130 million are expected to be sold in the US between 2020 and 2023.
The Top Selling Electric Vehicle In The Next Decade
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Fewer Students Are Going To College
US Schools Do Fine in International Rankings Except in Math
From US Schools Are Not Flunking Out:
“So the U.S. education system is actually doing fine in many areas and is not being outpaced by competitors. The one exception is math, where the U.S. really does underperform. Poor math education isn’t a problem for U.S. technological dominance; the country can always take in more skilled immigrants to fill engineering and research jobs that native-born workers can’t do. But it’s not fair for native-born Americans to be shut out of high-paying STEM jobs because of the low quality of the nation’s math education. The U.S. needs to do better.”
Why do US students do badly in math?
“It might simply be because the US directs more resources toward reading and verbal education to the detriment of quantitative skills. It stands to reason that if American kids can learn to read better than kids from Taiwan or Germany, then they’re smart enough to make up some of the gap in math. Another problem might be a culture that believes too much in the importance of inborn ability rather than hard work and persistence. Students often tend to view math as an intelligence test rather than a skill to be learned, causing anxiety that worsens their performance. Additionally, evidence suggests that more active student participation and the cultivation of a mathematical mindset are effective approaches. It’s also possible that U.S. math education has never fully recovered from a failed experiment in teaching methods in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Sentence and Paragraph to Ponder
From Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back.
The sentence:
“A majority (57 percent) of millennials agree that religious people are generally less tolerant of others, compared to only 37 percent of Baby Boomers.”
The paragraph:
“Why does it matter if millennials’ rupture with religion turns out to be permanent? For one thing, religious involvement is associated with a wide variety of positive social outcomes like increased interpersonal trust and civic engagement that are hard to reproduce in other ways. And this trend has obvious political implications. As we wrote a few months ago, whether people are religious is increasingly tied to — and even driven by — their political identities. For years, the Christian conservative movement has warned about a tide of rising secularism, but research has suggested that the strong association between religion and the Republican Party may actually be fueling this divide. And if even more Democrats lose their faith, that will only exacerbate the acrimonious rift between secular liberals and religious conservatives.”
Millennial sightings at our church are kinda like the aurora borealis. Find yourself a dark, clear night from late August to early April and wait patiently. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll happen upon one. But unlike the aurora borealis, it’s probably best not to stare.
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year
‘Time’ 2019 Person Of The Year
2019 Sportsperson of the Year
The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Donald Trump
I’m reading a biography of Kim Jong Un who Donald Trump seems to admire. One thing that fascinates me about North Korea is how an army of government apparatchiks use language (and song and art and media) to create as comprehensive a cult of personality as the world has ever seen.
What intrigues me seemingly inspires The Republican Congress and Donald Trump.
In an article titled “How the Kim cult of personality came to dominate North Korean life,” Fyodor Tertitskiy shares the most extensive title he has ever seen published in the Rodong Sinmun in December 1972, when Kim Jong Un’s grandfather was elected president for the first time. In one sentence, he was referred to as:
“Peerless patriot, National Hero, Ever-Victorious Iron-Willed Brilliant Commander, One of the Outstanding leaders of the International Communist and Workers’ Movement, the Great Leader of our Party and of our people respected comrade Kim Il Sung, who founded the Marxist-Leninist Party – the Workers’ Party of Korea and the true state of workers and farmers – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and steadily leads our Revolution on the way of victories.”
How long until Trump’s Republican backers “borrow” from the North Koreans minus the references to communism and begin addressing him along these lines:
“Dear Leader Trump Peerless patriot, National Hero, Ever-Victorious Iron-Willed Brilliant Commander, One of the Outstanding leaders of the World, the Great Leader of the United States and our people who resuscitated the Republican Party, made America Great Again, and leads our Revolution on the way of victories.”
Would that earn a retweet or is it insufficiently flattering?
The Best and Worst of Times
Excellent jobs report. Stock market records. Homelessness seemingly on the rise. When it comes to the (dis)United States economy, there are distinct winners and losers.
Eleven months ago, I bought a couple shares of AAPL for $142. Today, they are worth $270.
A few days ago I went to our downtown depository of knowledge to pick up a book I had requested. A man, middle class looking, was doing the same. Looks can be deceptive.
He informed the librarian that he “had some money” and wanted to pay some of what he owed. “Oh,” the librarian said somewhat surprised, “you have some money.” He fiddled around in his velcro wallet and pulled out a small tangled wad of $1’s. “What’s my debt?” he asked. “$5.35,” the librarian said. “Okay, I’ll pay $2 of that.”
Snowbrawl
Shot on a pocket computer.
Pressing Pause 