Category: Uncategorized
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Horse Play
A herd of horses live on Shackleford Banks, a barrier island near Beaufort, N.C., where the Bacon family is vacationing. The horses do not comprise a thundering herd of popular imagination, rather they are dispersed in small groups — “harems” — with a stallion, two or three breeding mares, and their colts. Five or six…
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Sunset: Beauford, N.C.
The Bacon family is on vacation this week in Beaufort, N.C. Blogging will be sparse.
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Left Behind…
Richmond resident and green card holder Javed Habibi has lived in Richmond since 2015 with his wife, and four daughters. The electrician and his family visited Afghanistan in June and was scheduled to return to the U.S. Aug. 31, but all hell broke loose when Kabul fell to the Taliban. The U.S. government promised him…
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Thirteen Glasses of Beer
by Kerry Dougherty They were heartfelt and poignant. Most remarkably, they seemed spontaneous. I’m talking about the makeshift memorials that suddenly appeared in American taverns, breweries and restaurants over the weekend to honor the 13 service members killed in action in Afghanistan on Thursday. Most featured 13 glasses of beer on an otherwise empty table…
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RIP: Ed Risse
by James A. Bacon Readers of Bacon’s Rebellion in the early days may remember Ed Risse, a long-time contributor to the blog (and its predecessor publication, a biweekly newsletter). Ed, who was 84, passed away a week ago from injuries sustained from a fall. Ed, whose idiosyncratic byline was E M Risse (with no periods),…
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What Impact Did COVID Have on the SOLs?
by James A. Bacon Most Virginia news media duly reported the release of the latest Standards of Learning (SOL) data showing the biggest collapse in pass rates in the history of the SOLs. Most accepted the Northam administration’s spin that the decline was due mainly to COVID-19-related disruptions, and that Virginians should not read too…
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2021 SOLs Don’t Tell Us Much of Anything
by John Butcher 2020 was the first spring since 1998 without SOL tests in Virginia. Then came 2021, when participation in the testing was voluntary. The VDOE press release says, “[2020-21] was not a normal school year for students and teachers, in Virginia or elsewhere, so making comparisons with prior years would be inappropriate.” The first line of…
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Another Sign of the Education Apocalypse
by James A. Bacon Tom Allison, a staff analyst with the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) has uncovered quite the conundrum. How does the Commonwealth reverse the plummeting rate at which low-income students are completing the Free Application for Federal Student Assistance (FAFSA) form? The free-fall in applications, which are necessary to…
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SOL Test Scores Collapsed In 2020-21 School Year
by James A. Bacon How bad are the Standards of Learning test results for the COVID-afflicted 2020-21 school year? They’re so bad that the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) press release announcing the results didn’t mention bare-bones numbers until the seventh paragraph, and even then it provided no basis for comparison to the previous year,…
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VMI, Media Bias, and Lies by Omission
by Larry Houseworth Charlie Beckett of the London School of Economics addressed journalism’s turn to emotionalism in a talk given at the 2015 Science Festival in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England (“How journalism is turning emotional and what that might mean for news.”) He stated, “the value of objective journalism is the idea that journalism can…
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A COVID Report From Southside
by Dick Hall-Sizemore With the exception of Carol, the contributors to Bacon’s Rebellion (and, I am guessing, most of the commenters) are in the NoVA, Richmond, Hampton Roads bubble. Therefore, I thought it would be enlightening to bring in some COVID news from my home area, Halifax County, in Southside. The first is an article…
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Supreme Court Refuses to Block Vaccination Mandate; Judicial Review Generally
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The U.S. Supreme Court has flatly turned down a request for an injunction against the enforcement by Indiana University that all students and staff be vaccinated against COVID-19. This request was an appeal of a unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit denying the request. The order was…
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My Advice to Glenn Youngkin – WAKE UP!!
May I call you Glenn? Glenn, we are neighbors. We’re roughly the same age. If you object to me calling you Glenn I suggest you stop reading this article now. It’s only going to go downhill from here. Dude, you need to wake up! Belay that You need to wake the hell up. And I…
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Not All COVID-Fighting Masks Are Created Equal
by James A. Bacon So, society is back to wearing masks. Governor Ralph Northam has mandated mask usage in public schools, while many universities and employers in Virginia are doing the same. The K-12 mandate does make accommodations for people who are eating, drinking, sleeping, exercising, playing a music instrument, and/or is in state of…