Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2687
August 2, 2010
How Much Do Parents Matter?
Provoked by research on the importance of good kindergarten teachers, Greg Mankiw asks about the role of parents. The author of the kindergarten paper replies:
The best evidence I've seen on the long term impacts of parents is this quasi-experimental paper
by Bruce Sacerdote published in the QJE. It shows that parental
characteristics explain about three times more of the variation in
adult outcomes than [kindergarten:] classes, consistent with your intuition.
Leonhardt also answers:
As more...
Living Wills And Living Deaths, Ctd
A reader writes:
Two months ago, my 88-year-old father-in-law passed away after lung cancer surgery at a Catholic hospital. The surgery was successful, but after two days his lungs filled with fluid, which caused his heart to stop due to lack of oxygen. By the time he was breathing and his heart beating again, his brain lacked oxygen for several minutes. An EEG showed some brain activity but he was effectively in a coma.
My wife had power of attorney and after 10 days of no change decided...
Quote For The Day II
"Why don't you think of [Christ:] as the coming one, who has been at hand since eternity, the future one, the final fruit of a tree, with us as its leaves? What is keeping you from hurling his birth into evolving times and from living your life as though it were one painful beautiful day in the history of a great pregnancy? Don't you see that everything that happens becomes a beginning again and again? Could it not be his beginning, since a beginning in itself is always so beautiful? If...
"This Little Thing"
Behold its power:
This Little Thing - Legalize It!!! Funniest video ever! - watch more funny videos
Multimedia - Development Frameworks - funny videos - Recreation - Flash
Another Conservatism
David Cameron writes an op-ed addressing the gay community. Imagine a Republican leader doing that. Better still, imagine him or her writing this:
I know there is one other subject that the gay community is particularly interested in: marriage. As someone who believes in commitment, in marriage and in civil partnerships, my view is that if religious organisations want to have civil partnerships registered at their places of worship that should be able to happen. Last week the Equalities...
Abortion And Slavery, Ctd
A reader writes:
Kain makes the mistake of thinking that any moral belief deeply held, no matter how extreme,
can't be criticized for being too extreme. It's a moral belief, after all!
But imagine a militant animal rights activist who claimed, "The meat industry is indisputably the worst Holocaust in history." If we buy into Kain's argument, there's nothing ridiculous here. If you believe in your heart of hearts that an animal is a sentient being worthy of equal moral weight to a human...
The ADL And Sensitivity
Always a one-way street:
When it comes to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's building the Museum of Tolerance on the oldest and largest Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, the ADL has no problem backing the legal rights of the Wiesenthal Center and turning a deaf ear to the sensitivities of the Palestinian Muslims.
Beinart unloads on another double-standard:
When Arizona passes a law that encourages police to harass Latinos, the ADL expresses outrage. But when Israel builds 170 kilometers of roads in the...
Obama's Foreign Policy: 0 - 4 So Far
Steven Walt writes that Obama is likely to be zero for four on big foreign policy goals going into 2012, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Israel:
Obama didn't get us into Iraq, and he's doing the right thing to get usout more-or-less on the schedule that the Bush adminstration negotiatedback in 2008. But it's now clear that the much-vaunted "surge" was astrategic failure, and Iraq could easily spin back out of control onceU.S. forces are gone. Even in the best case, Iraq can only be judged adefeat...
Top Secret America, Ctd
Julian Sanchez wants the Government Accountability Office to oversee the intelligence community. The Obama administration threatens to veto.
Presidency of Barack Obama - President - United States - Barack Obama - Government
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