"I once took a knife skills class, and they just show you how to chop an onion..."

Writes Matt Yglesias, in "Math needs a phonics-style reckoning Teachers should teach students how to do stuff correctly."

There is a specific, correct way to do this, and part of learning to cook is being told how to do it. A person with excellent spatial reasoning could probably figure this out from first principles given an onion and a knife. But the normal way to learn to chop is to be explicitly shown.... You don’t just give people knives and tell them to experience the joy of chopping.... [T]he best way to get from zero to vaguely competent is to be taught the proper way to do it....

Education school theorists, for reasons that are disputed, seem to dislike this idea. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Emile” to Paulo Freire’s “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” a long tradition in the field mashes up romanticism with left-wing politics and sentimentality about the point of school to suggest that there’s some other, secretly better way of teaching things to beginners than just literally teaching them....

The Washington Post shines its sharp investigative journalism at Kamala Harris.

There's so little time left, but kudos to The Washington Post for hitting the ground running.

On the front page right now: "Kamala Harris’s cooking wisdom: 7 tips from her kitchen videos."

seriously you need to watch Kamala dice the hell out of an onion (w/new bonus laugh!) pic.twitter.com/1y0gtZHCCa

— Josh Josh (Coconomenon Era) (@Josh_____Josh) July 22, 2024

2 MORE THINGS:

1. It's interesting to see the use of a video clip that emphasizes Harris's Indian heritage so soon after Trump stirred the pot about Indian heritage possibly dominating Harris's self-identity.

2. Forefronting cooking in the presidential election reminds me of the classic "First Lady Bake-Off" that started in 1992 and pitted Hillary Clinton against Barbara Bush:

The competition was inspired by a political gaffe made by Hillary Clinton in 1992... In response to questions about her career and the Whitewater controversy, she stated that "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."...

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said that Clinton's remarks "stepped outside the bounds of what was seen as the traditional role of first lady, potential first lady [...] the price she paid was being placed in the midst of a cookie bake-off."... According to media science professor Tammy R. Vigil, media coverage of the bake-off portrayed the women participating as adhering to traditional gender roles and published anecdotes about their domestic lives that contributed to this image.

And isn't it funny? 30 years later, traditional gender roles are still front-and-center in American politics. The Democratic Party candidate is, once again, a woman. Back in 2016, Bill Clinton competed in the (re-named) cookie contest. He won, too, just as Hillary had won in 1992 and 1996, and with the same recipe: "chocolate chip cookies." (Yes, I think we all know that recipe.) And the new female Democratic Party candidate isn't even using her husband to handle the cooking. She's dicing an onion, right there on camera for us. In 2024. I suppose she could have just fulfilled her profession, but what she decided to do was go on TV with Mindy Kaling and dice an onion. 

"Grief reigns in the kingdom of loss. I refer to not only the loss of a loved one but also the loss of a hope, a dream, or love itself."

"It seems we don’t finish grieving, but merely finish for now; we process it in layers. One day (not today) I’m going to write a short story about a vending machine that serves up Just the Right Amount of Grief. You know, the perfect amount that you can handle in a moment to move yourself along, but not so much that you’ll be caught in an undertow."

That's item #13 on "MONICA LEWINSKY: 25 'RANDOMS' ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BILL CLINTON CALAMITY/My name became public 25 years ago this week. What have I observed and learned in the quarter century since? Oh, plenty" (Vanity Fair).

Okay, let me try to write 25 "Randoms" on the text printed above:

We walked 6.6 miles in New Glarus Woods State Park today.

Brilliant green after yesterday's rain: 

Does this fungus suggest the presence of sponge mushrooms nearby?

Ramps: