Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 27
October 24, 2022
Two Tales about the Catastrophe called Socialism
Today, I am reposting a commentary I published a while back about socialism. As we rush toward the 2022 midterm elections, I can only hope that the infatuation some Americans have for the failed system called socialism has subsided. We shall see. Please read on. We are hearing a lot ...
October 23, 2022
Flashman–Victorian England’s foremost rotter would have made a great foreign correspondent
At the request of a faithful follower, today I am re-posting a column that appeared a while back in The Economist, one of the U.K.’s most prestigious magazines. Written by an unnamed foreign correspondent, it takes a sardonic and self-effacing view of foreign correspondents by suggesting that Harry Flashman, Victorian ...
October 21, 2022
12 English Words That You Should Avoid
And now for something completely different. When I was teaching journalism at the University of Illinois, I used to get on students for using, or I should say, misusing words—especially slang or words that have no business being in anybody’s vocabulary—especially university students. I created a list of those words ...
October 19, 2022
How To Make a ‘Trans Kid’
I am not a biologist, and as such, I would not feel comfortable telling any adult what to do with his or her body. That’s their business. But when it comes to children, the biology classes I had in high school and college tell me that there is a lot ...
October 18, 2022
A Little Truthful Levity to Ease Your Pain
Sometimes a picture or a meme can express our feelings better than words. Sometimes it takes both images and words. Here then, are a few images and words that I will wager express what a lot of us are feeling these days of $7 per gallon gas (at least here ...
October 12, 2022
Five Obscure Grammar Rules You Didn’t Know Existed & a Few Other Grammatical Twists
Because a portion of my blog is dedicated to writing, from time to time, I like to post about the English language. So join me for a few English grammar lessons. Not to worry. We aren’t going to diagram sentences here. Do you remember doing that in elementary and middle ...
October 11, 2022
Laws of Nature NOT Taught in Physics Class
Let’s think a bit about laws and how they impact our lives. First, there are laws made by human beings. Those laws are often ignored and broken. Then there are laws of predictable constants, laws of physics, and laws of nature. These are essentially immutable. But there are also laws ...
October 10, 2022
PROGRESSIVISM & THE RISE OF THE INTOLERANT LEFT
The following column appeared in my local newspaper a while back. It is well-written and thought-provoking—two areas that I like to focus on in my blog, so I am sharing it with you today. The author is Joel Kotkin, executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. You can ...
October 6, 2022
The “dumbing down” of college means mediocre education without rigor
The other day a front-page story in the New York Times grabbed my attention like few others. The headline read: “At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?.” The answer, readers learned, was not the students but the award-winning professor who taught the class. To quote the ...
October 5, 2022
Q & A With Ron Yates On Writing, Etc. (Part 3)
Periodically, I like to post about the art and craft of writing. Today I am posting the third of a three-part series on the topic that I did a while back. Here is Part Three: During the past few years, I have done several interviews with bloggers and spoken to ...
