If you're interested in the situation of the US education system, you need to read this: "a test you need to fail". It's short and sweet (really sweet) and says more in a few paragraphs than a dozen academic studies.
In Positive Economic Sign, Republicans Starting to Say Obama Wasn’t Born in US Again
I often confuse Andy Borowitz with the Onion and think once I've seen the headline I have the whole joke already, but this is not necessarily the case: this one just kept getting deeper.
Also, if you care about Chinese workers who make Apple products and Mike Daisey who reported on them for This American Life and then had to withdraw the report and Ira Glass sort of went Oprah on him on the air and... No, it actually doesn't matter whether you care about all of them as long as you've just heard about them, and you can even be fairly vague about that, then you should read the text of an interview between Ira Glass and Rumproast's Gil Mann that won't be going on the radio. (No, because it's imaginary.)
MosesZD in comments at Balloon Juice adverted to a 2007 story about the economist Rick Nevin, who argued on the basis of some incredibly persuasive data that the ups and downs of crime rates in the United States have had nothing to do with Rudolph Giuliani--it's all about lead poisoning, with the declining crime of the last couple of decades connected to the elimination of lead from automobile fuel. A more recent paper updating the data to nearly the present and the new frontier of lead abatement by replacing windows is here.
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| Clifton School House, Merritt Island, Florida, ca. 1890. |
I often confuse Andy Borowitz with the Onion and think once I've seen the headline I have the whole joke already, but this is not necessarily the case: this one just kept getting deeper.
Also, if you care about Chinese workers who make Apple products and Mike Daisey who reported on them for This American Life and then had to withdraw the report and Ira Glass sort of went Oprah on him on the air and... No, it actually doesn't matter whether you care about all of them as long as you've just heard about them, and you can even be fairly vague about that, then you should read the text of an interview between Ira Glass and Rumproast's Gil Mann that won't be going on the radio. (No, because it's imaginary.)
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| Granary, privy, and schoolhouse in Matanaka, Waikouaiti, New Zealand (near Dunedin, South Island). The oldest extant rural buildings in New Zealand. |
MosesZD in comments at Balloon Juice adverted to a 2007 story about the economist Rick Nevin, who argued on the basis of some incredibly persuasive data that the ups and downs of crime rates in the United States have had nothing to do with Rudolph Giuliani--it's all about lead poisoning, with the declining crime of the last couple of decades connected to the elimination of lead from automobile fuel. A more recent paper updating the data to nearly the present and the new frontier of lead abatement by replacing windows is here.
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| Schoolhouse Rocked by Avenger41. Fan art by Videl Gohan. |
