Climate R&D Gets Short Shrift at the Democratic Debate
Mayor Pete didn’t say much about climate R&D, but at least he mentioned it.PBS Everyone is now talking about climate change. Everyone is in favor of emergency action. Everyone (?) is in favor of a carbon tax. I guess this is good to hear, but it sounds an awful lot like what I’ve been hearing…
Facial Recognition Turns Out To Be Not So Great If You Aren’t a White Man
The National Institute of Standards and Technology released a report today about the accuracy of facial recognition software. The news was grim: most algorithms make a lot more errors when the subject is anything other than a white male, which means that women and people of color are more likely to be misidentified. But this…
Rep. Jeff Van Drew Just Switched to the Republican Party and Pledged His “Undying Support” for Trump
Evan Vucci/AP Following days of reports that Rep. Jeff Van Drew was considering switching his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, the New Jersey congressman officially announced that he was switching parties on Thursday at a press conference with President Donald Trump. Van Drew, one of just three Democrats who voted against one or both…
The House Just Voted to Impeach Donald Trump
Mother Jones illustration; Getty For the third time in United States history, the House of Representatives has voted to impeach the president. In a vote that fell largely along party lines, 229 Democrats and one independent voted to impeach President Donald Trump for abuse of power, while 195 House Republicans and two Democrats voted against…
The Inevitability of Donald Trump’s Impeachment
Mother Jones illustration; Evan Vucci/AP; Michael A. McCoy/ZUMA; Getty On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted, on a largely partisan basis, to impeach Donald Trump—only the third time a US president been indicted in this fashion. And as significant and historic as this action was, there was nothing shocking about it. That is different from…
Has Mississippi Performed a Reading Miracle?
While we all wait for the inevitable conclusion to the House impeachment debate, Bob Somerby has me pondering yet another education mystery. A couple of weeks ago Emily Hanford wrote in the New York Times that Mississippi had substantially increased its fourth graders’ reading ability recently: What’s up in Mississippi? There’s no way to know…