John Brown's Notes and Essays

Brandon P. Fleming experienced a “renaissance,” as he calls it, and it happened through engagement with great Black thinkers past and present.    Book Review by Mychal Denzel Smith , The New York Times , June 28, 2021, 3:33 p.m. ET Image from article:   MISEDUCATED  A Memoir  By Brandon P. Fleming Credit...Shoccara Marcus If you are a writer and have made the mistake of telling people so, there is a good chance that you have heard some version of this response: “You should write about me, I have a lot of stories to tell.” What these people generally mean is that they have experienced (or had a life ripe with) conflict, drama, suspense, sorrow, hardship and/or humor, and that these episodes may intrigue an audience. But an event, the writer knows, is not the same thing as a story; not all occurrences in the lived world, no matter how extraordinary, necessarily constitute material for narrative. The story, rather, lies in the effort to make meaning of, or ask...

"The United States is believed to be the world’s leader in incarceration ,  spending $80 billion a year to keep more than two million people behind bars ."   image (not from article) from -- Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maura Turcotte , "Thousands of Prisoners Were Sent Home Because of Covid. They Don’t Want to Go Back [:] Criminal justice advocates say the pandemic offers a case study for a different type of punitive system in America, one that relies far less on incarceration," The New York Times , June 27, 2021 Updated 6:31 p.m. ET *** image (not from article) from

For Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the proposed $280 million vessel would serve as a symbol of Global Britain. To critics, it’s an ill-conceived boondoggle. An artist’s impression of the new national flagship .  Image from article: An artist's impression of the new national flagship. Credit...10 Downing Street, via Press Association — Associated Press By Mark Landler , The New York Times , June 27, 2021 Updated 8:29 a.m. ET [ original article contains links and additional illustrations. ] LONDON — The naval architect who designed the Queen Mary 2 likened it to a “1950s fishing trawler, ” while a retired Navy admiral sniffed that the plans for it looked like an “oligarch’s yacht.” A Conservative Party grandee ridiculed it as a “complete waste of time, silly populist nonsense.” The target of all of this venom is Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s latest pet project: a replacement for the royal yacht Britannia, mothballed in 1997. Mr. Johnson wants to spend 200 million pounds, or $280 mi...

The global health crisis took a big bite out of higher-education revenue. But the pandemic’s long-term effect on colleges and universities may be the changing attitudes about remote learning. Hundreds of American colleges are at risk.  image from article By Spencer Jakab [jb - see ] , The Wall Street Journal , June 25, 2021 12:00 pm ET Jakab image from College Inc. is facing a reckoning.   American colleges and universities recorded their largest drop in cash inflows in decades this past academic year , thanks to a big drop in enrollment and a lack of room-and-board revenue from the students who did enroll but took their courses online. But that was just the start. Now that a generation of would-be applicants has grown used to online learning, the business of higher education will likely never be the same again. graph from article The affected schools are mostly not-for-profit, but they represent a huge enterprise with $670 billion in collective revenue, more than $300 billion...

From Mike Bird , The Wall Street Journal , "High Expectations and Low Vaccine Acceptance Pose Long-Term Recovery Threats [:] Big gaps in vaccination progress around the world will lead to an uneven recovery, and revive old debates on the state’s role in society," June 25, 202 12:00 pm ET Excerpt: Intriguingly, many of the countries that were most successful in containing the spread of the virus through social and state controls, including many in East Asia, have lagged in vaccination. Meanwhile, more open countries that struggled to control people’s behavior during the pandemic—like the U.K. and the U.S.—were most able to rapidly develop highly effective vaccines, perhaps thanks to more innovative and adept academic and corporate institutions.

U.S. households gained $13.5 trillion in wealth in 2020. That isn’t how recessions usually work.  image (not from article) from amazon.com By Orla McCaffrey and Shane Shifflett , The Wall Street Journal , June 27, 2021 7:00 am ET [original article contains charts, links, and illustrations.]  The coronavirus pandemic plunged Americans into recession. Instead of emerging poorer, many came out ahead. U.S. households added $13.5 trillion in wealth last year, according to the Federal Reserve, the biggest increase in records going back three decades. Many Americans of all stripes paid off credit-card debt, saved more and refinanced into cheaper mortgages. That challenged the conventions of previous economic downturns. In 2008, for example, U.S. households lost $8 trillion. In some ways, the singularity of the Covid-19 recession—and the recovery—shouldn’t surprise. The scope of the pandemic was unprecedented in the modern era. So was the government’s financial response. The U.S. bor...

Streaming giant is doubling down on dystopian reality dating, in the form of ‘Sexy Beasts,’ to lure more subscribers Image from article:  A scene from the Netflix show 'Sexy Beasts.' PHOTO: NETFLIX By Laura Forman , The Wall Street Journal , June 25, 2021 7:33 am ET Excerpt: Netflix NFLX 1.74% and romance have long been a match made in heaven, but now the streaming giant is taking things to another level. Perhaps emboldened by the success of recent shows like “The Circle” and “Love Is Blind,” Netflix is now doubling down on dystopian reality dating. A ccording to the trailer, released this week, the new concept will feature “real life singles,” sporting “elaborate makeup and prosthetics” and putting blind date chemistry to the test.