March, 2020 archive
Health Care in a Health Scare 0
David discusses the financial implications facing individuals as regards coronavirus testing and treatment in our predatory for profit health care system.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
What happens when a responsible gun owner (just ask one–he’ll tell you he is) escorts his lady friend to dinner?
Why, politeness, of course. What else did you expect?
How Stuff Works, Gypsy-Cabs-with-an-App Dept. 0
At NJ.com, Edward Escobar explains the con behind the gagged “gig” economy. A nugget:
Left Unchecked 0
I have never used a “grammar checker” in a word processing program.* (I can diagram my own sentences quite nicely, thank you.)
Turns out my instincts were correct. At the Hartford Courant, Mark McFadden explains that automated computerized grammar checkers don’t.
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*I do use spellcheckers, but never the “automatic” ones. Also, do grade schools still teach grammar, or has it gone the way of civics?
Misdirection Play, “Electability” Dept. 0
Writing at Psychology Today Blogs, Dylan Selterman suggests that arguments about which candidate for elected office may be more “electable” are, at best, pointless musings on the undefinable and, at worst, Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes for prejudice and bigotry.
Methinks his piece is worth a read. After all, many persons considered our current pestilen to have been “unelectable” . . . .
Here’s a snippet:
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Another responsible gun owner greets the neighbors.
The bullet went right through the shared wall of the Forest Avenue condo building and hit the toddler’s foot. The bullet also hit a mattress that Noah’s older brother had slept on the night before.
Blinders 0
Farhad Manjoo uses the spread of the coronavirus–more precisely, the spread of misinformation and hysteria and outright falsehoods about the coronavirus–to highlight a larger problem: the failure to pay attention to and heed what science and scientists have to say about real things happening in the real world.
Here’s a bit (emphasis added):
Our collective inability to communicate about science has thoroughly perverted our politics. Because science has become so deeply intertwined with partisan dogma, people’s very conception of scientific expertise has been hijacked by tribal reflex. Today, a lot of people seem to determine how much they trust scientists based on their political ideas, which is backward and bizarre.
