Articles of the Week

Should the US bring back the draft? I think so.

Fascinating article on AIDS in Africa, an epidemic that is ravaging a country. Having taught in Namibia (in Southern Africa) from 98 to 2000 this is a topic that always hits close to home. The article is by an economist, and she takes evaluates the problem from an economist's eye. Money quote: "It (AIDS) won't disappear until poverty does."

The black/white education gap still exists and, in some cases, is growing, despite what the President says. Key quote is towards the end: "Edwin E. Weeks Elementary School in Syracuse was singled out for narrowing the gap between black and white students. Dare Dutter, the principal, credited a prekindergarten program and a school health clinic that helped keep poor students from missing class."

How come we haven't stopped the genocide in Darfur? First Paragraph: Early in his first term, President Bush received a National Security Council memo outlining the world's inaction regarding the genocide in Rwanda. In what may have been a burst of indignation and bravado, the president wrote in the margin of the memo, "Not on my watch."

One of my four favorite authors (the others are Hemingway, David Simon, and Alan Moore) gave a talk at Politics and Prose today.