Education and Culture (2010-2011)

© 2012 Peter Free

 

 

Even Formerly Respected Police Departments Assist in Weaving Morally Corrupt Falsity — Refusing to Take Crime Reports to Keep Crime Rates Lower than They Actually Are — another Example of Government-Employed Supervisors Intentionally Working against the Public Interest(31 December 2011)

 

 

An Obvious Phenomenon that Most of Us Don’t Recognize Often Enough — the Structural Funneling of Knowledge, including Science and Medicine, through Somebody Else’s Self-Interest and Often Uninformed Opinion Means that “Truth” Is Only Rarely Found (16 December 2011)

 

 

Four Psychological Reasons for Why We Defend and Contribute to a Clearly Self-Destructive Political System — Explaining Why the Worse Things Get, the Harder It Seems to Change Them (14 December 2011)

 

 

“Success Chasing” and “Spurious Beliefs” on the Part of Doctors, and Presumably Other Decision-Makers, Usually Lead to Worse Outcomes — the Value of Paying Attention to Failures in Order to Improve Performance — a Not so “Duh” Insight from a Brain Study (02 December 2011)

 

 

Well Spoken — an Occupy Wall Streeter Synopsizes the Core Message that Slipped by the Economic Elite, Self-Interested Politicians, and Our Witless Mainstream Media (27 October 2011)

 

 

Misperceiving the Quality of One’s Performance (Compared to that of Others) Can Lead to Feelings of Dejection — a Finding that Casts Doubt on the Wisdom of America’s Self-Esteem Movement (19 October 2011)

 

 

Misquoting Martin Luther King, Jr. on His Own Memorial — Lies Have apparently become America’s Only Currency (19 September 2011)

 

 

Michael Brenner Sees America’s Flight from Truth as a Benefit to Quasi-Narcissists like President Obama — Do You Agree? (06 September 2011)

 

 

What It’s Really Like in Many of America’s Schools — Ex-Teacher John Owens’ Entertaining Essay about Bureaucratic Smothering and the Flight of Discipline and Common Sense (30 August 2011)

 

 

“Some Things Ya Ain’t Gonna Find Out” — Investigative Reporter Russ Baker’s Analysis regarding Unreliable Reporting about Osama bin Laden’s Execution — and the Role of Truth-Discovering Media in a Free Society (17 August 2011)

 

 

A Good Analogy Can Explain Someone’s Point of View in a Persuasive Way — a Clever Metaphor about the Debt Crisis from Robert Reich (08 August 2011)

 

 

People Saying One Thing, then Doing the Opposite — an Accepted Cultural Pattern of Lying that’s Going to Sink Us (10 August 2011)

 

 

Poor Communication Weakens a New Study’s Public Safety Message about Drinking and Driving — Are There No Scientifically-Minded Editors Anywhere? (21 June 2011)

 

 

Living in America’s Never-Never Land — the Optimistic Nonsense that Americans Are Asked to Swallow about Traumatic Brain Injury (16 June 2011)

 

 

Al Jazeera’s Excellent Journalism — A Short Documentary about Trucking across Pakistan’s Hair-Raising Lowari Pass Road (16 June 2011)

 

 

Brainlessness as a Media-Supported American Lifestyle — Columnist Kathleen Parker’s Accurate Perspective on the Utility of Actually Thinking(12 June 2011)

 

 

Sheer Class, Jim Lehrer’s Tenure and Exit from What Is Now the PBS NewsHour — the Professional Values that, if Emulated, Would Restore Journalism into the Democracy-Preserving Institution that It Once Was(14 May 2011)

 

 

Racism and Cupidity Still at Work — a Second African-American Mother Arrested for Trying to Advance Her Child’s Education (19 April 2011)

 

 

A Talented Synopsis Provides a Framework for Sound Political Thinking — Philosophical Counselor Andrew Taggart Summarized Columnist David Brooks’ View of Society in a Concise Fashion that Simultaneously Provides an Analytical Benchmark for Comparative Political Philosophy(12 April 2011)

 

 

Disparities in Law Enforcement Based on Race and Plutocracy’s Priorities — Going after Barry Bonds for Not Much of Anything and Giving the Financial Sector’s Numerous (Billions-of-Dollars-Stealing) Crooks a Pat on the Back (14 April 2011)

 

 

Fifty Years Ago, Yuri Gagarin Was the First Person in Space — and the United States Quickly Developed a More Purposeful Energy than It Has Displayed Since (11 April 2011)

 

 

A Good Question about the Failed Evolution of Political Culture — Katrina vanden Heuvel Asks Why Previously Disgraced Leaders Still Have their Opinions Prominently Aired by the Media during Challenging Times, when One Would Think Proven Capability Would Be at a Premium (30 March 2011)

 

 

Dragged Down by the Voluntarily Ignorant — Does the Mediocrity Suck-Down Phenomenon Act More Aggressively among African-American and Hispanic Students? (28 March 2011)

 

 

Cultural Strengths and Weaknesses on Display in Japan — Fukushima Daiichi’s Radiation Leaks (17 March 2011)

 

Would a National Character Trait that Combined Immodesty with a Disregard for Facts Generate Dangerous Domestic and Foreign Policy?(15 March 2011)

 

 

Improving Education as It Now Exists Will Not Advance the Economic Interests of Middle and Low-Middle Income People— Plutocrats and Politicians Are Lying to Us (07 March 2011)

 

 

Politically Liberal Over-Representation in the Social Sciences Is So Extreme that One Wonders How Many of the Field’s Findings Are Accurate (12 February 2011)

 

 

USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter — A Good Example of Apparently Influential Nonsense (09 February 2011)

 

 

Gale Scott’s Outstanding Piece of Lay Science and Medical Writing: “Scientists Discover Mechanism Involved in Breast Cancer’s Spread to Bone” — a Model of How It Should Be Done (04 February 2011)

 

 

If You Are Black and Poor, You Get Thrown in Jail — If You’re White or an Asian Tiger Mom, You Skate — The Case for Jury Nullification (01 February 2011)

 

 

Is Missing the Crucial Point Characteristic of Newly Minted American Leaders? — An Important Observation from the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee’s Heather Wilson (23 January 2011)

 

 

Kathleen Parker on Professor Alan Gribben — Is She Sanity’s Voice against “Illiterates” Who Would Alter Mark Twain’s Words? (08 January 2011)

 

 

Reviving Leadership’s Standard — Peggy Noonan on Modernity and “The King’s Speech” (09 January 2011)

 

 

The Obama Tax Cut Extension Compromise as an Indication of Cultural Short-Sightedness (10 December 2010)

 

 

What Will Our Children’s Kids Aspire to When They Look Up at the Night Sky? (24 November 2010)

 

 

How a Society Treats Women and Girls May Be the Best Off-the-Cuff Indicator of its Ethical Worth ─ a Minor Rumination on the Morality of Accepting Culture or Forcing Change (08 November 2010)

 

 

The First Bookless, Fully Electronic Library (30 October 2010)

 

 

Danno and Pontiac, Both Gone ─ Reminders of an Era that Was Sometimes (for Some People) More Fun than this One (29 October 2010)

 

 

United States Drops Out of the Top 20 Least Corrupt Places to Live and Work (26 October 2010)

 

 

Switzerland Versus the United States, an Interesting Difference in Perspectives regarding Democracy and Investment in Transportation Infrastructure (15 October 2010)

 

 

Another Step in the New American Way to Self-Destruction ─ New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Cancelled the Much Needed Hudson River Tunnel (08 October 2010)

 

 

China Is Looking toward the Future ─ What Are We Doing? ─ Pretty Much Zip (26 September 2010)

 

 

Philip K. Howard, David Brooks, and a Call to Personal and Positional Responsibility ─ Transitioning from a Currently Failing Culture into a Successful One (24 September 2010)

 

 

Pauline Wiessner’s Engaged Anthropology and a Penetrating Vignette of Technological Infrastructure’s Uneven Global Advance ─ Small Lessons for the Developed World (22 September 2010)

 

 

Is Accurate Thinking in Politics an Educable Trait? ─ Democracy Fails if It Is Not (20 September 2010)

 

 

How to Change the American Soul, as Applied to Education, without Getting Politically Shot Down

(19 September 2010)

 

Educational Reform Requires Fixing the American Soul (15 September 2010)

 

 

Improving American Education Is about Culture, More than It Is about Teachers, Buildings, and Books

(13 September 2010)