This link was sent to me by a despondent (and of course anonymous) New Zealander with the comment, “This is now unstoppable in NZ.” It’s from the Times Higher Education site, and the authors are Mahdis Azarmandi and Sara Tolbert, both on the Faculty of Education of New Zealand’s University of Canterbury. Click screenshot to […]
Last October I posted a critique of a new National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative designed to combine indigenous knowledge with modern science—in the U.S. this time, and to the tune of $30 million. The NSF was very optimistic, as you can see from the article below in Science (click to read; see also a similar […]
In the summer of 2004, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok invited me to guest blog for their new Marginal Revolution. MR was less than a year old then. And while I started sidelining for listservs back in 1993, insiders told me that blogging was something new. So exactly 20 years ago I gave it a…
We have been following the controversies surrounding professors commenting on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Some of those responses have ranged from celebrations to spreading bizarre conspiracy theories. The latest controversy concerns Rutgers University Writing Program Assistant Teaching Professor Tracy Budd, who posted a Facebook message saying ”Let’s hope today’s events inspire […]
Here we have a 55-minute (remote) conversation between Richard Dawkins and Kathleen Stock conducted during the “Dissident Dialogues” conference in NYC last May. Here’s a précis of Stock’s background from Wikipedia: Kathleen Mary Linn Stock OBE is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic […]
There is media fuss today around the resistance of schools in terms of excluding students excluded from other schools. The NZ Herald highlights statistics that 100s of schools appear to be reluctant and three remain outright resistant. The article highlights the legal obligation for schools to accept students in their zone. This can be ordered […]
Grant Duncan writes: University management should take note of that, as there have been unrealistic efforts to force poorly defined “Treaty obligations” into teaching and research. For example, one university is now telling its academic staff that all curricula should, as a high priority, be “designed, developed and delivered in authentic partnerships with Māori [and] […]
.PBS NewsHour Here is the transcript JUDY WOODRUFF: Scientists working in Greenland have identified the oldest samples of DNA ever found on Earth. By analyzing this two-million-year-old genetic material, they have revealed how Northern Greenland was once a wildly different environment than the cold polar region it is today, one teeming with ancient wildlife and […]
Two letters have just been published in Science signed by a total of 15 scientists, all criticizing the first article below (published in Science last February), a piece arguing for teaching indigenous knowledge (including N.Z.’s version, Mātauranga Māori) alongside science in the science classroom. (Click to read.) Now the authors, after being criticized, denied that […]
The next Green MP in on the List is Benjamin Doyle. This is his MA thesis: Here is a Master’s thesis crafted with, by, and for Rangatahi Takatāpui. It represents a labour of love for the community to which I belong, and seeks to generate understanding about the factors that enable LGBTQI+ Māori youth to […]
Donald Trump recently endorsed a glorious-on-net immigration proposal: giving a green card to every foreigner who graduates from a U.S. university. I was stunned when I read the fine print: Let me just tell you that it’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greater schools and lesser schools that are…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Recent Comments