Archive: Sep 2017

The National Parks Service has issued a report about the Reconstruction Era that followed the U.S. Civil War. According to a Pacific Standard article about the report, “a new initiative by the National Parks Service seeks to designate sites for their historic significance in the Reconstruction era. It’s a bold and vital move for an agency that has only recently begun to seriously address the racial complexities of the Civil War.” Indeed!

The Stanford University Tomorrow’s Professor e-newsletter recently examined the nature of the social sciences. In “What is Social Science?” Rom Harré — Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University — is interviewed by Nigel Warburton, co-author (with David Edmonds) of the book Big Ideas in Social Science. Harré and Warburton compare and contrast the social sciences with the physical sciences in a fascinating discussion.

Today is September 11, 2017, the 16th anniversary of the New York City and Washington D.C. terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011. The Pacific Standard website has an interesting article about cable news re-broadcasts of their original coverage.

Pacific Standard recently published an article on improving U.S. Presidential election primaries. The author poses a provocative proportion: “How to improve the primary process? Make it less democratic. It sounds counterintuitive—and would be a hard sell—but making the way the two major political parties nominate candidates less traditionally democratic could also make it more open to compromise and negotiation.” Specifically, he argues that we should:

  1. Make the primaries and caucuses proportional rather than winner-take-all;
  2. Shorten the time between the first and last primaries and caucuses so that candidates who aren’t necessarily winning in fundraising might still make it to the end; and
  3. Make contests less about the candidates and more about the delegates. This could include unbinding delegates from the voters’ choices.

Very interesting!