Recent Links

 Where is Teacher's Union Money Going? 

The report, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), Gevura Fund, and Rutgers University, among others, found that of the NEA’s $450 million annual disbursement budget from fiscal year 2025, less than $46 million, or 10 percent, was spent on activities directly representing the union’s constituents.

Initial impressions reading the Qur'an (instead of about the Qur'an) 

Fifty years ago Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood, by Jo Freeman in Ms. magazine* 

Lyman Stone on declining long-term fertility rate being exaggerated Number of live births was much higher than overall child survival rates until around 1920, when they matched up in the West. So graphs that show only the former give an appearance of decline in family size that is much less than we think. In fact, he thinks the current decline which has everyone so worried is more fixable than we think. This is counter to much I have been reading.

*linked in in a substack article By Helen Dale and Lorenzo Warbythat sees continuing behavioral differences in men and women from the y-chromosome bottleneck 7,000 years ago. Among hunter-gatherers, males and females reproduce in similar numbers.  With the rise in agropastoralism (think herders, Steppes, African cattle raids), the percentage of males reproducing dropped to about 6% that of females. 

 The development of farming and then animal herding greatly increased the number of humans—which continued to have evolutionary consequences for our species—and created productive assets (farms and animal herds) worth fighting over. Successful male teams (typically organised as clans) wiped out unsuccessful male teams and took their women as spoils...This is why young schoolboy sporting teams regularly crush adult women’s national teams in team sports such as soccer. It is not that schoolboys have the strength advantage over women associated with adult men (they are often not particularly advantaged around age 14-15). It’s simply that human males are much more likely to “get” teamwork at a visceral level.