Assistant Village Idiot

When you see an older person not figuring out the parking lot or not shopping correctly, or holding up the line; when a person in a driveabl...

Jonathan Haidt, in The Coddling of the American Mind, identifies very specifically the increase in snowflake activity to the high school gra...

Well, that didn't work. My belief is that there is much you cannot change.  The things you can change aren't as much fun for the c...

This is one of the most-visited because I have pushed it hard over several Christmases. So sue me. I think I was on to something. ***** U...

Grading with an easier hand might encourage more people to take STEM courses, especially women. I can make a defense for grading on a curve...

A book in the hand is worth two on back-order.

I have been nervous about reading Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The New Testament and Why. This is not be...

Here is something you can use going forward, a rule of thumb:  When someone claims that what they are putting forward is not an opinion but...

I continue to only catch most news about the impeachment proceedings largely by accident.  I don't read those articles at Maggie's ...

The 100 most-visited posts series is going to finish up just before the end of the year, which is only partly accidental.  I have adjusted t...

Dershowitz believes the SCOTUS has validated Trump's contention that the judicial branch is the final arbiter of subpoena power, by acc...

 Update:  The first comment is very worth reading, and thinking about. Journalists should do a better job matching experts to their actual...

Similar to the previous post, my wife is quite pleased this moment by what just happened while listening to "Says You" on NPR.  Th...

I hadn't realised that was 40 years ago . I had one of the first cubes in the US, smuggled out before it was quite legal - though I doub...

My fourth-most visited post over the years, even though it is not very thorough. From January 2007.  ******* Taking some “r’s” ou...

This is what is insufferable about Europeans. In terms of population, this is like "How to be a real native of Connecticut, or Massac...

He is considered by some to be the smartest man alive. He has attacked mathematics problems that have eluded others and made progress in fri...