A couple of weeks back I read an article in Reason by Emma Camp, More States Are Using Science-Backed Reading Instruction. It Shouldn’t Have Taken This Long., touting “science of reading” instruction methods, which stress training in phonics—mapping letters to sounds—as opposed to “balanced literacy”, aka “whole language”, aka “three cueing”, which, Emma says, was…
Author: Alan Vanneman
How to accessorize a coffee table: Alan Vanneman versus the New York Times
How’s your tablescape? Tim McKeough of the New York Times has some advice, and a video: You see them on Instagram and in design magazines: those perfectly composed coffee tables that tie a living room together and hint at the fabulous taste of the homeowners. How do those tablescapes come together? How does someone decide…
Shorter National Review: Yo, Trump people! WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE!
OK, this is goldarn hilarious—to me, at least. The National Review is throwing itself into a goldarn—or perhaps goldurn—full-court press over the utterly laughable, load o’ shit “Durham Report”, cranking out such utterly laughable, bullshit pieces as The FBI Didn’t Ignore Russian Intel on Hillary’s Plan to Smear Trump — It Abetted the Plan, and…
Who’s stoopider, Noah Rothman, the New York Times, or the U.S. Treasury? Tough call!
Damn right it is. Over at the National Review, hot shot author Noah Rothman, whose best-selling book, The Rise of the New Puritans, trashing those damn West Coast hippies grown old and rich and censorious, which, if I read it, I’d probably agree with more often than not, is on a tear, tearing into those…
Issa Souriant— “Monk’s Dream”
Posted by Issa
Shorter Paul Krugman: Herbert Hoover was right. Businessmen are too goddamn greedy!
Goddamn right they are. Uncle Paul tells it like it is, unlike the many times I’ve bitched or sneered at him (though mixed in, to be sure, with occasional gestures of praise). As Paul points out, all the supposedly “responsible” businessfolk, in favor of “sound” principles, have no problem with a single house of Congress,…
Yo, Fareed Zakaria! Biden administration national security advisor Jake Sullivan is not “fiercely intelligent”! Unless by “fiercely intelligent” you mean “totally stupid”!
The good news is that we have a “Biden Doctrine”, says the WashPost’s Fareed Zakaria. The bad news is, it’s a Biden doctrine. Innocently spelling out the bad news for us is Biden national security dude Jake Sullivan—“fiercely intelligent”, Fareed tells us, fiercely, as though a little afraid that Jake might punch him out at…
Noam Chomsky, cunning linguist
Has Literature R Us finally hit bottom? Well, yes, for now, because I really have no idea as to whether the good doctor and founder/inventor of modern linguistics is now or ever has been an efficacious practitioner of oral sex, but, well, it’s a funny lead, and if it’s funny, it leads. So let me…
Virtual Jazz Ensemble— “Monk’s Dream”
The 92nd St. Y Ensemble, featuring Ezra Kessler (drums), MarcAndrew Martinez (bass), and Chris Bergson (guitar). Posted by EZDRUMSNYC
Peter Watson’s The German Genius: Ist es deutsch? Ja, allzu deutsch.
Peter Watson’s massive (996 pages) study, The German Genius, is one of the most confounding books I’ve ever read, “impressive” for most of its great length, often “brilliant” in its discussion of 20th century Germany, but then lurching downhill drastically in places, descending to the level of Nazi apologetics at its worst—plus one whopping mathematical…