Check out this article written by Judith Warner, who writes for the New York Times mostly on family and gender issues. I found it to be an extremely thought provoking piece on the lack of compassion that many upper-middle class suburbanites feel towards the truly needy. In particular, I found the following passage [...]

It’s always dangerous to tell a chatty cab driver that you study Political Science. I learned that one the hard way when I was an undergraduate. The driver in question proceeded to spend most of my thirty minute ride from the airport explaining to me how the country has gotten away from the [...]

It’s a headline designed to scare: Study Finds 1 in 4 US Teens Has A STD. And it’s true, at least according to a recent federal study, which included a survey about adolescent women’s sexual practices and clinical testing. The article then goes on to describe “shocked” health experts, advocates stressing that more [...]

Lately I’ve been comparing the different primary debates. I was originally prompted by criticism about the CNN/YouTube GOP debate last week, in which CNN took heavy criticism for having biased questions and biased questioners. (In case you are curious, yes some of the questioners themselves had loose connections to Democratic campaigns, but the [...]

The last few days I’ve been reading Come On People, by Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint.  The book, and the extensive book tour that they’ve been doing to support it over the last week, is a call to action for black community leaders, teachers, and parents, among others.  I’m only about half-way through it, [...]

Mitt Romney is an idiot.
In 2004 Barack Obama supported a bill in Illinois that allowed for the teaching of age appropriate sex education to elementary school students as young as Kindergarten. The bill specified such topics as knowing about the body, understanding basics about sexual harassment and abuse (as in, it’s not ok to [...]

The University of Colorado just terminated the contract of Ward Churchill today. It was absolutely the right decision–and it has nothing to do with his statements regarding 9/11.
Just to remind you, Churchill first received national notoriety for comments he made comparing some 9/11 victims to Nazis. His point was that the Arab extremists [...]

So, Yahoo news recently reported that kids who’s parents are divorced are much more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and be prescribed Ritalin. Of course, the implication is that divorce causes kids to get ADHD. Here are some other possible explanations:
1) Kids who act out and have ADHD lead to more stressful family [...]

In case you haven’t heard, Jerry Falwell died today, probably of a heart attack, at the age of 73.  Agree with him or not, you have to admire his ability to accomplish his goals.  Falwell was a founder and leader of the Moral Majority, one of the original flagship organizations of the political movement which [...]

Here’s an article on private education in India. It’s not universal, and costs poor people money they barely have, but it seems to be working better than the public options. I’m a graduate of the public school system - partly, anyway - and benefited from that, but it’s interesting to hear a different argument for [...]