Monthly Archives: January 2020
Reviewing a Review: Annie Murphy Paul on Diane Ravitch’s Slaying Goliath
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchers?), Juvenal, Satire VI On January 21, 2020, Annie Murphy Paul’s “review” of Diane Ravitch’s Slaying Goliath appeared in The New York Times. Being reviewed in the Times is a big deal. Such … Continue reading
The Trump “Trial”
Everybody knows. Trump is pathetically insecure and profoundly ignorant, a lout, a moron, a pathological liar, a racist, a bully and a thug, clinically an exhibitionist narcissist, a serial sexual predator, a ne’er-do-well would-be playboy and business failure, a con … Continue reading
One-Dimensional Man: The Exhibitionist Narcissist
Trump is a stereotype. A caricature of a man. All surface. But beneath all that is the little boy who was so, so terribly wounded by his distant, disapproving parents and the yawning gulf, the abyss, of the despair he … Continue reading
Espinoza v. Montana
So, the Supreme Court is hearing a case called Espinoa v. Montana Department of Revenue. It’s about whether a state can refuse to provide religious schools with the same per pupil support (typically, seven or eight thousand per student, though … Continue reading
Robert’s Rule
ROBERT’S RULE: If you are wondering whether a new policy, procedure, technology, law, regulation, or system is a good idea, just think of the worst person at the worst time in the future wielding its power. –Robert D. Shepherd Bob’s … Continue reading
History of Ideas: Background to Puritan and Pilgrim Protestantism in North America
For some 1,300 years, from roughly 300 to 1600 CE, the Catholic Church, headquartered for most of this time in the city of Rome, was the most powerful institution in the Western world. It was the ultimate spiritual and temporal … Continue reading
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Notes Introducing a Debate Unit on Transformative Technologies
This is a little backgrounder on Shelley’s Frankenstein that I created for a Powerpoint presentation to a high-school Debate class. We were starting a unit in which students would be debating the merits of various emerging transformative technologies. In preparation … Continue reading
How Do I Loathe Thee?
Trump, as Trump will tell you, is the best. I quite agree. He is, of politicians, the most abhorrent, amoral, anti-democratic, arrogant, authoritarian, autocratic, avaricious, backward, base, benighted, bloated, blubbering, blundering, bogus, bombastic, boorish, bungling, cheap, childish, clownish, clueless, common, … Continue reading
Essential Reading | Book Review
Diane Ravitch’s Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools In these dark days of Trumpism, reasons for optimism are the spars to which the rest of us, the passengers on the … Continue reading
Bob Shepherd | Praxis 