Free Republic

At the risk of enraging the gods of political correctness, it is time that someone asks the NAACP why it wants to derail a movement that appears to improve the educational performance of black students. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wants federal money withheld from Florida schools because high-school graduation requires passing an exam on which blacks fare poorly. The NAACP effort has national implications because Florida's system of standards, accountability and what it calls "high-stakes testing" conforms to what is going on in most other states and the direction of federal education policy. The Florida...

Common mental tasks can cut a driver's ability to see signs, cars and traffic lights by as much as 30 per cent, accoding to a new study. The findings underline how what is going on in a driver's head can be as important - and distracting - as a crying child in the back seat, or driving past the scene of an accident. Some mental tasks can be so complex and distracting that they result in those all-too-familar accidents in which drivers claim they "didn't expect it" or "saw it too late," according to an article published recently in the...

The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language' This paper has been read to the University of Southern California philosophy group and the Boston 1972 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, as well as to the Houston meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society. Appeared in The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, IV(1973), pp. 125-132. Numbers in "<>" refer to this journal. Among the principal assumptions of major portions of philosophy in recent decades have been: (1) That philosophy somehow consists of (some sort of) logic, and (2) that logic is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language. There, of...

Australian "Thinking Cap" Stimulates Creativity April 19, 2002 8:30 CDT Autistic savants have long fascinated the medical profession. The rest of their lives profoundly impaired by autism, these amazingly resilient individuals have found a skill they excel at to such a degree that to call them "gifted" does them an injustice. Savant Syndrome is a disorder in which individuals with neurological developmental delays in socialization and communication possess astonishing islands of brilliance that stand in stark, markedly incongruous contrast to the over-all handicap. All forms of Savant Syndrome are associated with a phenomenal memory, which aids in the recognition of...