Amenities of the State [Kernel]
The mayor of Duluth, MN, wants more affordable housing in the city. The idea has at least two problems. The first involves perspective, and the second involves funding. First, perspective. Leaders of cities bemoan high housing costs, but that’s often
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Mind the Gap: Four Solutions to the Education Achievement Gap
C. N. Hughes, Ed.D. Director State Agency on Trends In Race and Education State of Minnesota St. Paul, MN 55155 Dear Dr. Hughes, This letter summarizes the findings of our grant (“Closing Minnesota’s Race-Based Educational Achievement Gap at All Costs,”
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A Thought Experiment for #EqualPay
Imagine that women’s soccer takes off. Would we be talking about #EqualPay for the men? For the uninitiated, the US Women’s Soccer Team is in the middle of a firestorm, and that firestorm is squarely in the gender pay gap.
Read More#Equal Pay, Inequality, and Yada-Yada Economics [Kernel]
This is a new, shorter format: the Kernel (hence the picture). Feedback is welcome, especially on our editor’s Twitter account (@RuralityChecker). As always, thanks for reading. After the US Women’s Soccer Team’s World Cup victory this weekend, all-world phenom forward
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Division Rivalry: Let’s Stop Pretending about “College Sports”
In college sports, when is it okay to take your ball—or puck—and go home? A couple of months ago, a group of small, private colleges in Minnesota decided to boot a school from their athletic conference, the MIAC. The University
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“Medicine?” You’re Kidding.
Sit in a coffee shop in middle America and you’ll see, time after time, people waddling away from the counter, with sugar-struck smiles amidst their chins, holding what appear to be quadruple double whipped frappe mochaccinos, liquid chocolate under a
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Power Couples, Little People
I am one of the little people, it turns out. You know, the kind of person whose job is to make the lives of the big people—the people with the big jobs, the people who are busy, the people with
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Rural White Privilege
(First, let’s get this out of the way: Instead of asking whether white privilege exists at all, I’m asking whether it exists uniformly, and what the consequences of that might be.) White privilege, or the notion that white people don’t
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Striking at the Heart
The stereotypical small-town person, or at least man, is a fan of sports, probably football. As I’ve written elsewhere, this isn’t necessarily wrong, but it is misunderstood. In fact, I’d like to offer a counterpoint: an example of how small-town
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A Bite at the Apple: The Arithmetic of Minority Teachers
Both Democrats and Republicans like to talk about increasing the number of minority teachers. The stated reasons vary, but let’s get right to the specifics: in Minnesota, an education coalition is asking the state for $80m to help increase the
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Sharing Fairly
“You bitch! Just put it in!” Whoa, there. Language. My wife may be misremembering, in no small part because she was sleep-deprived. But there she was, trying to stick a needle into this woman’s spine after being roused from her
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Frame of Preference
Clear, wet grease crawled up the sides of that brown paper bag. It sat on the counter, soggily erect, saturated with calories. A sack of beef. And cheese. And fried, krinkle-kut potatoes. And it was awesome. My life isn’t hard,
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Cents-less: How the Logic of a Living Wage Ignores Household Size
Here’s a counterintuitive idea: progressives must hate diversity. I mean, how else can you explain getting behind the idea of “a living wage,” as in singular? I kid, kinda. But only kinda. In two previous articles I outlined how minimum
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Oh, the Humanities: The STEM of the Problem
A recent bit in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights one “tortured” fellow’s failure to get any job security in higher education. (Yes, “tortured” is the Chronicle’s word, not mine.) As discussed in a previous article (“Adjuncts Go Marching”), this
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A Professor’s Letter to Small-Town Graduates
Going to college can be the single most expensive decision of your life, but it won’t be the most important. You might want to reconsider why you’re going to college. Next, reconsider where you’re going afterward. And why you’re going
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Good Discrimination: Why Feminists Should Oppose Gender Identity in Athletics
She went skittering across the floor. Or, maybe I’m over-remembering a traumatic event. But she did slam into the decades-old, brightly colored vinyl pad against the brick wall, and hard. And the coach did call off practice. Immediately. I was
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The Selfless Selfishness of Parenting
I’m a stay-at-home dad. I care deeply about family. My own, I mean. Yours? Not so much. Sorry. Just being honest. There is a constant refrain from some on the Left—particularly in feminist circles, but in progressive circles generally—that stresses
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Target vs. Walmart: How to Tell if You’re from a Small Town
“Are you a Walmart person, or a Target person?” Just by asking the question, you’re revealing something about yourself. In our consumer culture, where one chooses to shop is considered a personality trait. A case in point is the distinction
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A Rural Flavor of CoLA
As legislative bodies get rolling after the new year, we will hear a lot about cost of living and its impact on Americans, particularly “hardworking Americans.” Cost of living is not the sexiest political topic, but it is important because
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Home, Sheet Home
Not all home-field advantages are created equal. Some don’t even exist. Major-league baseball has a beloved quirk: no two ballparks are the same. Different ballparks have different sizes of outfields (e.g. the huge outfields in Detroit), different heights of outfield
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