorbitantly high while the risk that they will get seriously ill from Covid is low.

Jasmine Alyce

Ciearra Baker of St. Louis surprised her son and daughter with their own vending machine and starter snacks for the holiday in lieu of toys so that they can start learning how to be “young bosses in the making.” 

“Let’s not handicap these kids making their lives easy. I’m not buying toys my kids most definitely will understand life is not easy and making the right choices with money & etc…,” Baker wrote on Facebook. “So I came up with the idea to invest in vending machine for the kids as Christmas gift #Young bosses in the making”

Will Bunch:

By the late 2010s, less than a quarter of American eighth graders scored at or above the “proficient” level in civics, according to a National Assessment of Educational Progress exam in that subject. I guess that jibes: In a world in which a carpenter has no need for biology, why would he need to know how a bill becomes a law, or the role of the Supreme Court? Or why it’s good when the candidate with the most votes wins an election?

The US spends more on education than other countries. Why is it falling behind?

Apxap:

Minnesota’s St. Paul Children’s Campus will soon close one of the eastern subway’s only pediatric intensive care units, even as the same hospital prepares to add a new 22-bed inpatient mental health unit for children aged 5 to 18.

Children’s Minnesota – which was established in the capital in 1924 – manages some 380 beds between the St. Paul and Minneapolis sites of its nonprofit hospitals. These hospitals and their state-wide network of clinics, specialty care, and rehabilitation sites form one of the largest stand-alone pediatric health systems in the country, and fundamental changes are underway as that system. is approaching the century.

Eric Berger:

Case counts “are causing a lot of panic and fear, but they don’t reflect what they used to, which was that hospitalizations would track with cases”, said Dr Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

However, other infectious disease experts say that while they are encouraged by data from South Africa showing that its recent Omicron wave was not accompanied by a significant increase in deaths, the virus continues to strain hospitals in the US, therefore the number of Covid cases remains a vital measurement.

The US on Thursday had more than 580,000 new Covid cases, the second time this week that the country has broken its record for daily Covid cases, according to New York Times data. But over the past two weeks, while the number of Covid cases in the United States has increased by 181%, the number of hospitalizations has increased by 19% and the number of deaths has decreased by 5%.

“It seems to be less virulent for two reasons,” said Gandhi. “One, we seem to have so much more immunity in December 2021” than during previous waves, and “there are now five laboratory studies that show that it doesn’t seem to infect lungs very well”.

In reporting data on Covid, health departments should now take the same approach as they do with influenza, Gandhi said. That means releasing hospitalization and death data but not numbers concerning case counts because, like with the flu, it’s not possible to eliminate the virus, therefore we should only focus on its severity, she said.

Dave Cieslewicz:

And there is a certain amount of Jacobin terror out there. If you’re a young professor looking for tenure, you place your career in peril if you disagree with any of this. If you publish books or edit a newspaper, magazine or website and you publish something that runs counter to the dogma, you can find yourself booted by your own staff. If you run a business, but don’t fall in line, you can be run into the ground by a boycott and a besmirching of your brand. 

That’s why I think it’s so important for liberals, like me, with nothing to lose, to speak up strongly and just say it in clear terms: you do not have to accept critical race theory. It’s okay. You can still call yourself a liberal. You are still a good person. And you are not a racist. 

If enough people say this out loud, then maybe we can make the world safe again for ideas and for classical liberal values. We can end the terror. 

Because my own theory is that the American system contains the means of its own correction. I like Bill Clinton’s formulation: “There’s nothing that’s wrong with American that can’t be fixed with what’s right with America.”

Emily Rizzo:

The PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia supports schools returning to in-person learning after winter break.

CHOP released a statement Friday explaining the decision.

“Our statement this morning is upon careful review of the data that’s emerging,” PolicyLab Director Dr. David Rubin said in an interview.

Amid the rising rates of transmission among children, Rubin said, the data shows that the omicron variant is milder than earlier coronavirus strains, especially for those who are vaccinated.

“The sheer numbers of children have resulted in some increasing hospitalizations, but a lower proportion of kids are in our intensive care units,” said Rubin.

Children in the ICU are almost exclusively identified as unvaccinated, Rubin added.

The statement is a consensus across clinical and policy lab teams at CHOP, Rubin said, and stressed the need for returning to the classroom. Schools’ decisions to return to buildings should be more based on “an issue of staffing and operational issues and not related to concerns about the severity of the virus,” he said.

Christopher Ferguson:

Dear American Psychological Association:

It is with a heavy heart that I write to officially resign my membership in the American Psychological Association (APA) at this time effective when my current year’s membership expires. I do so because I increasingly feel the APA has lost its way as either a science organization or an organization representing good clinical practice. Increasingly, I am concerned that its public facing messages are more likely to do harm than good and, as such, I cannot in good ethical conscience continue my membership. I write this in the form of an open letter in hopes my comments may lead to some reflection as well as broader awareness regarding issues facing the APA today.

The problems facing the APA are nothing new. Within my own area of research, the APA has grossly distorted the evidence on “violent” video games for decades, despite repeated cautions from scholars (including, at one point, an open letter by over 200 scholars, as well as a statement of concern from the Society of Media Psychology and Technology). This extends to other public policy statements such as on spanking where the nuances of a complicated and controversial field are flattened into a definitive but ideological stance. Similarly, recent practice guidelines, most notably the guidelines for Men and Boys but also treatment for PTSD, are not well grounded in science and often conflict with scientific data. I worry specifically that these policy statements may do actual harm to clients, particularly that on Men and Boys which has credibly been accused of disparaging more traditional men, and may actually discourage many men and families from seeking treatment they could benefit from.

Lance Morrow:

I once knew a magazine journalist who was addicted to metaphors. He was, so to speak, an alcoholic of metaphors. If he took one sip from the demon rum of analogy, he would be in the gutter by the end of the paragraph. His journalism suffered from what might be called cirrhosis of the prose.

My friend would sit down at his typewriter—this was a long time ago—and set out to tell a seemingly straightforward news story. But in the first or second sentence, his mind would be seized by an image (jaunty, visual, arresting), and pretty soon the seductive analogy would take over the story altogether, hijacking the news report that it was intended merely to embellish.

I thought of him again when I learned that the University of California Irvine has issued an Inclusive Language Guide. In addition to the usual banalities (e.g., “avoid ableist language,” say “folks, team, y’all” instead of “guys” or “gals,” and advance “social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion” with every particle of speech, be it only a “he” or a “she” or a “zhir”), the guide offers this advice: “Avoid metaphors, which can introduce unneeded baggage.” Needless to say, “baggage” is not meant literally.

Glenn Reynolds:

The “public health” response to COVID has been awful. Ever since cases first appeared in Wuhan, the reaction has been marked by mistakes, reversals, outright lying and even political manipulation. We need a thorough accounting.

Mistakes are forgivable. In the early days, everything we knew came from the Chinese government, and while we now know that Beijing lies about everything, we knew less then. In fact, it not only lied about the disease’s origins, its nature and its spread, it kept the Wuhan airport open for weeks, allowing (deliberately?) the disease to take hold all over the planet before anyone else knew it was coming.

And in a fast-moving situation with imperfect information, mistakes are inevitable and hence forgivable. Nobody’s perfect.

Likewise, reversals aren’t necessarily bad. You make a decision based on what you know. Later you know more, and you change. That’s not just forgivable, it’s laudable: You’re supposed to change your mind when you realize that you were wrong. (Of course, it’s better if you explain why you made the change and if you don’t pretend that your first, incorrect, decisions were based on unshakable and incontrovertible science only to pretend that your new approach is, too.)

Logic Matters:

A gentle introduction?

My Category Theory: A Gentle Introduction is intended to be relatively accessible; in particular, it presupposes rather less mathematical background than some texts on categories. The version of January 29, 2018 is x + 291 pp. long, and is very much work-in-slow-progress, at an uneven level. I then had to leave it on the back burner while finishing of IFL2 for the press: but I now hope to return to it.

The current version incorporates a raft of corrections of the previous version, but everything of course still comes with the warning caveat lector. However, although I started writing really as an exercise in getting myself a bit clearer about some basic category theory, I hope that others will find something of interest and use here. Obviously I’d very much welcome comments and corrections.

There are a lot of possible follow-up materials listed here. But if you want something just a step or two up from my notes but still tolerably gentle, let me highlight two books listed below. One is Steve Awodey’s Category Theory (chapters available on his website here). The other is Tom Leinster’s Basic Category Theory.

Kali Holloway:

That would explain why CBS News last month posted a tweet that asked, “How young is too young to teach kids about race?” The network had blatantly overlooked the experiences of Black and other nonwhite kids, who mostly learn about racism through firsthand experiences at disturbingly young ages—never at a time of their choosing. “They say, ‘Our children are too young to hear about racism.’ Who is our children?” asked a Black parent named Caron LeNoir in a Washington Post piece that is among the few CRT-focused articles that actually features Black parents’ voices. “I don’t remember a day of my life when I wasn’t taught about racism, or learning about it through just existing.” Black kids are always dealing with the actual consequences of racism. A 2008 Harvard/University of California study found that by the time they’re 4 years old, white kids “express negative attitudes and stereotypes” toward nonwhite kids, while Black and Hispanic kids show no “in-group” bias toward those who look like them. A 2019 study concluded that both Black and white preschoolers have already developed “a strong and consistent pro-White bias.” A whole body of medical scholarship has demonstrated the deleterious impact on Black and other nonwhite kids of not seeing themselves reflected in the world.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

In his New Year’s message, Yonden Lhatoo demands Western governments free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange before preaching press freedom to everyone else. pic.twitter.com/dVN4NTO7KC

— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) January 1, 2022

Douglas Hook:

“If we learned anything from this pandemic, it’s the damage that was done to kids should never be repeated,” said Baker on Thursday. “We have the tools and capabilities to keep people safe.”

DESE announced Wednesday that it will send the rapid antigen tests to districts so all teachers and staff can test for COVID before they return to school following the break.

Alex Hammer:

An error-filled letter from a Virginia teachers union president calling for increased protections against the coronavirus was mocked relentlessly on Twitter after an appalled parent took a correction pen to the piece and posted the revised version online.

‘Hey @VEA4Kids, are you going to send out more of these grammar worksheets over break?’ parent Ellen Gallery wrote Thursday morning, in a post that featured the heavily marked-up document sent by Arlington Education Association President Ingrid Grant.

‘My kids and I had a great time spotting errors! Did we find them all?’ the mom quipped.

Gallery, who describes herself as a home-schooling mom, marked up roughly 20 grammatical errors highlighted in green pen in a letter Grant sent to Arlington Schools Superintendent Dr. Francisco Duran to increase the amount of on-site COVID tests for schools in the Virginia district.

The letter was only five paragraphs long.

“An emphasis on adult employment”
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Ronald N. Kostoff, Daniela Calina, Darja Kanduc, Michael B. Briggs, Panayiotis Vlachoyiannopoulos, Andrey A. Svistunov and Aristidis Tsatsakis:

Highlights

•Bulk of COVID-19 per capita deaths occur in elderly with high comorbidities.•Per capita COVID-19 deaths are negligible in children.•Clinical trials for these inoculations were very short-term.•Clinical trials did not address long-term effects most relevant to children.•High post-inoculation deaths reported in VAERS (very short-term).

Abstract

This article examines issues related to COVID-19 inoculations for children. The bulk of the official COVID-19-attributed deaths per capita occur in the elderly with high comorbidities, and the COVID-19 attributed deaths per capita are negligible in children. The bulk of the normalized post-inoculation deaths also occur in the elderly with high comorbidities, while the normalized post-inoculation deaths are small, but not negligible, in children. Clinical trials for these inoculations were very short-term (a few months), had samples not representative of the total population, and for adolescents/children, had poor predictive power because of their small size. Further, the clinical trials did not address changes in biomarkers that could serve as early warning indicators of elevated predisposition to serious diseases. Most importantly, the clinical trials did not address long-term effects that, if serious, would be borne by children/adolescents for potentially decades.

A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic. The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.

Perell:

This is the opening message of Andre Agassi’s biography, Open. Agassi was the son of a tyrannical father who cared for little beyond creating a tennis champion out of his little boy. Steered by his father’s heavy hand, and often against his will, Agassi rose to be the number one player in the world. To others, the top was an unachievable dream. To Agassi, it was a toxic ball of fire.

The fame, the ridicule, and the decades of living a life he despised caught up to Agassi. His anger became resentment, his resentment became rage, and his rage descended into a decision to dump crystal meth on a coffee table, cut it, and snort the powder up his nostrils with the speed of a U.S. Open serve.

Why did Agassi break under the pressure of discipline? How does his story represent so many of us?

Aruna Viswanatha and Sha Hua:

In January 2020, Gang Chen and about two dozen other professors and students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology traveled to Shenzhen, China, to talk about overlapping university research, visit local companies and interview students interested in studying at MIT.

When Mr. Chen landed back at Boston’s Logan airport, Customs and Border Protection agents pulled him aside, seized his laptop and two cellphones and began asking him what he had been doing in China and why. Mr. Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering and an American citizen, told them he had been collaborating with a Chinese university and that all his research had been conducted in the U.S.

One year later, he was arrested on charges of concealing extensive ties to China in grant applications he had made to the U.S. government. It was one of a string of attention-grabbing cases brought by the Justice Department to address suspicions that the Chinese government was exploiting academic ties to engage in technological espionage.

Since then, the government’s pursuit of academics for alleged lying about their affiliations has faltered. The first such case to go to a jury ended in an acquittal. Out of 24 other cases, nine defendants have pleaded guilty. Charges have been dropped completely in six others, five of which officials said they dismissed because the scientists involved already had been sufficiently punished by being detained or otherwise restricted for a year.

Wall Street Journal:

The year 2021 that ends this week wasn’t the return to normalcy that President Biden promised, but it was invaluable in one respect. This was the year when the conformity that characterizes American politics and media was exposed for its mistakes as never before.

By conformity we mean the progressive political and media consensus that forms quickly around an issue and then reinforces itself no matter the competing arguments or new information. This isn’t a conspiracy in any formal sense; there are no organized calls or Zoom meetings. 

This is about a shared set of political values and preferences that leads people to reach the same conclusions about an event. The reporters and commentators of the major progressive media—the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, theNew York Times, the Atlantic, and more—all then reinforce what they now like to call the “narrative” of a story. 

Politicians and the press feed the narrative with leaks and the stories they pursue—or, as important, what they don’t pursue. Disagreement is rare to nonexistent because the cost can be ostracism or lost careers.

Maddie Hanna and Kristen A. Graham:

In questioning the superintendent of a rural school district, a lawyer for Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman repeatedly asked why the state’s academic standards mattered for students entering certain professions.

“What use would a carpenter have for biology?” asked John Krill of Matthew Splain, superintendent of the Otto-Eldred School District in McKean County and president of the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, one of the plaintiffs. Splain had said his district’s scores on state standardized tests in biology and other subjects were not acceptable.

“What use would someone on the McDonald’s career track have for Algebra 1?” Krill continued.

As lawyers for the plaintiffs objected, asking what the relevance was, Krill said that the trial was about whether Pennsylvania was meeting its constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient” system of education.

“The question in my mind is, thorough and efficient to what end? To serve the needs of the Commonwealth,” Krill said. “Lest we forget, the Commonwealth has many needs. There’s a need for retail workers, for people who know how to flip a pizza crust.”

Gail Heriot:

On September 15, 2021, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a report entitled Racial Disparities in Maternal Health (the “Report”). This Dissenting Statement and Rebuttal (the “Statement”) is a part of that report.

Among other things, the Statement points out several errors in Report. For example, the Report incorrectly states that maternal mortality has increased 50% over the last generation. What has actually happened is that changes in death certificates have caused more deaths to be classified as maternal in nature. The Report also emphasizes the theory that racism plays a prominent role in causing racial disparities in maternal mortality. The Statement points out in response that maternal mortality rates for Hispanic and Asian American mothers are lower than the rate for white mothers. This tends to detract from the theory that racism is what’s causing the disparities.

Gail Heriot:

On September 15, 2021, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a report entitled Racial Disparities in Maternal Health (the “Report”). This Dissenting Statement and Rebuttal (the “Statement”) is a part of that report.

Among other things, the Statement points out several errors in Report. For example, the Report incorrectly states that maternal mortality has increased 50% over the last generation. What has actually happened is that changes in death certificates have caused more deaths to be classified as maternal in nature. The Report also emphasizes the theory that racism plays a prominent role in causing racial disparities in maternal mortality. The Statement points out in response that maternal mortality rates for Hispanic and Asian American mothers are lower than the rate for white mothers. This tends to detract from the theory that racism is what’s causing the disparities.

Charles Martin and Ben Popper:

The actual work of software development by vehicle engineers such as Gerding is largely done using C++, which has been the mainstay of the company’s code since its early days. The software reads text-based configuration files. “We invented simple domain specific languages to express those things, such that other engineers in the company who are not software engineers can maybe configure it.”

Flight software for rockets at SpaceX is structured around the concept of a control cycle. “You read all of your inputs: sensors that we read in through an ADC, packets from the network, data from an IMU, updates from a star tracker or guidance sensor, commands from the ground,” explains Gerding. “You do some processing of those to determine your state, like where you are in the world or the status of the life support system. That determines your outputs – you write those, wait until the next tick of the clock, and then do the whole thing over again.”

The control cycle highlights some of the performance requirements of the software. “On Dragon, some computers run [the control cycle] at 50 Hertz and some run at 10 Hertz. The main flight computer runs at 10 Hertz. That’s managing the overall mission and sending commands to the other computers. Some of those need to react faster to certain events, so those run at 50 Hertz.”

There is a wide variety of machines talking to the central flight system. “We have inputs from sensors all over the vehicle, all kinds of different sensors.” Many are measuring internal values critical to the health of the ship and crew. “Temperatures are important. For crewed vehicles, we have oxygen and carbon dioxide sensors, cabin pressure sensors and things like that.” 

Another set of sensors looks externally to aid in navigation and telemetry. “That would be like the IMU, GPS, and star trackers.” Once they are close enough to the space station, they also use laser range finders.

AP Dillon:

“What we’ve seen happen with school boards and parents these past few months reminded me of something that I ran on — and that is the importance of parent voice,” said Truitt.  

“When I declared my candidacy, there were no Critical Race Theory debates, and there was no pandemic, and what I spoke about often on the campaign trail was the need for K-12 education leaders to see parents as consumers,” Truitt said.  

“And in my support of school choice in all of its forms, I have frequently said that the parent is the best person to decide what’s right for their child’s education and that no one cares more about that child than that child’s parents or guardians,” said Truitt. “And to that end, I will, in the New Year, be announcing the formation of a new parent council.”  

Truitt didn’t specify how the new parent council would be set up, but she indicated more details would be coming in the near future.  

North State Journal also touched based with Truitt on the Oct. 4 memorandum issued by U.S. Attorney General directing the FBI to investigate school board protests.  

Garland’s memorandum was based on a Sept. 29 lettersent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) president and CEO. The letter suggested using the Patriot Act and other domestic-terrorist measures to address alleged “violence” and “threats” surrounding school board meetings nationwide.

Laura McKenna:

Are we going to shutdown society and schools again?

There is enormous pressure from the top to not close schools. That’s why the CDC has shifted its recommendations for dealing with positive people. Now, positive people only have to isolate for five days. Fauci says that positive people are really only contagious two days after exposure and the first three days of symptoms. After that, they say that the risk of contagion is minor. (So, we quarantined for ten days for nothing? Ugh!) 

My guess is that big city schools are going to shutdown. School leaders in Washington and Chicago, under enormous pressure by the AFT, are saying that schools will probably go remote in January. Mayor Adams in New York City says they won’t. Behind the scenes, there must be HUGE battles going on between the various groups in the Democratic Party. If schools close down, Democrats will lose every election for the next ten years. 

I suspect that the Democrat leaders are making some deals that suburban schools stay open, because they can’t afford to lose the suburbs, but they’ll take the loss in the cities. 

In politics, there’s always a big difference between what will happen and what should happen. What should happen is that schools remain open, because kids have still not recovered from remote education. One education expert called remote education a “cruel joke,” and I think he’s right. 

By now, there’s just so much evidence about learning lag and behavior issues, but what’s freaking me about today are the stories from teachers saying that their students are developmentally delayed. Third graders are acting like kindgarteners. First graders don’t know how to play with their classmates on the playground.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

FS.blog:

No skill is more valuable and harder to come by than the ability to critically think through problems. Schools don’t teach you a method of thinking. Thinking is one of those things that can be learned but can’t be taught.

When it comes to thinking the mind has an optimal way to be operated. When operated correctly you’ll find yourself with plenty of free time. When operated incorrectly, most of your time will be consumed correcting mistakes.

Good decisions create time, bad ones consume it. Good initial decisions pay dividends for years, allowing abundant free time and low stress. Poor decisions, on the other hand, consume time, increase anxiety, and drain us of energy.

But how can we learn how to think?

Rasmussen Reports:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 75% of American Adults agree that there are only two genders, male and female. That total includes 63% who Strongly Agree. Eighteen percent (18%) disagree.

Taylor Nicole Rogers and Gary Silverman:

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When US civil rights campaigners of the last century took to the streets, they dreamt of a day when black Americans would enjoy the same educational opportunities as everyone else in the country. Sabrina Cannon has lived that dream — and it has landed her deep in debt.

Cannon, 33, was the first member of her African-American family in Buffalo, New York, to go to college, using $100,000 in federal student loans to obtain a marketing degree in 2010 from Niagara University, a nearby private institution.

But she struggled to find work in her field during the tough times that followed the financial crisis, and only earned enough from other jobs to make minimum payments on her borrowings, leaving the principal untouched.

So, Cannon switched gears. She decided her future was in healthcare — specifically, mastering the alphanumeric code doctors use to keep track of patients — and she went back to school part-time to obtain a second degree in 2017 from State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. Resuming her studies allowed her to put payments on her first student loan on hold while she was in school, but it also required her to take on more debt to obtain new credentials.

Max Kutner:

Early last June, Brentwood School posted an image of a black square on Instagram. This was eight days after George Floyd had been killed, and it was part of #BlackoutTuesday, a social media campaign against racism and inequality. Other Los Angeles prep schools also participated in the well-intentioned if largely symbolic online gesture, along with millions of other institutions, businesses, and individuals. But Brentwood’s black box got what’s known as ratioed; it received more negative comments than likes. Many more.

“Brentwood is a toxic racist cesspool for students of color, but an ivory tower for the wealthy, white elite,” read one of the scores of scathing remarks that kept popping up on Instagram throughout the day. “If you cared about racial justice, you would close your doors and redistribute your obscene wealth,” read another.

In the year since Floyd’s murder, the atmosphere at this bucolic, super-exclusive, $38,000- to $45,000-a-year private school has only grown more poisonous, with some Brentwood alumni of color not only hurling accusations of racism but also demanding that the school completely scrap what they see as a biased curriculum. Meanwhile, parents, teachers, and administrators spent much of last summer and fall wrestling over the value of books like To Kill a Mockingbird—a civil rights classic to some; an outdated, problematic text to others—in what’s shaping up to be an epic battle over the hearts and minds of the children of America’s one percent.

To be sure, scenes like this are not occurring only at Brentwood. Similar skirmishes are breaking out at elite prep schools all over—at Harvard-Westlake, Marlborough, and Archer School for Girls in L.A. and in New York at Chapin and Dalton—making headlines across the country in publications as ideologically divergent as the New York Post and The Atlantic. But it’s worth focusing on what’s going on at this particular school off West Sunset. Because it’s here at Brentwood that all the forces arrayed in this conflict—woke alumni who want to tear the system down; teachers who’ve had a hard enough time getting through the year on Zoom, let alone dealing with paradigm shifts in educational priorities; and angry, frustrated moms and dads who just want their kids to get into good colleges—are most dramatically and publicly clashing, like those stranded boys battling each other on a deserted island in Lord of the Flies, one of the novels Brentwood struck from reading lists last year.

Jennifer Jenkins:

When works go into the public domain, they can legally be shared, without permission or fee. That is something Winnie-the-Pooh would appreciate. Community theaters can screen the films. Youth orchestras can perform the music publicly, without paying licensing fees. Online repositories such as the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and Google Books can make works fully available online. This helps enable access to cultural materials that might otherwise be lost to history. 1926 was a long time ago. The vast majority of works from 1926 are out of circulation. When they enter the public domain in 2022, anyone can rescue them from obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover, enjoy, and breathe new life into them.

The public domain is also a wellspring for creativity. The whole point of copyright is to promote creativity, and the public domain plays a central role in doing so. Copyright law gives authors important rights that encourage creativity and distribution—this is a very good thing. But it also ensures that those rights last for a “limited time,” so that when they expire, works go into the public domain, where future authors can legally build on the past—reimagining the books, making them into films, adapting the songs and movies. That’s a good thing too! As explained in a New York Times editorial:

When a work enters the public domain it means the public can afford to use it freely, to give it new currency . . . [public domain works] are an essential part of every artist’s sustenance, of every person’s sustenance.3

Caroline Haskins:

The guide doesn’t just show how Gotham works. It also shows how police are instructed to use the software. This guide seems to be specifically made by Palantir for the California law enforcement because it includes examples specific to California. We don’t know exactly what information is excluded, or what changes have been made since the document was first created. The first eight pages that we received in response to our request is undated, but the remaining twenty-one pages were copyrighted in 2016. (Palantir did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

The Palantir user guide shows that police can start with almost no information about a person of interest and instantly know extremely intimate details about their lives. The capabilities are staggering, according to the guide:

Steve Appleford:

In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.

Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.

“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear,  which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”

That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”

James Somers:

One night in October, 2009, a young man lay in an fMRI scanner in Liège, Belgium. Five years earlier, he’d suffered a head trauma in a motorcycle accident, and since then he hadn’t spoken. He was said to be in a “vegetative state.” A neuroscientist named Martin Monti sat in the next room, along with a few other researchers. For years, Monti and his postdoctoral adviser, Adrian Owen, had been studying vegetative patients, and they had developed two controversial hypotheses. First, they believed that someone could lose the ability to move or even blink while still being conscious; second, they thought that they had devised a method for communicating with such “locked-in” people by detecting their unspoken thoughts.

In a sense, their strategy was simple. Neurons use oxygen, which is carried through the bloodstream inside molecules of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin contains iron, and, by tracking the iron, the magnets in fMRI machines can build maps of brain activity. Picking out signs of consciousness amid the swirl seemed nearly impossible. But, through trial and error, Owen’s group had devised a clever protocol. They’d discovered that if a person imagined walking around her house there was a spike of activity in her parahippocampal gyrus—a finger-shaped area buried deep in the temporal lobe. Imagining playing tennis, by contrast, activated the premotor cortex, which sits on a ridge near the skull. The activity was clear enough to be seen in real time with an fMRI machine. In a 2006 study published in the journal Science, the researchers reported that they had asked a locked-in person to think about tennis, and seen, on her brain scan, that she had done so.

With the young man, known as Patient 23, Monti and Owen were taking a further step: attempting to have a conversation. They would pose a question and tell him that he could signal “yes” by imagining playing tennis, or “no” by thinking about walking around his house. In the scanner control room, a monitor displayed a cross-section of Patient 23’s brain. As different areas consumed blood oxygen, they shimmered red, then bright orange. Monti knew where to look to spot the yes and the no signals.

David Sumpter:

Over the last few years, hundreds of thousands of Swedes have spent an estimated total of more than ten million euros on a book which many of them believed contained a scientific account of human psychology, written by an expert in the area. The book’s success has led many companies and other organizations to order personality tests, from a growing number of suppliers eager to exploit the new market, and apply them on their employees. Surrounded by Idiots has had a major impact on how Swedish people talk to each other about psychology and discuss the behaviour of those around them. Indeed, Thomas Erikson has undoubtedly had the greatest influence on the public’s interest in psychology in a generation.

Unfortunately, the theory behind this book, and the various follow-ups, is no more than pseudoscientific nonsense. And Erikson appears to lack even basic knowledge of psychology or behavioural science. This is why we at VoF (Vetenskap och Folkbildning — the Swedish Skeptics Society) named Thomas Erikson fraudster of the year in 2018.

Accusing an individual of being a fraud should never be done lightly. We need to be very sure of where we stand. Here I lay out the case as to how and why Thomas Erikson books have misled so many people…

“Kids need to be in school.” Thank you, @MassGovernor. pic.twitter.com/kc6Uq0Yi50

— Matt Ryan hosts #CanonChat (@MatRyanELATeach) December 30, 2021

Jason Riley:

Just before the start of my senior year in college, I received a job offer from the local newspaper. A short time later, I ran into a former editor of the college paper where I had previously worked and told her the news. “Congratulations, Jason,” she said. “I heard they were looking for more minorities.”

I don’t know if it was her intention, but the remark stung. The episode crystallized for me one of the major drawbacks of affirmative-action policies. In the name of helping some blacks, they taint the accomplishments of all blacks. No one with any self-respect wants to be perceived as a token, whether in the workplace or on a college campus.

Black professionals who came of age in the era of racial preferences have been dealing with this stigma for decades. Stephen Carter, a Yale law professor, recalls applying to Harvard Law School in the 1970s after completing his undergraduate degree at Stanford. The school initially rejected him but reversed its decision after learning that he was black. “Naturally, I was insulted,” Mr. Carter writes in his memoir, “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby.” “Stephen Carter, the white male, was not good enough for Harvard Law School; Stephen Carter, the black male, was not only good enough but rated agonized telephone calls urging him to attend. And Stephen Carter, color unknown, must have been white: How else could he have achieved what he did in college?”

Here is the full press release announcement. Press conference tomorrow morning. https://t.co/BQWW4mAjyf pic.twitter.com/xi94AlnBe8

— Scott Girard (@sgirard9) December 30, 2021

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Nice depiction in @Forbes showing COVID in schools vs. from schools vs in the community as observed in Wood, Co, WI. As senior author of this study, it was tempting for me to believe this pattern was contingent on masking kids, but for many reasons I have come to doubt this 🧵: pic.twitter.com/ZpeyM8d4Ue

— Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD (@TracyBethHoeg) September 2, 2021

Reversals in Psychology: A list of famous psychological findings that are now in doubt. Includes the Stanford prison experiment, implicit bias, Pygmalion effect, stereotype threat, power posing, multiple intelligences, brain training, learning styles, etc. https://t.co/WOES9XsMfs pic.twitter.com/VXGGhkxpCo

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) December 27, 2021

Jessica Calefati:

Los Angeles Unified was supposed to show other school districts how to roll out an expansive Covid-19 vaccine mandate for students, but its about-face this month may instead have a chilling effect around the country.

In September, the nation’s second-largest school district imposed strict vaccine requirements on children 12 and older, with almost no exemptions. The district blinked at the last minute, however, as community activists and Gov. Gavin Newsom questioned the idea of moving more than 30,000 unvaccinated students back into distance learning.

Other U.S. districts in blue states are scaling back previous student mandate ideas, too. School leaders in Portland, Ore., tabled discussion this fall amid vigorous pushback, while New York and Chicago have taken a wait-and-see approach. Not only are they wary of mandate critics, but they also question whether they should impose a requirement before the Food and Drug Administration fully approves vaccines for their students — a threshold Los Angeles Unified didn’t wait for.

“Better to get it right than be first!” Portland Public Schools Board Member Julia Brim-Edwards tweeted as she and other leaders delayed a vote in Oregon’s largest district.

As we approach the end of Winter Break, my latest for @reason examines the politics and science of masking kids in school and features the head of the FL @AmerAcadPeds, Stanford’s @DrJBhattacharya, and @moms4liberty co-founder @TinaDescovich.pic.twitter.com/OydgNVHKTo

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) December 28, 2021

Emily Buder:

Mathematicians and computer scientists had an exciting year of breakthroughs in set theory, topology and artificial intelligence, in addition to preserving fading knowledge and revisiting old questions. They made new progress on fundamental questions in the field, celebrated connections spanning distant areas of mathematics, and saw the links between mathematics and other disciplines grow. But many results were only partial answers, and some promising avenues of exploration turned out to be dead ends, leaving work for future (and current) generations.

Topologists, who had already had a busy year, saw the release of a book this fall that finally presents, comprehensively, a major 40-year-old work that was in danger of being lost. A geometric tool created 11 years ago gained new life in a different mathematical context, bridging disparate areas of research. And new work in set theory brought mathematicians closer to understanding the nature of infinity and how many real numbers there really are. This was just one of many decades-old questions in math that received answers — of some sort — this year.

But math doesn’t exist in a vacuum. This summer, Quanta covered the growing need for a mathematical understanding of quantum field theory, one of the most successful concepts in physics. Similarly, computers are becoming increasingly indispensable tools for mathematicians, who use them not just to carry out calculations but to solve otherwise impossible problems and even verify complicated proofs. And as machines become better at solving problems, this year has also seen new progress in understanding just how they got so good at it.

Robby Soave:

On Monday, I received a rather curious notification on Facebook. A friend alerted me that when she tried to share a recent article of mine, the social media site automatically blurred the accompanying image, replacing it with the ominous declaration that the link contained “false information checked by independent fact-checkers.”

The article in question was this one: “The Study That Convinced the CDC To Support Mask Mandates in Schools Is Junk Science.” As the Reason Roundupdaily newsletter (subscribe today!), it contained information on several other subjects as well, but Facebook made matters fairly clear that the fact-checkers were taking issue with the part about masks in schools. Attempting to share the article on Facebook prompted a warning message to appear: This message redirected to an article by Science Feedback, an official Facebook fact-checking organization, which asserted that “masking can help limit transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools” and it was false to say that “there’s no science behind masks on kids.”

Since I had never made this claim, it was odd to see it fact-checked. Indeed, the purveyor of false information here was Science Feedback, which had given people the erroneous impression that my article said something other than what I had actually written.

Edmond Ng and James Pomfret:

Hong Kong pro-democracy media outlet Stand News shut down on Wednesday after police raided its office, froze its assets and arrested senior staff on suspected “seditious publication” offences in the latest crackdown on the city’s media.

The raid raises more concerns about press freedom in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise that its freedoms, including a free press, would be protected.

The police action prompted censure by Germany and the U.N. Human Rights Office, which said it was alarmed at the “extremely rapid closing of the civic space and outlets for Hong Kong’s civil society to speak and express themselves freely”.

Stand News, set up in 2014 as a non-profit organisation, was the most prominent remaining pro-democracy publication in Hong Kong after a national security investigation this year led to the closure of jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily tabloid.

“Stand News is now stopping operations,” the publication said on Facebook, adding all employees had been dismissed.

Sedition is not among the offences listed under a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing in June 2020 that punishes terrorism, collusion with foreign forces, subversion and secession with possible life imprisonment.

Closed public schools are lockdowns! They’re also the best example of blatant systemic racism. Private schools were mostly open which would not be allowed if they actually believed the threat to children was immense. pic.twitter.com/76mTubQhvr

— Dr. Clemson (@mikemcmannmd) December 26, 2021

Bari Weiss:

A year ago, I still believed very much that the best use of my energy was to try to work to shore up the old institutions from the inside. I was wrong. My readers know: This newsletter would not exist if I hadn’t changed my mind.

Yoree Koh:

For the past three years, Lance Walker has been locked in a cat-and-mouse game with his 11-year-old daughter for control over her iPhone and iPad.

Initially he considered TikTok a harmless distraction, which Peyton used for watching dance videos. When he discovered she was receiving messages from adult men she didn’t know after posting public videos of herself doing silly poses, he quickly went into Apple Inc.’s parental-control settings to block access to the app. Peyton countered by using a different Apple ID to download new apps including TikTok.

When he tried to delete the Apple ID, she changed the password to block his access to the account. It continued like that for months—his daughter thwarted every attempt by Mr. Walker, a 43-year-old real-estate broker in Johnstown, Colo., to block certain apps through Apple’s Screen Time controls.

“It was a nightmare,” Mr. Walker said. He said he and his wife are still working on a reliable way to keep Peyton off TikTok.

Apple and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the two main software providers for smartphones, have touted parental controls as a way for parents to keep tabs on their children’s technology use. But tech-savvy children, whose online time skyrocketed during the pandemic, are finding ways to circumvent the controls meant to protect them.

I can't even express how angry this makes me. Think of all the lives ruined, jobs lost, education squandered b/c of false positives. We've been saying since summer 2020 that the PCR test can be positive at 5 days or 75 days. And ONLY JUST NOW is it being used to adjust policy. https://t.co/4Q6rHFDB4S

— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) December 29, 2021

LATEST: The newly updated CDC guidelines don’t require testing at the end of isolation because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tells @GMA. https://t.co/p6HUxeD4Go pic.twitter.com/TmVaF0eRcG

— ABC News (@ABC) December 29, 2021

Dean Mosiman:

In Madison, for example, the total tax bill for a $250,000 home in the Madison School District assessed at 100% of its fair market value was $5,336, among the highest in the county.

The highest was $5,593 for a Madison home of the same value in the Verona School District, followed by $5,590 for a Fitchburg home in the Verona School District and $5,423 for a Madison home in the Sun Prairie School District.

Among villages, the highest was $5,537 in the village of Belleville in the Belleville School District, and among towns, the highest was $4,640 in the town of Perry in the New Glarus School District.

The lowest for a $250,000 home was $2,933 in the town of Christiana in the Cambridge School District.

Tax bills began arriving in mailboxes in mid-December. The deadline for owners to pay at least the first installment of their property taxes is Jan. 31.

Rod Dreher:

These people aren’t hiding it. They are openly bragging about propagandizing children without parental consent. Putting their faces to it and everything for plaudits from their online tribes.

Why don’t these people ever seem to be outed, and parents demand that they be professionally disciplined, and (preferably) fired? This is exploitative and disgusting. Are parents afraid to take a stand and to say publicly that there is something wrong with presenting this material to children? Do they fear the accusation of bigotry more than they care for their kids?

Yes, I think they are — and that’s why these lunatics keep posting these things. They know that most parents in this country would rather sacrifice their children to these monsters than stand up and say HELL NO, for fear of personal and professional repercussions.

I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. I’m a bear when it comes to defending my children. If one of these pushy freaks forced their personal choices onto my children in a classroom setting, where they have authority, I would bring down Armageddon on their heads, and on the heads of the school officials who continue to employ their creepy groomer selves.

A friend of mine says this is why he thinks that the transgender cult is going to continue going from strength to strength: because there’s no real fight left in this country, even from the Right.

Christian Schneider:

In December 2020, the U.S. Department of Education announced the creation of a new “Free Speech Hotline” that college students and professors could use to file complaints if their First Amendment rights were violated on campus.

One year later, the department is still withholding records detailing the nature of the complaints filed with the hotline.

On March 31, 2021, The College Fix filed a freedom of information act request with the department to see what types of complaints had been reported. Aside from being granted a waiver of the typical freedom of information act fees, The Fix has not heard back from the department regarding the request.

In April, a spokesperson for the department did confirm the hotline was still active.

“Under the previous administration, the Department established an email inbox to receive complaints regarding campus speech,” a spokesperson told The College Fixat the time. “At present, the Department’s new leadership is assessing this inbox and it remains online.”

But The College Fix heard nothing back from the March FOIA request, nor from a September 27 email sent asking for an update as to the status of the March request.

Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller:

Five months after Kassandra Jones earned her master’s in public health from New York University in May 2019, she still hadn’t landed a job in the field. She was staring down a six-figure student-loan balance and had to pay for rent and food.

So she sold her eggs. Again.

Ms. Jones first harvested her eggs before starting at NYU in 2017 to help pay for moving to the city, she said. She received a $12,500 annual scholarship and relied on $131,000 in federal loans to cover the rest of her tuition and expenses. She has given her eggs five times, including to an NYU fertility clinic, earning $50,000.

Now 28 years old, Ms. Jones is working freelance on public-health campaigns for nonprofits making about $1,500 a month, which isn’t covering her living expenses, she said. She is applying for new jobs and considering leaving the field. “There are definitely moments where that number just looms as this tunnel that doesn’t have a light at the end of it,” she said of her debt. “It feels like I’m kind of trapped.”

Princeton’s latest COVID policy — twice-weekly asymptomatic testing, mandatory “boosters,” banning gatherings that include food, instructing students to “stay in their rooms as much as possible” — is set by a person who previously ran the Gender and Sexuality Studies program pic.twitter.com/5EzGa4Ko19

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 28, 2021

CJ Malone:

“Should you fix errors and contribute to Google Maps for free?”

I feel the same way about OSM. It may be mainly made by individuals in there spare time, but the big tech companies are making millions of it. The same as free and open source software (FOSS).

Apple uses OSM data in parts of the world where their commercial partners don’t provide data. They are reasonably good at fixing and contributing data to OSM in those regions. They employ nobody in the OSM community.

Microsoft Bing uses OSM in several regions, and is slowly moving from it’s traditional providers to OSM globally. They provide machine-learning (ML) datasets that they have computed from areal imagery. They employ nobody in the OSM community.

Facebook uses OSM world wide. They do a lot of quality-assurance (QA) work on OSM data as they were burned by a malicious user changing the name of New York City to Jewtroplis. As part of their work they now release a dataset called Daylight. Daylight is basically OSM data (+ other Open Data, like the Bing buildings) delayed with QA tests. They employ nobody in the OSM community.

Amy King:

From how we say ‘hello’ to the side of the road we drive on, all societies have norms – or ‘rules’ – that shape people’s everyday lives. 

Now a new study – the first of its kind – has shown that children worldwide will challenge peers if they break the ‘rules’, but how they challenge them varies between cultures. 

Led by the University of Plymouth, UK and Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, the study analysed the behaviour of 376 children aged five to eight from eight societies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America.

The children were each taught to play a block sorting game – with half taught to sort the blocks by colour, and half taught to sort them by shape. They were then put into pairs, with one playing the game and the other observing. 

The research showed that observers intervened more often when the other child appeared to play by the wrong set of rules. The more a child intervened, the more likely their partner was to change their behaviour. 

The study also showed that the type of intervention varied – with children from rural areas using imperative verbal protest more than children from urban areas.

Libby Sobic and Will Flanders:

Madison is ranked dead last when it comes to performance among disadvantaged students.

Pre-pandemic, Madison’s overall student proficiency in English/Language Arts hovered around 35% while Milwaukee’s overall student proficiency was even worse at around 19%. Even after accounting for a huge number of students who opted out, proficiency rates plummeted further in the 2020-21 school year.

But concerned parents will find that these shocking results are not reflected in the state’s own report cards. Under the 2020-21 DPI report cards, Madison Metropolitan School District was rated “exceeds expectations” and Milwaukee Public Schools were rated “meets expectations.” You have to be wondering how either of these districts could be considered to meet anyone’s expectations.

DPI, without input from the state Legislature or taxpayers, changed what information was included in the report card scores and how districts are rated. Specifically, DPI changed the cut-off points for the five thresholds that determine a school’s score and changed the manner in which absenteeism is accounted for. Their result? Three hundred ninety-nine of the state’s 421 districts were able to “meet expectations” in a year where student proficiency took a precipitous decline. After a year in which school districts faced extensive criticism for refusing to open despite scientific evidence it was safe, perhaps it makes sense for DPI to give districts cover.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Marty Makary:

The U.S. government is pushing Covid-19 vaccine boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds without supporting clinical data. A large Israeli population study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month, found that the risk of Covid death in people under 30 with two vaccine shots was zero.

Booster mandates for healthy young people, which some colleges are imposing, will cause medical harm for the sake of transient reductions in mild and asymptomatic infections. In a study of 438,511 males 16 to 24, 56 developed myocarditis after their second Pfizer dose (or 1 in 7,830, at least seven times the usual rate). True, most cases were mild, but in the broader group of 136 people (including older and female patients) who developed myocarditis after the vaccine, seven had a “complicated course,” and one 22-year-old died. Moderna’s vaccine carries an even higher rate of heart complications, which is why some European countries have restricted it for people under 30. But in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indiscriminately push for boosters for all young people.

Those recommendations came over the objections of the agencies’ own experts. The last vote by FDA advisers, in September, rejected the proposal 16-2. FDA leaders revisited the proposal in November and simply bypassed the experts. So did the CDC, whose advisers had rejected boosters for people not at high risk. Two top FDA scientists, including the head of the agency’s vaccine efforts, quit around the time of the September vote over White House pressure to authorize boosters for all. They wrote in detail about their concerns.

Anya Kamanetz, Cory Turner and Mansee Khurana:

The challenge now, for educators, is understanding where those young children and their older siblings went. Did they simply stay home — or did their families enroll them elsewhere?

A shift to private schools 

Private and parochial schools generally enroll about 10 percent of all students in the United States, or about 5.7 million students. While nationwide enrollment in private schools dropped last year along with public schools, this year it has rebounded.

The National Association of Independent Schools comprises private, non-parochial schools. They report a net enrollment growth of 1.7% over the two pandemic years.

There’s a particularly big rebound in private preschool enrollment in the NAIS sample. That number dropped dramatically between 2019-20 and 2020-21, but then grew 21% this fall for a net growth of 6% over two years.

While accurate data are not yet available for parochial schools, media reports suggest their enrollment has rebounded this fall as well.

“We saw a couple thousand students that transferred over to private schools in the city,” says Martinez, who took over as chief executive officer this summer in Chicago. “And that was because the private schools were assuring the families that they would be open in-person, no matter what.”

Aaron Kheriaty:

Yesterday I received the following notice from the University of California, effective immediately, where I have served for almost fifteen years as Professor at UCI School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health:

This termination has been an opportunity for me to reflect on my time at UCI, especially my time there during the Covid pandemic. Two years ago I never could have imagined that the University would dismiss me and other doctors, nurses, faculty, staff, and students for this arbitrary and capricious reason. I want to share a bit of my story, not because I am unique but simply because my experience is representative of what many others—who do not necessarily have a public voice—have experienced since these mandates went into effect.I worked in-person at the hospital every day during the pandemic, seeing patients in our clinic, psychiatric wards, emergency room, and hospital wards—including Covid patients in the ER, ICU, and medicine wards. As our chief ethics consultant, I had countless conversations with families of patients dying of Covid, and tried my best to console and guide them in their grief. When our pregnant residents were worried about consulting on Covid patients, the administration reassured these residents that they had no elevated risks from Covid—a claim without any evidential basis at the time, and which we now know to be false. I saw the Covid consults for these worried residents, even when I was not covering the consult service.I also remember in the early weeks of the pandemic when N-95 masks were in short supply and the hospital kept them under lock and key. Hospital administrators yelled at nurses for wearing surgical or cloth masks (this was before masks became all the rage after the CDC suggested, with little evidence, that they might help). At that early stage the truth was we didn’t know whether masks worked or not, and nurses were doing the best they could under pressure in a situation of uncertainty. The administrators yelled and ridiculed them, not wanting to admit the real issue was that we simply did not have enough masks. So I called local construction companies and sourced 600 N-95s from them. I supplied some to the residents in our department and my attending colleagues in the ER, then donated the rest to the hospital. Meanwhile the University administrators—the same ones who fired me yesterday—were working safely from home and did not have to fret about PPE shortages.

Sabrina Tavernise:

Demographics are changing too. Growing numbers of Hispanic people and Asian people from the Marshall Islands call Enid home. The county of Garfield, in which Enid is the seat, was 94 percent white in 1980. Last year, that figure was about 68 percent. The county experienced one of the largest increases in racial diversity in the country over the past decade, 2020 census data show.

Teachers and administrators in Enid’s school system have worked hard to integrate growing numbers of immigrant children. But everyone else interviewed in Enid, including Ms. Crabtree, who is white, expressed surprise when told of the scale of this change. Immigrants tend to live in certain parts of town and work in certain jobs, like at the meat plant, and do not yet have high-profile positions of power.

Still, she could feel that change overall was accelerating, and that was making her feel like she was losing her country, like it was becoming something she did not recognize.

“I truly think that what we are doing is pulling our republic apart at the seams,” she said.

So when she heard about the indoor mask mandate proposal last year in her city, she jumped to get involved. She discovered that she liked bringing people together, people whose thinking she shared. It felt good to learn together, and to belong to this group she was building with urgent purpose. Eventually she made a Facebook page called Enid Freedom Fighters.

Noah Diekemper:

It’s little wonder that the American Enterprise Institute’s education research fellow Max Eden has denounced college requirements for preschool teachers as “regressive,” declaring that there is “ no evidence to support this will help with student outcomes .”

Why, then, are lawmakers considering a federal law that would fund preschool programs only if lead teachers have years of experience in special collegiate programs? After all, how many people genuinely believe preschool instruction is a discipline that requires years to learn and not a matter of brief on-the-job training?

It’s no secret that college graduates are more liberal than the typical person. Pew Research Center polling over the past 20 years has seen the proportions of white Democrats self-identifying as liberal scale directly with education levels . More education tracks with more liberal engagement and activism and familiarity with niche woke jargon . In 2015, the share of “mostly” or “consistently liberal” people was 26% among those with “high school or less” education, 36% with “some college,” 44% with a college degree, and 54% with postgraduate experience .

And those numbers consider people on the basis of education in general — there’s reason to believe that those with college degrees in the humanities would be even further extreme than a generic graduate. A 2016 study that analyzed the party registration of college professors found that more “hard” disciplines, such as economics and law, featured less skewed ratios of registered Democrats to Republicans than departments such as “journalism/communications” and history. (“Education” was not a department studied.) History professors who were registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 33.5 to 1. If increased Democratic registration tracks with more humanities fields, such as education, and with more liberal attitudes, then the above numbers about self-identified liberalism probably understate the ideological slant of this group.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Melissa Korn:

Early-admission applications to some of the nation’s most selective colleges remained near historic highs this year, as the admissions process for those institutions continues to shift into high gear earlier and grow more uncertain for applicants and schools.

Applications for binding early decision or more flexible early action programs jumped last year at schools including Harvard University and Brown University as anxious high-school seniors embarked on a chaotic admissions cycle. Schools ditched testing requirements, placed campus visits on hold because of the pandemic and are still sorting through whether students who deferred enrollment from the prior year would take away spots from the coming class.

This fall, early decision applications declined at the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College and Columbia University from fall 2020, but remained far higher than the volume reported in other recent years.

Columbia received 6,305 early-decision applications this year, a 2% drop from 2020 but a figure that still tops the prior record by more than 40%. Applications to Dartmouth were off by 1%, and at Penn they declined by 2%.

Brown reported an 11% increase in early-decision applications, citing the expansion of its financial aid program as a likely factor in the heightened interest.

Kate Hirzel:

Campus Reform has covered various instances of colleges, faculty, and students fighting back against leftist ideology in 2021.

Below are the top 10 examples of sanity prevailing this year. 

10. Hillsdale’s ‘1776 Curriculum’ is a patriotic response to the ‘1619 Project’

Hillsdale College announced its ‘1776 Curriculum’ that helps K-12 students appreciate America. Hillsdale’s curriculum was created by “teachers and professors—not activists, not journalists, not bureaucrats”. It was made in response to Nikole Hannah-Jones “1619 Project.”

9. BREAKING: ASU rejects student demands, refuses to ban Rittenhouse from future enrollment

Arizona State University refused to give into students’ demands to ban Kyle Rittenhouse from attending the university. After heated protests on campus, ASU told Campus Reformthey will treat Rittenhouse’s application “as any other would be” if he applied. 

“As a university that measures itself by whom it includes and how they succeed, should he choose to seek admission in the future, his application will be processed as any other would be,” the school told Campus Reform.

The Economist:

One way to account for these methodological problems is to use a simpler measure, known as “excess deaths”: take the number of people who die from any cause in a given region and period, and then compare it with a historical baseline from recent years. We have used statistical models to create our baselines, by predicting the number of deaths each region would normally have recorded in 2020 and 2021.

I would love to know what Harvard Prof. Thomas Burke, who testified in favor of shutting schools in Aug. 2020, now thinks. He is the Chief of the Division of Global Health and Human Rights at Mass General Hospital.@MGHGlobalHealth https://t.co/hIHC4P6oW6 https://t.co/kqdtlza1pP pic.twitter.com/h1jCLCHtTq

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) December 28, 2021

Professor Thomas Burke notes and links.

Professor Thomas Burke notes and links.

Susannah Luthi:

A second high-ranking California Department of Education official has resigned because she lives out of state.

Pamela Kadakia served as a CDE equity project manager but resides in Texas, based on public records and her LinkedIn profile.

Her exit follows the departure of Daniel Lee, a Philadelphia-based psychologist, life coach and long-time acquaintance of California schools chief Tony Thurmond, who was involved in Lee’s hiring. Lee was the state’s first superintendent of equity and earned more than $161,000 annually.

Lee, 51, resigned shortly after POLITICO reported that his appointment may have violated state policy decreeing that state employees must live in California unless their jobs require them to live elsewhere, such as those lobbying the federal government in Washington.

NY Post:

“Follow the science,” it said about handling COVID. But for Team Biden, it was follow the teachers unions when it came to reopening schools.

Emails between the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — provided to the watchdog group Americans for Public Trust via a Freedom of Information Act request — reveal that the Biden administration not only consulted national teachers unions before releasing school reopening guidance to the public, it put a heavy thumb on the scales in favor of the unions’ agenda.

The messages show that White House staff arranged a meeting between CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and the head of the nation’s largest teachers union, National Education Association president Becky Pringle. 

Heck, one NEA official used her access to score a job inside the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC. Having an “inside man” ensured that the unions were always seated at the policy table. 

In one damning email to others in the department, HHS official Michael Baker wrote: “We need to think about this in the broader context of teacher contract negotiations.”

The CDC even tightened mask guidelines after the unions balked and threatened to go public with their criticisms.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Markus Knauff , Jelica Nejasmic

The choice of an efficient document preparation system is an important decision for any academic researcher. To assist the research community, we report a software usability study in which 40 researchers across different disciplines prepared scholarly texts with either Microsoft Word or LaTeX. The probe texts included simple continuous text, text with tables and subheadings, and complex text with several mathematical equations. We show that LaTeX users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced more typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors. On most measures, expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users. LaTeX users, however, more often report enjoying using their respective software. We conclude that even experienced LaTeX users may suffer a loss in productivity when LaTeX is used, relative to other document preparation systems. Individuals, institutions, and journals should carefully consider the ramifications of this finding when choosing document preparation strategies, or requiring them of authors.

Lyn Alden:

The most precise way to phrase it is that rapid money supply growth is necessary but not sufficient to cause widespread price inflation.

In other words, price inflation always tends to happen when money supply grows very quickly, but a rapid growth in money supply does not always lead to substantial price inflation.

In the United States, for example, we can look at the 5-year rolling growth rate of M2 and CPI over the past 150 years:

Every Dem running for higher office should be asked if they, like former Dem candidate Terry McAuliffe, agree with this sentiment. https://t.co/RvzvtGIlBN

— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 26, 2021

Jay Matthews:

Now some schools are experimenting with easing homework and grading as a way to be fair and coax students back into the learning process. I had assumed educators would quickly realize this was a formula for disaster.

But I have learned such take-it-easy policies are being seriously considered in what I have considered for many decades to be one of the best school districts in the country — Arlington County, Va., right next to our nation’s capital.

Arlington teachers are revolting against the ideas. District spokesman Frank Bellavia said it is all preliminary. The district “is in the early stages of revising the grading and homework policies and policy implementation procedures,” he said. “As part of Phase 1, we provided some ideas for staff to look at as a starting point.”

I think even that is going too far.

Arlington County is studying proposals that would, among other things, remove penalties for missing homework deadlines and prohibit grading of what is called formative work — daily assignments. Faculty would grade only what are called summative assessments, which generally means tests.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Swikar Oli:

“In principle, of course, cell data can be used for tracking.”

Mobility data analysis “helps to advance public health objectives,” the PHAC spokesperson said. The findings have been regularly shared with provinces and territories via the special advisory committee to “inform public health messaging, planning and policy development,” the spokesperson said.

The data is also used for the COVID Trends portal, a dashboard that provides a summarized data of movement trends.

Lyon urged a need for greater information “regarding exactly what was done, what was achieved and whether or not it truly served the interests of Canadian citizens.”

George Will:

The 1619 Project, which might already be embedded in school curricula near you, reinforces the racial monomania of those progressives who argue that the nation was founded on, and remains saturated by, “systemic racism.” This racial obsession is instrumental; it serves a radical agenda that sweeps beyond racial matters. It is the agenda of clearing away all impediments, intellectual and institutional, to — in progressivism’s vocabulary — the “transformation” of the nation. The United States will be built back better when it has been instructed to be ashamed of itself and is eager to discard its disreputable heritage.

The 1619 Project aims to erase (in Wood’s words) “the Revolution and the principles that it articulated — liberty, equality and the well-being of ordinary people.” These ideas are, as Wood says, the adhesives that bind our exceptional nation whose people have shared principles, not a shared ancestry.

The Times says “nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional” flows from “slavery and the anti-black racism it required.” So, the 1619 Project’s historical illiteracy is not innocent ignorance. Rather, it is maliciousness in the service of progressivism’s agenda, which is to construct a thoroughly different nation on the deconstructed rubble of what progressives hope will be the nation’s thoroughly discredited past.

Let’s go back in time to 3/29/21

“No we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person… The virus does not infect them…It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to get more people.” pic.twitter.com/kwsDIPYl2E

— Aaron Ginn (@aginnt) December 26, 2021

Brian Riedl:

Today’s trendy economic argument asserts that the current debt-to-GDP ratio of 100% has not harmed the economy, and therefore Congress can easily afford large new government expansions. But that argument has two fatal flaws. First, it fails to acknowledge that over the next few decades—even without new legislation—the debt is already projected to reach levels that even debt doves would likely consider unsustainable. Second, this argument assumes that interest rates will forever remain near today’s low levels, thus minimizing Washington’s cost of servicing this debt. However, economic trends rarely remain linear indefinitely, and interest-rate movements have rarely followed forecaster projections. Indeed, several realistic economic scenarios could easily push interest rates back up to 4%–5% within a few decades—which would coincide with a projected debt surge to greatly increase federal budget interest costs. Debt doves have no backup plan for this possibility. Policymakers should now enact reforms that scale back the escalating long-term debt projections in order to limit the federal government’s risk exposure to a fiscal crisis.

Ann Althouse:

Circuit Judge Ellen Berz said the sentence [8 years] for Treveon Thurman was the first time outside a homicide or child sexual assault case that she had ever sentenced someone to prison for their first adult convictions….

Thurman, 20, pleaded guilty… to charges in eight of the 26 felony cases… four counts of operating a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent, two counts of taking and driving a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent and two counts of second-degree reckless endangerment….

Thurman would sometimes broadcast live video of himself while speeding around the Madison area in stolen cars, sometimes showing the speedometer at speeds over 100 mph. In one instance he broadcast himself going about 140 mph in a stolen car.

Vaclav Smil:

THERE IS A FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE between what can be designed and built and what makes sense. History provides a lesson in the shape of record-setting behemoths that have never since been equaled.

The Egyptian pyramids started small, and in just a few generations, some 4,500 years ago, there came Khufu’s enormous pyramid, which nobody has ever tried to surpass. Shipbuilders in ancient Greece kept on expanding the size of their oared vessels until they built, during the third century BCE, a tessarakonteres, with 4,000 oarsmen. That vessel was too heavy, too ponderous, and therefore a naval failure. And architect Filippo Brunelleschi’s vast cupola for Florence’s Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, built without scaffolding and finished in 1436, was never replicated.

The modern era has no shortage of such obvious overshoots. The boom in oil consumption following the Second World War led to ever-larger oil tankers, with sizes rising from 50,000 to 100,000 and 250,000 deadweight tonnes (dwt). Seven tankers exceeded 500,000 dwt, but their lives were short, and nobody has built a million-dwt tanker. Technically, it would have been possible, but such a ship would not fit through the Suez or Panama canals, and its draft would limit its operation to just a few ports.

The economy-class-only configuration of the Airbus A380 airliner was certified to carry up to 853 passengers, but it has not been a success. In 2021, just 16 years after it entered service, the last plane was delivered, a very truncated lifespan. Compare it with the hardly puny Boeing 747, which will see its final delivery in 2022, 53 years after the plane’s first flight, an almost human longevity. Clearly, the 747 was the right-sized record-breaker.

Glenn Reynolds:

In fact, a cynic might think — and, in fact, I do think — that much of this is just to make Harvard’s already extensive discrimination against Asians easier and harder to prove.

Asian students do very well on objective tests, on average. If Harvard admitted students based solely on SAT scores, its population would be very heavily Asian. Harvard doesn’t want that. So it aims to use softer variables instead.

This isn’t new. The Ivy League did the same thing in the first half of the last century, when it was afraid it would be overrun by Jews. It started emphasizing “well-roundedness,” “leadership,” athletics and things that Jewish immigrants would find harder to satisfy. Now it’s doing it again.

Maggie Litt:

A Chicago businessman is withholding $4.5 million in donations from the University of Illinois (UI) Urbana-Champaign until the school agrees to get rid of former domestic terrorist and convicted murderer James Kilgore.

Richard Hill, the retired CEO of Novellus Systems, wrote a letter to Ul at Chicago administrators notifying them of his intent to rescind his pledge to donate $6.5 million to the school’s bioengineering department, according to The Chicago Tribune. Hill has already donated $2 million dollars of that money, but is refusing to cash in the other $4.5 million until the school agrees to fire Kilgore.

“I no longer wish to be associated with University of Illinois,” Hill wrote to in a letter to UI, following the board’s decision. “The Academy at the University of Illinois has clearly lost its moral compass.”

As Campus Reform previously reported, the university announced they would be renewing Kilgore’s contract in November after initially dropping him from his adjunct faculty position, due to controversy over his employment.

School closings and “remote learning” have caused a massive mental health crisis among teenagers. This, and the disruption to their intellectual development, will be enduring and severe.https://t.co/Q3mtWJ9MnR pic.twitter.com/ONrnYIWBPI

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 26, 2021

I think about whenever I (frequently) see children running around outside, masked.

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health’s mandates (via unelected taxpayer funded administrators).

Dillon H. Murphy, Kara M. Hoover, Karina Agadzhanyan, Jesse C. Kuehn, Alan D. Castel:

We presented participants with lecture videos at different speeds and tested immediate and delayed (1 week) comprehension. Results revealed minimal costs incurred by increasing video speed from 1x to 1.5x, or 2x speed, but performance declined beyond 2x speed. We also compared learning outcomes after watching videos once at 1x or twice at 2x speed. There was not an advantage to watching twice at 2x speed but if participants watched the video again at 2x speed immediately before the test, compared with watching once at 1x a week before the test, comprehension improved. Thus, increasing the speed of videos (up to 2x) may be an efficient strategy, especially if students use the time saved for additional studying or rewatching the videos, but learners should do this additional studying shortly before an exam. However, these trends may differ for videos with different speech rates, complexity or difficulty, and audiovisual overlap.

Alexander C. Dowell, Megan S. Butler, …Shamez Ladhani

SARS-CoV-2 infection is generally mild or asymptomatic in children but a biological basis for this outcome is unclear. Here we compare antibody and cellular immunity in children (aged 3–11 years) and adults. Antibody responses against spike protein were high in children and seroconversion boosted responses against seasonal Beta-coronaviruses through cross-recognition of the S2 domain. Neutralization of viral variants was comparable between children and adults. Spike-specific T cell responses were more than twice as high in children and were also detected in many seronegative children, indicating pre-existing cross-reactive responses to seasonal coronaviruses. Importantly, children retained antibody and cellular responses 6 months after infection, whereas relative waning occurred in adults. Spike-specific responses were also broadly stable beyond 12 months. Therefore, children generate robust, cross-reactive and sustained immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 with focused specificity for the spike protein. These findings provide insight into the relative clinical protection that occurs in most children and might help to guide the design of pediatric vaccination regimens.Download PDF

Zachary Halaschak:

On the same day that Realtor.com announced that it was removing its crime data, Redfin came out with a full-throated denunciation of crime data being included on real estate websites. Redfin’s chief growth officer Christian Taubman announced that, after consideration, the company would not be adding crime data to its own platform.

Taubman said that Redfin had been weighing whether to add information about crime because one of the metrics that consumers consider when looking for a home to purchase is how safe the area around that home is. The company concluded that available crime data doesn’t accurately answer that question, and “given the long history of redlining and racist housing covenants in the United States there’s too great a risk of this inaccuracy reinforcing racial bias.”

Erica Green:

Three hours into a recent Monday morning, blood had already been spilled in a hallway at Liberty High School. With his walkie-talkie in hand, the principal, Harrison Bailey III, called on the custodial staff to clean up the remnants of a brawl while hurrying to the cafeteria in hopes of staving off another.

This is how Dr. Bailey has spent many of his hours since the school welcomed back its 2,800 students for in-person learning in August: dashing around the 400,000-square-foot building, outrunning bells and crowds of students, and hoping that his towering presence will serve as an inspiration to pull up masks and a deterrent to other, less obvious burdens that his students have had to contend with since returning.

Like schools across the country, Liberty has seen the damaging effects of a two-year pandemic that abruptly ejected millions of students from classrooms and isolated them from their peers as they weathered a historic convergence of academic, health and societal crises. Teenagers arguably bore the social and emotional brunt of school disruptions.

Nationally, the high school-age group has reported some of the most alarming mental health declines, evidenced by depression and suicide attempts. Adolescents have failed classes critical to their futures at higher rates than in previous years, affecting graduations and college prospects. And as elected leaders and public health officials scrambled to bring students back to school last winter and spring, the focus on having the youngest and most vulnerable students return to in-person instruction left many high school students to languish, with large numbers missing most or all of the 2020-21 academic year.

Song Jung-a:

Yanbo Li began searching for an international school in Asia as soon as his son Zhilun was born.

A Chinese businessman who works in the IT sector, Li eventually chose a British school on South Korea’s subtropical island of Jeju over schools in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. Two years ago he bought a house on Jeju and moved from China with his son, now a seventh grader at the island’s North London Collegiate School.

Li now takes care of his Beijing-based business remotely, only visiting his company in emergencies. “Schools here offer high quality education and great outdoor activities,” said Li.

Wall Street Journal :

Americans rightly cheer the cops, firemen, nurses and emergency medical technicians who stayed on the job during the pandemic. But in education some big contributions have gone largely unsung. We hope that changes now that the Discovery Center in Springfield, Mo., has won the $1 million STOP Award.

This is the first year for the award, a partnership between the Center for Education Reform and Forbes funded by education reformer and philanthropist Janine Yass and her husband, Jeff. STOP stands for the criteria used to select the winning program: Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless. By the latter the judges mean they are looking for people who don’t wait for official permission when they see a need.

The Discovery Center was chosen from nearly 1,000 applications. It is a nonprofit center that encourages children to be curious about science and the world. When Covid hit, its board voted to keep the center open, and then transformed its 60,000-square-foot building to serve children of essential workers, offering everything from free meals and child care to tutoring.

Tawnell Hobbs, Rob Barry and Yoree Koh:

Some included tips about taking in less than 300 calories a day, several recommended consuming only water some days, another suggested taking laxatives after overeating.

Other videos showed emaciated girls with protruding bones, a “corpse bride diet,” an invitation to a private “Christmas-themed competition” to lose as much weight as possible before the holiday and a shaming for those who give up on getting thin: “You do realise giving up after a week isn’t going to get you anywhere, right?…You’re disgusting, it’s really embarrassing.”

On Thursday, several days after the Journal sought comment for the findings detailed in this article, TikTok said it would adjust its recommendation algorithm to avoid showing users too much of the same content, part of a broad re-evaluation of social-media platforms and the potential harm they pose to younger users. The company said it is testing ways to avoid pushing too much content from a certain topic to individual users—such as extreme dieting, sadness or breakups—to protect their mental well-being.

Wall Street Journal:

Merry Christmas, student loan borrowers. Taxpayers will have to settle for airing their grievances a la Festivus. That’s the result of the Biden Administration’s decision on Wednesday to extend its payment moratorium again to May 1. Unlike its last pause through January, the Administration isn’t saying this extension is final—probably because it’s not.

The Cares Act in March 2020 relieved borrowers from making payments on $1.6 trillion in federal student loans and waived interest accrual through September 2020. President Trump extended the pause through January despite no legislative authority to do so. Mr. Biden compounded the injury to taxpayers and the separation of powers by extending it through this September.

Over the summer the Administration resisted progressive pressure for another extension. But it ultimately surrendered, as it did with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s rental eviction moratorium. The Education Department in August claimed this “final extension” was necessary to “reduce the risk of delinquency and defaults.” Democrats don’t want the pandemic emergency to end because it’s too politically useful.

Claims of financial hardship for borrowers were dubious then and are even more so now as the unemployment rate among bachelor’s degree recipients has fallen to 2.3%. Some 1.1 million more were employed in November than in February 2020. The pause has on average saved borrowers $400 per month.

M. Antoni J. Ucerler:

To pursue their objectives, the Jesuits did something that they had originally determined that they should not do: establish schools. The order’s principal founder, Ignatius of Loyola, had fretted that taking on responsibility for institutions would hinder their mobility and availability for the mission, but he was soon persuaded that education could be a potent instrument of cultural influence and religious transformation. Their first college was established in Messina in Sicily in 1548. Dozens of colleges were built throughout Italy under the patronage of the local nobility and of rulers and within decades there were several hundred Jesuit institutions of learning across Europe, Latin America and Asia. But none was more important than the Collegio Romano or Roman College, established in 1551 and dedicated to religioni et bonis artibus, ‘religion and solid learning [the arts]’ – a simple motto summarising what it sought to achieve. These new schools became powerhouses of learning and repositories of knowledge, regulated by carefully crafted guidelines, known as the Ratio studiorum, which outlined in great detail a curriculum that included the subjects of the traditional trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), as well as philosophy, theology, and other subjects, including elaborate theatrical performances. They thus prescribed a rigorous training both in the classical studia humanitatis and in the sciences, with a special emphasis on mathematics, physics and astronomy.

It was at the Roman College that the Jesuits engaged in debate with Galileo. Most prominent among them was Christopher Clavius (1538– 1612), who taught mathematics and astronomy to generations of students. Clavius’s 1574 Latin edition of Euclid’s Elementsbecame a popular text book, was reprinted dozens of times over an 80-year period and earned him the title of the ‘Euclid of the 16th century’. The college was also where that most remarkable of 17th-century polymaths and eccentric par excellence, Athanasius Kircher (1602–80), set up his famous hall of wonders and cabinet of curiosities, which became the Roman College Museum. The sources for the objects and information that he so copiously reproduced in his works were in great part his fellow Jesuits, engaged in the principal and original pursuit of the Society – working in its missions across the globe. For better or for worse, it was an exciting and transformative age of maritime exploration and discovery and the Jesuits took full advantage of the new horizons beyond Europe, which they no longer considered their final frontier.

Matthew Dalton:

Prominent French politicians and intellectuals say that the country faces a growing threat: U.S.-style activist movements that are foisting American multiculturalism and gender politics onto France.

In recent months, President Emmanuel Macron, government ministers and other high-profile figures have said that activism on a range of issues—from gender-neutral language to condemnation of French historical figures for racism and sexism—is threatening to cleave the republic along the lines of race, religion, gender and sexual orientation.

That, they say, contradicts France’s republican ideals, which call for citizens to subordinate such group identities to the country’s universalist values of “liberty, equality and fraternity.”

To characterize the purported threat, some have adopted the English term “woke.” Coined in the U.S. to describe a heightened awareness of racism and other prejudice, it has become shorthand for a worldview that puts identity politics front and center in addressing injustice and inequality.

As such, the term has been used as an epithet in the U.S., and now in France, by those who challenge that view as dogmatic.

Andrew Alexander:

The phrase “scattered, smothered, and covered” has a certain poetic ring, so it’s fitting that Waffle House has its own poet laureate. Georgia Tech poetry professor Karen Head is the first to lay claim to that title. We caught up with the recently anointed scribe in advance of her appearance at this weekend’s Decatur Book Festival:

How did you become Waffle House Poet Laureate?
Georgia Tech and Waffle House are very firmly connected. All of the heads of Waffle House have been Georgia Tech graduates. The current CEO Walt Ehmer is a Georgia Tech graduate, and the former CEO Bert Thornton was a Tech graduate. Bert and I got to know each other through some alumni events. We talked about Georgia Tech’s guaranteed admission for any valedictorian or salutatorian in the state. The first year it was offered, there were 37 counties that did not send a single application. Many students just don’t have any examples of someone who has gone to college in their lives. I didn’t. I’m a first-gen college student, Neither of my parents graduated high school. I told Bert I wanted to go out to the most rural schools in the most far-flung counties and talk about arts and poetry. I wanted the students to hear my story about going to college. Bert suggested I write up a proposal for the foundation. I asked for a modest grant to cover travel to 12 schools and a poetry competition, which would pay the winner’s tuition to the state’s online college core program. They agreed to fund my idea and mailed me a Waffle House nametag with an official title, Waffle House Poet Laureate. The idea of it has just sort of caught on. People want to tell me their own Waffle House stories. It’s been fascinating.