Ned Danison, unedited

Probably as an outcome of our affluent age, our preferred course of action in dealing with a problem is to skip the subtleties and specifics and throw money at it. Everything comes down to money, we say, so we might as well just put a dollar amount on a problem and get it over with. [...]

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There I was, idly reading a New York Times article about how American college freshmen are more stressed out than ever before (which is a laugh, really, when you know something about the life of college students in China or India). One thing led to another, and I thought: Hmm, what is the percentage of [...]

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(this is the continuation from here) I promised at the beginning I was going to say something about Chinese culture, but so far I have rambled on about the Americanness of the interaction between the guy and me in the restroom. Well, now for the anticlimax: in general I’d have to say that what transpired [...]

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It’s time again to re-post something by one of my favorite economists, George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux: Deeply Deficient Trade Thinking Posted: 20 Jan 2011 11:38 AM PST Here’s a letter to a Chinese news agency: Editor, English.Xinhuanet.com Dear Editor: I want to jab a chopstick into my eye when I read that “China is [...]

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(This is the continuation from here.) [Adding this later: http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_english_mania.html] I want to finally put to rest my commentary on an op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof on the “paramount importance” of teaching our children Spanish. So far I have said, essentially, that teaching our children foreign languages is good, but Kristof’s case that Spanish (and [...]

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(This is the continuation from here.) Back to Kristof’s evidence for the “paramount importance for our children” to learn Spanish: (2) As the United States increasingly integrates economically with Latin America, Spanish will become more crucial in our lives. More Americans will take vacations in Latin America, do business in Spanish, and eventually move south [...]

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I just read an op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof called “Primero Hay Que Aprender Español. Ranhou Zai Xue Zhongwen.” Translated, that is, “First learn Spanish, then study Chinese”. His point is that a lot of people seem to think learning Chinese as a second language is the thing to do nowadays, but it’s more important [...]

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Ignorance — to not know something — is something we all have. As Will Rogers put it, “Everybody’s ignorant, just about different things.” Adults sometimes don’t mind appearing to be ignorant of something, as in not knowing who’s playing in the World Cup or even what sport that is. Adults have “don’t know, don’t care” [...]

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I was standing on a bridge over a little stream with my family recently. We were looking for fish in the stream, and my daughter saw one. “There’s one!” she said, “Right there!” I looked and looked, and all I saw was stream — muddy rocks and assorted thingamajigs under sparkly water. I looked intently [...]

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The deep thoughts and grand plans of deep and grand thinkers flow from high silos of truth and eventually water the thought life of common folks. Big ideas like progressivism, conservatism, socialism, and libertarianism each have their own subtle beauty (which only devotees may appreciate), but what is filtered down and distributed among common folks [...]

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