Snow!
This Week’s Posts
Monday, January 24th - Gen X Was the Political Generation
Stop predicting that the new generation is the one that will save us.
Tuesday, January 25th - Q&A: Ethan Sherwood Strauss
An interview with one of my favorite sportswriters.
Another damning study.
Thursday, January 27th - Human Capital is Real, and Some People are Smarter than Other People
Pretending everyone is equally smart serves the interests of no one.
Friday, January 28th - By Request, How I Structure My Days (subscriber only)
People keep asking, so here’s my (minimalistic) approach to scheduling.
We also got a new Book Club post on Wednesday.
From the Archives
Short and sweet: random assignment of a computer to homes with children has no effect on the academic performance of those children. At the time this was represented as a counterintuitive finding, but… why would it be?
Song of the Week
Mexico oh Mexico!
Book Recommendation
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee, 2010
A real triumph of big-subject nonfiction, Mukherjee’s celebrated overview of cancer and our centuries-old efforts to fight it is most impressive to me for its level of perspective, for its “zoom,” so to speak. With a subject as capacious and complex as this, it’s very easy to either be zoomed too far out, trying to include too much and becoming a tedious encyclopedia, or to get too close, fixating on case studies and indicative examples to the extent that the reader can’t get an adequate grasp of the sweep of the subject. And this is a sweeping subject, a vast trove of human suffering and tragedy and the dogged efforts of experts to fight a disease that, in some variants, is no more survivable today than when I was born. You’ll be disturbed by the extremity of the surgeries and chemotherapy in the early days of such procedures, and you’ll be both in awe of the intricacy of the genetic research brought to bare and sobered by just how little we know. Whether you have a personal connection to cancer or not, this is a bracing read.
NFL Picks of the Week
We’re on a little win streak. Let’s keep it going. I hate to pick favorites because I usually go moneyline in the playoffs, but I gotta go with the Los Angeles Rams (-3.5) over the San Francisco 49ers at home. The Niners can’t hide Jimmy G. forever. Sooner or later Stafford will put up points and the 49ers will have to play from behind. And I don’t think they can.
Win-Loss-Push: 16-16-0
Comment of the Week
My mom was a teacher and a great one but she always seemed to believe, in a flower child kind of way, that we could all be doctors or engineers if we wanted to. I think I mostly believed her until my husband and I adopted our children. Want some back up for the power of genetics? Ask an adoptive parent. Both of our kids were adopted as infants. One is social-butterfly artist that everyone likes but couldn’t make change to save her life. The other one scores in the top percentiles on everything academic and has the social skills of a lovable brick wall. I think our emphasis on education and our financial ability to give them opportunities has definitely enhanced their lives, but we have had zero to do with their skill sets. - HL
That’s it! Stay warm.
I wonder how that computer study would hold up 7 years later. I can't dispute the findings, mind you, but from the high school perspective it feels like student tech skills have been regressing as smartphones become more ubiquitous and, in low-SES neighborhoods like mine, the only internet device in the home besides video game consoles. Half my students text on their phones faster than they type, and many have admitted that they never use keyboards outside of school and don't really know how to use a desktop OS. I blew a student's mind yesterday by showing her the tab key and the copy+paste keyboard shortcuts.
Assuming desktops and laptops are less distracting and better-suited to reading, writing, and research than phones (which most people probably assume, myself included) I wonder how well those computer results would replicate today in a more phone-mediated world.
Huge drop in quality of opponents for both favorites from last week. I bet with my brother all season (we avoid the vig!). I'm ahead so far so he picks first. I like Rams-3.5. If bengals line stays at 7.5, that's a difficult choice.