Author Archives: Harry Katz
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny By Kate Manne Oxford University Press, New York, 2018 On August 11, 2020, Joe Biden chose Senator Kamala Harris to be his 2020 running mate. Within minutes, Trump and other Republicans launched misogynist and … Continue reading
A Burning
A Burning By Megha Majumdar Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020 Faced with a difficult moral choice, would you do the right thing? What if doing the right thing might cost you your job or the chance of a promotion? … Continue reading
Surviving Autocracy: Can American democracy survive Trump’s autocratic transformation?
Most people in the US today have never lived under a dictatorship. Maybe we’ve heard stories from our parents or grandparents who immigrated from such places, but we don’t have personal experience with autocratic rulers. This is truly one of … Continue reading
White Fragility
White Fragility By Robin DiAngelo Beacon Press, Boston, 2018 “White Fragility” sounds like a paradox. How can whites be fragile when we’re supposed to be the largest and smost dominant segment of US society? As author Robin DiAngelo explains it, … Continue reading
So you want to talk about race
So you want to talk about race By Ijeoma Oluo Seal Press, New York, 2018 In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and the nation-wide protests that followed, many white people, … Continue reading
Gorsuch Surprises, Alito Spews, Scalia Haunts in Bostock v. Clayton County
On Monday, June 15, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects homosexual and transgender individuals from job discrimination. This decision has been hailed as a major victory for … Continue reading
Good Economics for Hard Times
Good Economics for Hard Times By Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo Hachette Book Group, New York, 2019 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their research into alleviating global poverty. In Good Economics … Continue reading
Supreme Court Upholds Limits on Attendance at Church Services
At about midnight last night the United States Supreme Court, in a 5.4 decision, upheld California’s restrictions on the number of people who can attend church services during the coronavirus emergency. Scotusblog has posted the written decision. The South Bay … Continue reading
Together
You can die of loneliness. It’s not just poetic sentiment, it’s a medical fact. Research shows that lack of social connection is just as hazardous to life expectancy as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Humans are social beings. We are … Continue reading
Solar power is becoming insanely cheap
The cost of solar power has fallen by a factor of 5 since 2010, and it will keep falling for decades to come. That’s the gist of a May 14, 2020 blog post titled Solar’s Future Is Insanely Cheap (2020) … Continue reading
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