Miles Kimball

Permalink

Apparently, a large number of Americans and other people...

Singular they has become the pronoun of choice to replace he and she in cases where the gender of the antecedent – the word the pronoun refers to – is unknown, irrelevant, or nonbinary, or where gender needs to be concealed. It’s the word we use for sentences like Everyone loves his mother. But that’s nothing new. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf....

For learning, celebrating failure is a superpower. It opens the door to asking the stupid question that wasn’t stupid at all, paves the way to trying something out to get practice and course correct, and blazes a trail for deeper insight. Show me someone who fails a lot because they take risks, and I’ll show you someone who is learning a lot. Show...

A Partisan Nonpartisan Blog: Cutting Through Confusion Since 2012 Key Posts Neg.Rates Resources Bio Blog Archive...

For tickets to Monday’s Faneuil Forum with Professor Michael Sandel, click here. Stories of learning, teaching, and turning points, in the Experience series. Michael Sandel joined the Government Department in 1980 to teach political theory largely on the strength of a dissertation that boldly critiqued the ideas of John Rawls, then a towering figure both at Harvard and in the field. Since then he has grown to be among the most influential political philosophers of his era, and one of...

Many people oppose immigration for either racist reasons or looking down on non-citizens in a way that is just as bad as racism. One way to suss out whether this is true in a given case is to call their bluff when they say (as they often do) that they are opposed to illegal immigration. OK, fine. Let’s be against illegal immigration, but let’s dramatically increase legal immigration. And, as I’ve often said on Twitter, if I get to choose the realized quantity of legal immigration that is a...

Many people believe that truth conveys power. If some leaders, religions or ideologies misrepresent reality, they will eventually lose to more clearsighted rivals. Hence sticking with the truth is the best strategy for gaining power. Unfortunately, this is just a comforting myth. In fact, truth and power have a far more complicated relationship, because in human society, power means two very different things.On the one hand, power means having the ability to manipulate objective realities: to...

Insulin levels that are too high lead to obesity and directly to many other health problems. Insulin levels that are too high are very common. So you should worry about keeping your insulin levels within bounds even if you don’t yet have any particular worrisome symptoms. (See “Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon.”)Franziska’s...

Life stories from Drew Faust, Howard Gardner, Annette Gordon-Reed, Martin Karplus, Toshiko Mori, Steven Pinker, E.O. Wilson, Paul Farmer, and many more, in the Experience series. Coming from a long line of Hindu intellectuals and teachers, Amartya Sen enjoyed advantages and freedoms that few others did in a deeply-stratified India of the 1930s, during the waning days of the British empire. Teaching was in his blood, and from an early age, Sen was struck by the stark economic inequities...