opinion
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You are viewing stuff tagged with opinion.
I enjoyed reading Stanley Fish’s argument against attempts to justify studies of the humanities. Fish respectfully points to Anthony Kronman’s idealistic viewpoint that the humanities teach people compassion and give them examples of the different paths a life can take. He acknowledges that this argument makes sense, but ultimately seems to think it’s dishonest. Which is to say: can you stand up in front of a bunch of people and say the humanities make better people when the professors who study them everyday are clearly no better as people than the rest of us? Similarly, a “careerism” argument for the humanities is just as flimsy as it is depressing.
Right now, roughly 1 in 5 Americans don’t have full time jobs:
A truer picture of the employment crisis emerges when you combine the number of people who are officially counted as jobless with those who are working part time because they can’t find full-time work and those in the so-called labor market reserve — people who are not actively looking for work (because they have become discouraged, for example) but would take a job if one became available.
The tally from those three categories is a mind-boggling 30 million Americans — 19 percent of the overall work force.
Nicholas D. Kristof - Crisis in the Operating Room:
Outside, her husband, Allahdita, was grieving but philosophical. “It is God’s will,” he said, shrugging. “There is nothing we can do.”
That’s incorrect. If men had uteruses, “paternity wards” would get resources, ambulances would transport pregnant men to hospitals free of charge, deliveries would be free, and the Group of 8 industrialized nations would make paternal mortality a top priority. One of the most lethal forms of sex discrimination is this systematic inattention to reproductive health care, from family planning to childbirth — so long as those who die are impoverished, voiceless women.