It’s been a lively week, dashing from topic to topic as usual. I spend a lot (too much) time thinking about blogging and wondering if I’d have more readers if I just posted lots of stories on one topic. Probably. But I’d get bored and it wouldn’t reflect my real range of interests. So this…
My son uses words, jargon (sounds that are not recognizable to people who aren’t in the know), signs, gestures, expressions, symbols, and an I-pad to communicate. We’re deeply in to the assistive technology world – it’s helping Nico find a voice that anyone could understand, rather than just his family, teachers, and therapists. So it…
In another edition of how we got into this mess, Nick Danforth, a doctoral candidate in Turkish history at Georgetown writes for the Atlantic about Syria’s borders. He begins by pointing out that it’s easy to blame Syria’s troubles for arbitrarily-drawn borders, then writes: There’s plenty to criticize about the legacy of colonialism, but dwelling on…
As a father of a girl, I’m highly alert to the ways that toys are marketed to children. It’s not that boys don’t have gender-specific marketing and that I’m not concerned about issues related to boys: I am concerned and they do. But two factors come into play: One, my son has Down syndrome, and…
NOTE 10/19/2016: This essay was published in 2013, featuring a memoriam I wrote in 2012 not long after Ambassador Stevens died (before I started the blog). Things have changed, but the post is unedited from that time. ————————————————————— Exactly a year ago, I woke to discover from the news that my cousin, Ambassador Chris Stevens,…
I’m trying out an argument here and looking for feedback. The feminist position on parenting is as follows: Men and women should have equal choices when it comes to work and caregiving. Historically, feminists have advocated for employment policies that support women who choose to have a family and want to work. These include: paid…
Yesterday, several journalists converged on a study arguing that students at Northwestern learned more from adjuncts than from tenured/tenure-track faculty. Here’s my take: This study reveals something about the great work done by adjuncts, but also makes me think about the perverse incentive structure of R1 full-time faculty life. Every incentive – prestige, status, money…
Yesterday I had an argument with a man who felt that feminists were disrespecting him as a father. I gained a few insights from it that I thought I would share with you. 1. If you find yourself compelled to write a sentence that starts, “The problem with feminists is …” – Consider writing a…
Jacob Barnett, a 14-year-old with Asbergers, is a genius. Now I think the smarter-than-Einstein gimmick that reporters use (here’s one on an 11-year-old English girl) just demonstrates how little we understand about intelligence and how limited the notion of IQ (the number) is. That said, Barnett is clearly a genius. I’m interested in two things…
This week oscillated between vaccines (Jenny McCarthy begins at “The View” on the 9th) and the big Ethan Saylor news. I could write about Saylor every day, honestly, but I think the readers of this blog know how I feel on the issues. Still, please remember that Gov O’Malley is resisting calls for an independent…