POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The New York Times Editorial Board has published a lengthy editorial on the Trump administration’s persistent efforts to deny scientific consensus and to place in positions of power people who share that disdain for scientific truths that conflict with narrow corporate interests and Far-Right ideological talking points. The editorial begins by…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The World Socialist Web Site includes a feature that is must-reading for anyone interested in labor issues. The site provides digests of labor news by region: “Workers Struggles: The Americas”; “Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East, and Africa”; and “Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.” This week’s edition of “Workers Struggles:…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following podcasts are available from New Yorker: The Antifa Handbook The author of a new book about the leftist movement explains why its members will resort to violence as a form of political action. Long a Bastion of Free Speech, U.C. Berkeley’s Commitment Is Tested In the wake of Charlottesville,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This resolution has passed the Senate without debate and with Unanimous Consent. It now goes to President Trump for his signature. In the Senate of the United States Mr. Warner (For Himself, Mr. Kaine, Mr. Gardner, And Mr. Isakson) Introduced the Following Joint Resolution. JOINT RESOLUTION Condemning the violence and…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The first item is an article written by Frederick M. Hess and Grant Addison for the National Review. Titled “DeVos Moves to Reign in the Campus Kangaroo Courts” and sub-titled “Her Fine Speech and Pledge to Act Are Worth Commending,” the article opens with the following paragraphs: In an anticipated speech…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following is the text of the speech posted on the Department of Education website. Thank you Dean Henry Butler for the kind introduction and for the opportunity to be here. Thank you President Angel Cabrera for your leadership of George Mason University. And to the students and faculty with…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for IndyWeek, which serves the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, Erica Hellerstein reports: After months of contentious back-and-forth, the UNC Board of Governors voted this morning [Friday, September 8] to ban the UNC Center for Civil Rights from doing legal work on behalf of the state’s poor and minority…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This chart is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: The list is surprising in the following ways: Of the 30 occupations on the list, 22 are what are traditionally considered “blue-collar” occupations. Of those 22 “blue-collar” occupations, all have been major sources of employment for decades: 7 are in general…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH All language is an inexact effort to reference and communicate aspects of reality, and ultimately, even the most seemingly straightforward statement can be shown to have ambiguous possibilities. That said, human society depends on language to function, and as this account of a judicial ruling makes clear, making unusual efforts to…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Poetry has been defined as the effort to express the inexpressible. In the context of the flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, I think that much the same can be said for many disciplines, ranging from statistics to engineering. Consider the following numbers: Estimated volume of rainwater from Harvey that has…