China's schoolkids beat American students in all academic categories The academic performance of American schoolchildren hasn't budged in two decades, despite billions of dollars in increased funding. ........... the current performance of a nation's students predicts future economic potential.
What South Korea Can Teach Us About Vaccine Hesitancy There is a danger that coronavirus vaccination becomes just another battle in America’s endless culture war. ........ But online, the fear would not bend to rational explanation. ........ Americans in 2020 exist in splintered realities. A large number of us believe one truth about Ukraine, face masks, hydroxychloroquine, climate change and the results of the presidential election; perhaps almost as large a number of us believe the opposite. .......... in some geographic or social circles, anti-vaccine activists will wreak havoc. ....... making the vaccines free and easy for Americans to get will be a much more effective way of promoting their use than devising some clever public relations campaign.
The Fight to Win Latino Voters for the G.O.P. For 10 years, Libre — an arm of the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity — has been working to foster conservatism in Hispanic communities. Now, the group is going all-in on Georgia’s Senate runoffs.
Headlines Don’t Capture the Horror We Saw I chronicled what COVID-19 did to a hospital. America must not let down its guard. .......... the experiences of health-care workers, and young doctors in particular: the anxiety, the fear, the overwhelming responsibility, and the ethical burden of hard decisions. Even after the pandemic is over, the weight of these experiences will remain with us for a lifetime. .......... March 26 ....... Upon running to respond to yet another intubation page, she was horrified to see that the patient was one of our supervising physicians. Today, one of our surgeons was intubated. Off duty in my Upper West Side apartment, I hear an ambulance go by every 10 minutes. It’s hard to sleep. My colleagues wonder out loud: Is this chest pain from the virus, or just intense anxiety? ........... When I put on my PPE (N95 mask, goggles, face shield, hair cover, gown, and two pairs of gloves) to enter the operating room .............. Pre-COVID, we were used to seeing patients pass away with at least one family member at their side. ICU doctors are desensitized to death, but even for us, the fact that people are dying alone is devastating to watch. ............... I explained that what they were about to see would likely be disturbing—that their dad might be unrecognizable to them—and asked again if they were sure they wanted to see. They insisted that they did. I slowly went to his bedside and flipped the camera so they could see his face. They immediately started to cry. I cannot imagine how jarring it must have been to see him for the first and last time with a breathing tube, deeply sedated, and in shades of yellow and purple. “That’s not Dad anymore,” one of the children said. I showed them the many machines and IV medications he was connected to. ................... My lesson so far is that this disease, for the subset of patients who become critically ill to the point of requiring mechanical ventilation, is far worse than we ever imagined. It is certainly not pure respiratory failure. .................. None of the experimental drugs will be of any utility in an environment where there are not enough hospital beds, doctors, and nurses. ......... April 22 ....... I push medications to sedate and paralyze them, and then put a tube through their vocal cords. Looking down at them as they go to sleep, I’m the last person they see. And for the ones who don’t survive, I will have been the only one to hear—or rather, not hear—their last words. ............ The main resources we lack are respiratory therapists and ICU nurses. .............. We get through our day in the OR-ICU by compartmentalizing—by ignoring the fact that our patients are people who are deeply suffering. When reality cuts through our fantasy, the job can be unbearable.
How Francis Ford Coppola Got Pulled Back In to Make ‘The Godfather, Coda’ The director and cast, including Al Pacino, Sofia Coppola and Andy Garcia, look back at making “Part III,” which has been re-edited (and retitled) for its 30th anniversary. ........... In the final scene of “The Godfather Part III,” Michael Corleone, the aged protagonist of this epic crime drama, is left in solitude to contemplate his sins, gripped with guilt over actions that have devastated his family and the knowledge that he cannot change what he has done. ......... These three movies have won a combined nine Academy Awards, grossed more than $1.1 billion when adjusted for inflation and gained an exalted status in the popular consciousness. But rather than regard them as immutable monuments, Coppola has treated them like an unfinished painting he is free to update. ........ “Part III” is remembered as the Fredo of its family — the one that doesn’t really measure up. .......... The history of this “Godfather” movie is as sweeping and dramatic as the much-told tales behind the creation of its two illustrious predecessors, full of conflict, perseverance and decisive last-minute changes. It is a legend that seemingly ended with a fatally flawed result — but now has a new untold chapter that could improve the standing of the final film in one of the most influential franchises of all time............... As he explained the studio’s philosophy, he said, “You’ve got Coca-Cola, why not make more Coca-Cola?” .............. Pacino was delighted by the screenplay, in which Michael’s well-honed craftiness would be tested by unexpected guile within the Vatican: “He found something a little more corrupt than his criminal world,” the actor said. ............ He also shed some of his pride and became a humbler person. ............... “I’m ready to do it now!” he exclaimed. “I understand it better! I don’t need makeup!”
Marc Benioff Sets His Sights on Microsoft The Salesforce C.E.O.’s planned acquisition of Slack will have him competing directly with the Goliath that is Microsoft. .......... He learned some lessons in showmanship from his mentor, the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, including how to turn news conferences into events and how to become the human embodiment of a company. ............ Before the coronavirus pandemic forced many to stay home, Salesforce was San Francisco’s largest private employer, eclipsing the 168-year-old Wells Fargo. Its offices were in Salesforce Tower, a lipstick-shaped edifice that dominated the skyline and could be seen from around the bay. ............. “Business is the greatest platform for change … The future of our industry is a work-from-anywhere environment … I like to innovate, I like to create, I like to see things and make them happen … I love that we take care of all stakeholders, not just shareholders.” ........... Over the past two decades, Salesforce has acquired dozens of companies to extend its core products. The biggest acquisition before Slack was Tableau, a data visualization company, which Salesforce bought for $15.3 billion last year.
The Deep State Is on a Roll Three cheers for Anthony Fauci and all the other glorious cogs. ............ These officials and servants are distinguished by a professionalism that survives and edges out their partisan bearings, by an understanding that the codes of conduct and rules of engagement become more important, not less, when passions run hot. They’re incorrigible that way. Invaluable, too. .......... Anthony Fauci is the steely superhero of my deep state
How to End a Forever War The Biden administration should support a regional effort to stabilize Afghanistan. ......... At 19 years and counting, the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan is already the longest war in American history. ......... The two sides have yet to begin confronting a host of seemingly irreconcilable differences, including whether to be a theocracy or a republic, and the status of women and followers of the Shiite sect of Islam. ........... Some Hazaras fear the Taliban are simply going through the motions of peace talks until U.S. forces leave. ........ The United States has a moral obligation to work with regional partners to try to clean up the mess we are leaving behind. .......... Six countries share a border with Afghanistan. Not one wants a failed state on its doorstep. Afghanistan has been at war almost continuously since 1978, partly because its powerful neighbors have all tried to manage the chaos inside it by funding proxies. ............ a rare instance where Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and the United States all share a common interest: the orderly departure of American troops and preventing Afghanistan from imploding. .............. the United States would benefit from having a strategic vision for the region that was bigger than “no Al Qaeda.” .......... a country in a region with China, Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan — four nuclear powers
Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow Are Sentenced to Prison Over Hong Kong Protest Activists denounced the prison terms for illegal assembly charges over a 2019 demonstration outside Police Headquarters. ....... “They’re using Joshua Wong as an iconic figure in particular to issue this chilling message.” ......... Ms. Chow, 23, who has been called the “Mulan” of the Hong Kong democracy movement, enjoys a wide following in Japan thanks to her Japanese-language skills.
India’s Leading Documentary Filmmaker Has a Warning Anand Patwardhan spent decades tracking the rise of Hindu nationalism. And now, under an increasingly repressive government, he holds his screenings in secret. ........... Over four hours, “Reason” documents how the world’s largest democracy has plunged into a majoritarian abyss since the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., came to power in 2014, and Narendra Modi was voted in as the prime minister. With testimonies from witnesses to mob lynchings, stories of college students driven to suicide by intense right-wing ostracism and interviews with Hindu nationalists willing to defend the frequent murders of journalists and activists, Patwardhan contradicts the narrative that the B.J.P. routinely projects to the country’s 900 million voters: a story where, under Modi, India is at last starting to fulfill its potential, more than 70 years after independence. .................. “In many ways, this is worse than the Emergency” ........... We have been conditioned into a false sense of normalcy. Most of us don’t know how bad things are.” ........... a country’s slide into intolerance is rarely so dramatic: Norms don’t always collapse overnight; they corrode against the background of everyday life. ........... In India, the Modi years are often spoken of as an “undeclared Emergency.” But something more enduring, a fundamental reimagining of the nation as a homeland for Hindus, appears to be afoot. .......... The larger story Patwardhan tells in the film is of a revival of the psychosis of Partition, when the subcontinent was divided by the British into India and Pakistan along explicitly religious lines. More than one million people died in the resulting violence, and, according to some estimates, more than 15 million were displaced. Democracy in India was never quite robust — Ambedkar thought the Indian soil was “essentially undemocratic” — but never before have all its organs seemed so fragile. ............ TV networks that refuse to toe the line have been investigated for laundering money from abroad. Bank accounts of human rights organizations have been frozen. Citizens have been jailed for lampooning Modi online. Activists are routinely scorned as traitors. Policemen have falsely implicated victims of right-wing violence. .......... many Hindu nationalists still condone Gandhi’s murder. Godse had once been a member of the R.S.S. — his family maintains that he never quit — and many members of the B.J.P., including Modi, began their careers as R.S.S. volunteers. ............... a story to illustrate the extent of hysteria in the city around that time. Many Hindu residents were apparently so convinced that Muslims from abroad were planning to overrun Indian shores that they would stay up all night guarding the city’s beaches. .............. “All my films are made like home videos” ............ Until the Emergency, the R.S.S. stood more or less discredited in India because of its perceived involvement in Gandhi’s death.
