Links for 2012-02-07

For a while, I've been thinking about writing a piece on how NPR is more toxic than Fox News. Fox preaches to the choir. NPR, though, confuses and misinforms people who might otherwise know better. Its "liberal" reputation makes palatable a deeply orthodox message for a demographic that could be open to a more critical message. The full critique will take some time. But a nice warm-up opportunity has just presented itself: a truly wretched piece of apologetic hackery by Adam Davidson, co-founder of NPR's Planet Money economics reporting team, that appears in today's New York Times magazine.

The overpowering impression left by Harper's study, he and others say, is that while the achievers in his group worked hard and made their own way through significant personal effort and motivation, their path was fueled by what he calls "serendipitous" influences and factors that inspired them and connected them to their institutions. Why should their success be left to serendipity, they argue? "We know a heck of a lot more about why and how and where black men fail than we do about how and why they are successful," says James Minor, director of higher education programs at the Southern Education Foundation and a member of Harper's advisory panel. "Let's start with this group and figure out what it is about their experience, their environmental realities, that makes them successful, and advance institutional policies around assessment of outcomes that advance performance and the likelihood that more African-American males can do what these guys have done."

When Republicans line up against Clint Eastwood and cars, one has to ask, "What could they possibly be for?"

Before I was born, my dad ran for local office and got to speak at a 1960 rally where he introduced the speaker who introduced Republican presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon. Nixon was then vice president, but that's not the cool part of the story or why Dad is still rightly proud to have shared that podium. The cool part of the story is the guy he introduced: Jackie Robinson. In 1960, Jackie Robinson was a Republican. That was still possible in 1960, still conceivable. In 1960, President Eisenhower, like Teddy Roosevelt before him, still was able to make the claim that he was the leader of "the party of Abraham Lincoln." He was the last Republican president who could plausibly say that. And apart from empty platitudes ritually repeated, he was the last Republican president who seemed at all interested in saying that.

All science toys and projects: *are accessible (so cheap to make that nobody is excluded because of cost, and they don't require special skills, tools, materials, or work facilities beyond a kitchen). *have a "more about" page with explanations, historical context, related activities and high quality links for further research. *have clear step by step video directions or text instructions with lots of pictures. The science projects at the top are most developed; some of the farther-down science projects are works in progress. Most project instructions have been improved by helpful feedback from people like you, and some projects are entirely the work of guest authors.