Is there a fix for gerrymandering?

Last updated on: April 30, 2026 at 6:38 am By Jane the Actuary

Right now, there’s an escalating tit-for-tat battle, with each of Republicans and Democrats accusing the other of being the instigator, over gerrymandering. As far as I can tell, Democrats used the excuse of a moderate increase in the number of GOP seats in Texas to produce extremely unrepresentative gerrymanders in California and now in Virginia, where the new map will . Before that, Illinois’s gerrymander was particularly egregious. I’m sure Democrats could point to bad examples from the Republican side,... Read more

Are 28% of Americans truly functionally illiterate?

Last updated on: April 5, 2026 at 9:35 pm By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

That’s the quickie headline for a long read-through of the 2023 PIAAC report. This study, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, sponsored by OECD, is similar to the PISA report, but it measures adults’ education. It does not define its results in terms of “grade level” but instead is more complicated than that, so I’m going back to my old practice of using the blog as a means of working through information. The labels: Let’s start with... Read more

About Amelia Wittkoetter (for Women’s History Month)

Last updated on: March 8, 2026 at 9:37 pm By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

The photograph you see here has no date on it. On the back is written, “Amelia Wittkoetter[‘s] mother and sister Anne”; that’s my grandmother’s handwriting, and the photo is of her grandmother, also named Amelia Wittkoetter, and aunt. It’s clear that they are not well-off; the girl’s dress is ill-fitting, the woman’s hands are gnarled well beyond her years. Her crossed eyes suggest lack of money for eyeglasses. On the supposition that the girl is about age 11, the photograph... Read more

RIP, newspapers. RIP, Facebook. What next?

Last updated on: February 28, 2026 at 10:28 pm By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

For most of my adult life, I was a subscriber to the Chicago Tribune. That ended in November, or a couple months prior, depending on how you measure, since I cancelled but didn’t demand a pro-rate refund for the prepaid portion, and it finally ran out in November. Funny thing is, though, that I can still access Trib content through the app, since I was a subscriber when I first downloaded and logged on. Maybe eventually it’ll catch on, but... Read more

What about the Holocaust-denying Republicans?

Last updated on: January 24, 2026 at 10:56 am By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

The numbers are concerning, to say the least, in a poll released last month by the Manhattan Institute on the differences in beliefs between the GOP “old guard” and the New Entrant Republicans, who voted for the GOP for the first time only recently. Many of the questions are fairly ordinary but there are several which most decidedly are not. When asked whether they think it is definitely or probably true, or definitely or probably false, that “The Holocaust of... Read more

“Heritage Americans”? No, WEIRD people.

Last updated on: December 31, 2025 at 10:34 am By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

There’s been a whole debate raging on twitter recently, in which one side says, “anyone with American citizenship is just as American as anyone else,” and the other side saying, “people whose ancestors have been in America for longer are more American than new arrivals,” and the first side countering, “you’re just being racist!” But the issue isn’t race: it’s WEIRDness. And unfortunately, Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World didn’t become a part of the mainstream understanding of... Read more

From the library: Believe, by Ross Douthat

Last updated on: November 28, 2025 at 10:19 pm By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

With the subtitle, Why Everyone Should be Religious. Is it a perfect book? No. If I were Douthat’s editor, I would have marked up a bunch of passages and asked for him to clarify his statements, particular for subject matter that the general reader wouldn’t necessarily know. But it seems to me that this book, by the New York Times religion columnist, is this generation’s The Case for Christianity, and I want to try to write out a little bit... Read more

Bonus pre-Advent commentary on The Visitation

Last updated on: November 28, 2025 at 9:03 pm By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

Why is this “bonus” commentary? Merely because this is an angle that I don’t really see discussed but an incidental reference on twitter piqued my curiosity. Consider the text in Luke 1:39 – 40: “With haste Mary arose and went into the hill country, to a town of Judah, and entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” From this we get the Hail Mary, in part, and pro-life reflections on how the unborn child John recognized Jesus supernaturally. But... Read more

Just how high will whooping cough prevalence increase?

Last updated on: October 21, 2025 at 9:07 pm By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

My last post, I labelled as a “rediscovered draft.” But sometimes I click on an interesting-looking draft and am disappointed to learn that all I had done was write the title, yet you can guess by the title that this dated to the time when we had localized measles outbreaks and people were worried about antivax sentiment. Of course, whooping cough isn’t measles, but somewhere along the way I stumbled upon a detail that surprised me. I recall seeing, when... Read more

Missing the point of suburban bike-friendliness

Last updated on: October 19, 2025 at 8:03 pm By Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

Every now and again, I scroll through the drafts to see what I had written and then decided was not yet “ready for prime-time” and afterwards forgotten about. This is one of those: it’s now dated because it was written in reaction to the announcements about pork-spending at the end of Illinois’ legislative session in May, but it’s still a topic I want to raise. **************************** It seems that not just my own but pretty much every suburb wants to... Read more

Cast all your anxiety on him because he ____ for you.