First Looks category archive

David dissects the duplicity.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Christopher J. Ferguson makes a strong case that the recent dip in school children’s test scores on the NEAP standardized test was not nearly so severe nor so alarming as depicted by (some) press reports and politicians. He points out:

Since 2020, drops in both reading and math were noticed, likely tied to school closures during the Covid-19 epidemic. News media dutifully referred to these drops as “alarming,” an “emergency,” or “grim.” But how bad is the news, actually?

When we look at the official charts released for the NAEP, we can see a small 4-point drop in reading and a larger 9-point drop in math.

. . . even across 5 decades, scores overall didn’t change very much. For reading, scores improved slightly over time before becoming largely static since 2012, then dropping a bit during Covid. Math scores improved a bit more, then dropped a tiny bit since 2012, then more rapidly during Covid. Since scores can range 500 points, how worrisome is a drop of 4 or even 9 points?

Follow the link for his answer to his (admittedly rhetorical) question.

(Broken link fixed.)

Thom explores how the right-wing is trying to stifle fact-checkers.

I think Steven M. may have decoded de code.

Jen Psaki remembers stuff.

Via C&L, which has commentary.

In a related vein . . . .

Aside:

Despite what the Senator wants to believe, it is true that Europeans came up with the concept of race as we know it today in the 16th and 17th centuries so as to justify chattel slavery.

And now, some more stuff you couldn’t make up.

Also, too.

Off to drink liberally.

Emma talks with Henry Grabar about how the fixation on providing room for automobiles distracts from providing room for persons. An excerpt:

You’re not thinking about room for people. You’re thinking about room for cars.

_________________

*With apologies to Joni Mitchell.

Michael in Norfolk takes exception (emphasis added):

We endlessly hear politicians of both parties, but especially Republicans bloviating about “American exceptionalism” even as objective measures such as off the charts gun deaths, a declining life expectancy and other criteria suggest that to the extent America is exceptional it is often in a negative sense.

Follow the link for the numbers.

Virginia Woolf:

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

This poem by Alastair Reid served as the introduction to a small book on genetics that I read in high school. For some reason, it’s stuck in my mind for all these years.

Curiosity

may have killed the cat, more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die –
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Jeffrey Kluger:

It’s not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it’s extremism wedded to false beliefs.

Lewis Carroll, in the voice of Humpty Dumpty:

When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean.

He spoke truth. For example.

Off to drink liberally.

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall.

It’s a short read, but a valuable one. It’s historical American realpolitik. I read it many years ago for one of my classes when I was training as an historian.

Learn more about George Washington Plunkitt at Wikipedia.