Last year I wrote a post, “Your data suggest a strong automatic association for Male with Career and Female with Family”, which was the result of my having taken the Implicit Association Test (IAT) for Gender and Career. Although the IAT has sparked controversy—among other things, some critics say it doesn’t prove that an implicit belief … Continue reading What Are Your Unconscious Biases?
I've written before about how Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), President Obama, and Steve Jobs (Apple) used to essentially wear the same outfit every day (not the same one among them). Zuckerberg wore the same gray t-shirt every day, Obama wore only blue or gray suits, and Jobs wore black mock turtlenecks, Levi’s, and New Balance sneakers … Continue reading These Are My Kind of Teachers
In a post from last week, I talked about the Genius Awards given by the MacArthur Foundation and focused on a particular winner, Vijay Gupta. I also noted that I thought I would turn the Genius Awards into a series of posts, profiling a different winner every week or so. This week's MacArthur Fellow is Ken … Continue reading This Is What Genius Looks Like – Part 2
Today's Wall Street Journal featured a profile of Heather Mac Donald, an American political commentator, essayist, attorney, and journalist. She is currently a Thomas W. Smith Fellow of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Over the years, Mac Donald has been more than willing to share her opinion on a variety of issues, including victimization, philanthropy, immigration reform, crime prevention, racism, racial profiling, rape, politics, … Continue reading What Am I Missing?
Every year, the MacArthur Foundation selects between 20 and 30 individuals as MacArthur Fellows, commonly referred to as Genius Grant winners. The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather … Continue reading This Is What Genius Looks Like
A survey released today by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found that only one in three Americans (36 percent) can actually pass a multiple choice test consisting of items taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test, which has a passing score of 60. Here are some of the highlights (lowlights?) from the survey: Only 13 percent of … Continue reading Most Americans Can’t Pass the Civics Test Required of immigrants. Could You?
The Village Voice ceased online operations last month, a year after ending its print edition. It was the end of the line for the laborious, gritty investigative reporting that was the heart and soul of the paper. The muckraking for which the Voice was known has become an endangered species. According to an article in the … Continue reading This Is Why We Need a Free Press
I'm not sure why, but last week a random thought about poetry popped into my head. It may have been triggered by hearing about a book that had been turned into a movie or was going to be turned into a movie. And I thought, 'I wonder if singers/composers/record companies ever buy the rights to poems with … Continue reading Some Thoughts about Poetry and Censorship
The New York Times Magazine had a wonderful, but at the same time depressing, story about what it's like to be poor in the United States today. Written by Pulitzer Prize winning writer Matthew Desmond, the article offers insight into world of poverty, and provides evidence and sound reasoning as what is the best way … Continue reading Why Is There Even a Debate about Trying to Help the Poor?
This past week I read a couple of articles that talked about the potential impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on the future of work, and the articles noted that some jobs would likely be safe from being replaced by a robot. So I decided to look a bit more into it, and see if … Continue reading What Jobs Will Survive the Artificial Intelligence Revolution?
Borden's Blather 