*As has been widely reported, Russian computer geeks under the control of dictator Putin are playing games with all kinds of (mis)information to screw with peoples’ minds and perceptions of the world. According to a deeply troubling analysis of QAnon (“Pastels and Pedophiles,” by Mia Bloom and Sopia Moskalenko) Americans are nine times more likely to fall for Russian nonsense pertinent to QAnon than their counterparts elsewhere in the world (15.3% versus 1.7%). “One cause … is that U.S. education lags behind Europe in teaching critical thinking and social media literacy.”
“Need a doctor but don’t want to miss the Rutgers game? Call Telemed.” Let’s see, if you suddenly need a doctor, that would imply something – uh, like important. Do you think a quickie before kick-off suffices. Or is it that maybe the pending game is not expected to excite you enough and you want doc to write a scrip for some enhancement.
*If you had a class of 100 minority future engineers, you could reasonably hold out the prospect of something close to 100 really good jobs, such is the shortage in this country. If you had 100 minority high schoolers majoring in football, basketball, or soccer, holding out the prospect of more than one of them earning a living from their sport does a disservice to the data. The advertising and messaging comparison is just the reverse, of course, as all the glamor accrues to the sport, not the engineer.
Perhaps this is another trick by which white America gets to be entertained without fearing that the people on the stage will become serious competitors for jobs, money, power, recognition.
*Not to be a doomsayer, but can any amount of communication, workshops, public chest beating, and mea culpas rectify the historical chasm between what the country said it was/is in its wonderful Declaration of Independence and what it was/is. If I am worth ten-to-twenty times what you are in part because of our historical hypocrisy, and there is no difference in our weekly paychecks or prospects (which in reality are skewed against the lower net worth individual), the chances of our net worths becoming equal are equivalent to the odds of winning the lottery. Reparations anyone?
*Once upon a time, it was assumed that college students had limited financial means, excluding of course those members of the lucky sperm club, equipped with fat wallets from birth. Dorm rooms or nearby apartments, rented out by not the most avaricious landlords, were closer to being described as “spartan” than they were to “fancy.” The affordability of college remained an issue, as it always will, but a reasonably remunerative job (and absence of silly spending) in the Summer could take a student or their family a long way toward paying tuition and room and board.
In the ensuing years from the above baseline, taxpayers – through various federal financial aid programs — were happy to provide modest grants and immodestly-sized loans to aspiring collegians. Whether the students were net ahead on the college cost equation is unfortunately not clear. It seems that tuition increases soaked up the availability of incremental student funds.
What was clear is that students were willing, persuaded, cajoled into being oblivious to the mounting discrepancy between the historical punch line – “a Bachelor’s means a million dollars more of income in your lifetime” and what that means in terms of after-tax, after-debt, after-stress happiness.
Now, flat screen televisions, spacious suites, and other amenities are part of the sales pitch of universities attempting to survive in what has become a market share battle for the declining number of students in the college pool. None of this basically non-academic stuff comes free of course, producing the oddity at some state schools that room and board can exceed tuition (alert notice: keep this in mind when people start talking about free tuition). In all cases, the high cost of college housing enables off-campus landlords to lift their rents.
The economics of owning said housing have not been lost on Wall Street or corporate America, both of whom have increased their portfolios of barely off-campus student housing.
If you do a flyover of this story, you see that students are borrowing from taxpayers to pay investors (who typically know every legal and tax advantage in the books) for the ability to pursue a degree which no longer has the catchet of former days. In fact, a diploma is increasingly simply a means to the end of a job, the irony being that a lengthening list of employers do not even require it from an applicant.
Is it any wonder that a thorough examination of the business known as higher education is inevitable in the real world, not simply in barely read treatises from think tanks. A flattening of high school graduating seniors, changing demographics, and increased reflection on this thing called “the meaning of life” all contribute to the angst felt by small private liberal arts colleges with light endowments.
*It appears that at my apartment complex, there is an unwritten rule: every person who takes a leisurely walk must be blabbing into a cell phone, pushing a stroller with a munchkin in it, or hanging on tight to a leash that a rambunctious dog is trying to stretch past his owner’s patience. Breaking the code is an old guy with a basketball tucked under his arm, apparently focused on getting past this traffic in order to simply shoot some hoops.
*White America’s in-grained, not necessarily articulated, life narrative is no longer operative – all the thrashing about is centered on that uncomfortable truth. Add the power of social media and the physical isolation of the pandemic and you have QAnon able to stay alive even as its various conspiratorial predictions come to naught. (Forgot to mention that clever people have monetized aspects of QAnon.)
*Note: obviously these observations are random; otherwise, seemingly related thoughts would be logically grouped, perhaps with bullets to emphasize whatever verbiage ensued. Not happening.
*If “track is black,” as is sometime said, then suburban cross-country meets on a Sunday morning are a predominantly white activity. Twenty towns with tents and lawn chairs and little diversity, Volvos and Subarus and Beemers in the parking lot, wine undoubtedly being chilled at home (not allowed in the park) for Mom and beer for Dad when he drops into his NFL chair for eight hours of watching football.
*Is there a course somewhere that pounds into a respondent’s head that the first words out of their mouth must be, “that’s a great question.” I mean at least there could be some distinctions made: some questions are totally inane, some suck for other reasons, some are incredibly brilliant – especially those which include “why” in the query. Enough with the default response.
*”She is serving really well.” “He is the high scorer.” “The Lions are doing a great job on defense.” Inevitably these statements by sports broadcasters are followed by “so far.” Uh, they have to be so far unless there is a tricky way of inserting the future into what has already happened.
*I have always fantasized that Clint Eastwood would regard Facebook with total disdain, shooing its presence off his lawn and out of his daily life. Now the “Wall Street Journal” has published a four-part series that is summed up thusly by the authors: “Facebook’s own research lays out in detail how its rules favor elites; its platforms (especially Instagram) have negative effects on teen mental health, its algorithm fosters discord; and that drug cartels and human traffickers use its services openly.” The most charitable description comes from a Facebook executive: “We created the machine and we can’t control the machine.” (Aren’t there great sci fi movies and futuristic novels about good ideas run amuck. Wait, that frequently describes politics as well; there might be more dead bodies from implementers of seductive philosophies than there are from outright criminals.)