At Amazon, Thomas Ricks, Making the Corps (10th Anniversary Edition with a New Afterword by the Author).
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
In Return to Classroom, Universities and Professors Struggle with Covid
My division dean just sent out an announcement on this yesterday. How to handle?
1. Notify sick student to stay the hell off campus. 2. Reassure the lamebrains that you're not going to drop them from class. 3. Make sure students are screened and cleared for classes at the check-in tables on-site.4. Contact college administration to inform them of a cases. 5. Maintain strict confidentiality. (Or else?)
At the New York Times, "The Masked Professor vs. the Unmasked Student":
Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 Delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor — vaccinated and masked. So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked. It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. “It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals, it’s more of an emotional hellscape,” Dr. Boedy said. North Georgia is not requiring its students to be vaccinated or masked this fall. And as in-person classes return at almost every university in the country, after almost a year and a half of emergency pivoting to online learning, many professors are finding teaching a nerve-racking experience. The American College Health Association recommends vaccination requirements for all on-campus higher education students for the fall semester. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends face coverings, regardless of vaccine status, for indoor public spaces in areas where the rate of infection is high. But this is not how it has worked out on more than a few campuses. More than 1,000 colleges and universities have adopted vaccination requirements for at least some students and staff, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. In an indication of how political vaccination has become, the schools tend to be clustered in states that voted for President Biden in the last election. But at some campuses, particularly in Republican-led states with high rates of contagion — like the state systems in Georgia, Texas and Florida — vaccination is optional and mask wearing, while recommended, cannot be enforced. Professors are told they can tell students that they are “strongly encouraged” or “expected” to put on masks, but cannot force students to do so. And teachers cannot ask students who have Covid-like symptoms to leave the classroom. At least nine states — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Tennessee — have banned or restricted school mask mandates. It is unclear, education officials say, whether all of these prohibitions apply to universities, but public universities depend on state funding. Certainly, some professors are happy to go maskless. A smattering have resigned in protest over optional mask policies. Most, like Dr. Boedy, are soldiering on. But the level of fear is so high that even at universities that do require vaccination and masks, like Cornell and the University of Michigan, professors have signed petitions asking for the choice to return to online teaching. “Morale is at an all-time low,” warns a petition at the University of Iowa. Universities are caught between the demands of their faculty for greater safety precautions, and the fear of losing students, and the revenue they bring, if schools return to another year of online education. “I think everybody agrees that the idea is to have people physically back in the classroom,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for the American Council on Education, an organization of colleges and universities. “The turning on a dime to provide online education last year and the previous spring semester was only seen as temporary.” For some faculty, the new year brings not a return to normal but a strong sense that things could go off the rails. In the first weeks of class, case counts have risen at schools including Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Arizona State, Liberty University, the University of Arkansas, the University of North Florida and the University of Texas at San Antonio. “It seems like a repeat,” said Michael Atzmon, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan. “On the one hand, we have the vaccine. On the other hand, we have Delta.” Dr. Atzmon helped organize a petition asking the university to be more open to online teaching. It was signed by more than 700 faculty members and instructors. In a response to the petition, Michigan’s president, Mark Schlissel, said on Thursday that, given the “stellar” rate of vaccination at the Ann Arbor campus (92 percent for students, 90 percent for faculty), the classroom was “perhaps the safest place to be” on campus. Dr. Schlissel suggested that faculty would just have to get used to the idea that there would be Covid cases on campus. “A pandemic is unsettling, it’s unpredictable, and yes, it involves an unavoidable level of risk,” he said. There are signs of defiance against state policies. The three big public universities in Arizona — University of Arizona, Arizona State and Northern Arizona University — are tiptoeing around the ban on masks and requiring them in class. If all students have to wear masks, university officials believe that they are obeying Gov. Doug Ducey’s order not to discriminate against students who choose not to be vaccinated. “It’s kind of a cat-and-mouse game,” said Peter Lake, an education law professor at Stetson University...
For real, man.
Paige Loves College Football
This woman is always worth a post.
.@PaigeSpiranac previews the ACC🏈
— PointsBet Sportsbook (@PointsBetUSA) August 23, 2021
Click to bet👇https://t.co/DaI9OyxF8W pic.twitter.com/cHqwycThBF
Interview with Maj. Dick Winters (VIDEO)
I'm a major fan of "Band of Brothers," and especially Episode 2, and Easy Company's destruction of the German 88 artillery emplacement at Brecourt Manner.
If you've seen the series, then you know the story-line of Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Speirs and the legend of him gunning down more than a dozen Nazi captives.
Watch and be amazed:
Within the Margin of Error: More Americans Than Ever Before Disapprove of Joe Biden's Performance as President
And this is after a big PBS News poll earlier this week, "More than half of Americans disapprove of Biden right now."
At YouGov:
President Joe Biden is confronting the worst public ratings of his eight-month-old presidency. His approval ratings in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, overall and on his handling of major issues, have all fallen, dramatically in some cases. That includes the evaluation of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, one area where public support had remained high. For the first time, more American adults disapprove of how Biden is handling his job. Nearly half the public (49%) disapproves of Biden’s job performance in the poll conducted September 4-7, while only 39% approve—a drop of six points in the last week. Twice before, during the pullout from Afghanistan, as many people disapproved as approved, but this is the first time in his first-year presidency that Biden’s ratings are negative. The drop in Biden’s approval rating is most severe among Democrats. Around nine in ten of them had approved of Biden’s performance for nearly all of his first year in office. This week, Biden’s approval rating among Democrats dropped nine points to 77% from 86% last week...
I can't wait for next year's midterms.
Toddler in Diapers Discovered and Rescued by Food Delivery Driver in Burbank (VIDEO)
At CBS 2 Los Angeles, "Caught on Camera Exclusive: Food Delivery Driver Rescues 2-Year-Old in Diapers Wandering Into Burbank Boulevard at Night."
The man's a guardian angel:
Americans Stretch Across Political Divides to Welcome Afghan Refugees
This is fine with me, though, of course, not for most Trump supporters.
As always, my concern is that jihadi terrorists will be admitted to the country along with Afghans who helped the U.S., and along with the tens of thousands of regular Afghans fleeing totalitarian terrorism.
Wow.
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) August 22, 2021
Just one poll, but “Welcoming Afghan translators to the US” looks like the most popular and bipartisan policy idea I’ve seen in a long, long time pic.twitter.com/o09sWjrnXE
PHOENIX — The hundreds of parishioners at Desert Springs Bible Church, a sprawling megachurch in the northern suburbs of Phoenix, are divided over mask mandates, the presidential election and what to do about migrants on the border. But they are unified on one issue: the need for the United States to take in thousands of Afghan evacuees, and they are passing the plate to make it happen. “Even the most right-leaning isolationists within our sphere recognize the level of responsibility that America has to people who sacrificed for the nation’s interest,” said Caleb Campbell, the evangelical church’s lead pastor. Last weekend, the church inaugurated a campaign to raise money for the dozens of Afghan families who are expected to start streaming into greater Phoenix in the next several weeks. Already, thousands of dollars have flowed into the church’s “benevolence fund.” “This is a galvanizing moment,” said Mr. Campbell, 39. Throughout the United States, Americans across the political spectrum are stepping forward to welcome Afghans who aided the U.S. war effort in one of the largest mass mobilizations of volunteers since the end of the Vietnam War. In rural Minnesota, an agricultural specialist has been working on visa applications and providing temporary housing for the newcomers, and she has set up an area for halal meat processing on her farm. In California, a group of veterans has sent a welcoming committee to the Sacramento airport to greet every arriving family. In Arkansas, volunteers are signing up to buy groceries, do airport pickups and host families in their homes. “Thousands of people just fled their homeland with maybe one set of spare clothes,” said Jessica Ginger, 39, of Bentonville, Ark. “They need housing and support, and I can offer both.” Donations are pouring into nonprofits that assist refugees, even though in most places few Afghans have arrived yet. At Mission Community Church in the conservative bedroom community of Gilbert outside Phoenix, parishioners have been collecting socks, underwear, shoes and laundry supplies. Mars Adema, 40, said she had tried over the past year to convince the church’s ministries to care for immigrants, only to hear that “this is just not our focus.” “With Afghanistan, something completely shifted,” Ms. Adema said. In a nation that is polarized on issues from abortion to the coronavirus pandemic, Afghan refugees have cleaved a special place for many Americans, especially those who worked for U.S. forces and NGOs, or who otherwise aided the U.S. effort to free Afghanistan from the Taliban. The moment stands in contrast to the last four years when the country, led by a president who restricted immigration and enacted a ban on travel from several majority-Muslim countries, was split over whether to welcome or shun people seeking safe haven. And with much of the electorate still deeply divided over immigration, the durability of the present welcome mat remains unknown. Polls show Republicans are still more hesitant than Democrats to receive Afghans, and some conservative politicians have warned that the rush to resettle so many risks allowing extremists to slip through the screening process. Influential commentators, like Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, have said the refugees would dilute American culture and harm the Republican Party. Last week, he warned that the Biden administration was “flooding swing districts with refugees that they know will become loyal Democratic voters.” But a broad array of veterans and lawmakers have long regarded Afghans who helped the United States as military partners, and have long pushed to remove the red tape that has kept them in the country under constant threat from the Taliban. Images of babies being lifted over barbed-wire fences to American soldiers, people clinging to departing planes and a deadly terrorist attack against thousands massed at the airport, desperate to leave, have moved thousands of Americans to join their effort. “For a nation that has been so divided, it feels good for people to align on a good cause,” said Mike Sullivan, director of the Welcome to America Project in Phoenix. “This country probably hasn’t seen anything like this since Vietnam.” Federal officials said this week that at least 50,000 Afghans who assisted the United States government or who might be targeted by the Taliban are expected to be admitted into the United States in the coming month, though the full number and the time frame of their arrival remains a work in progress. More than 31,000 Afghans have arrived already, though about half were still being processed on military bases, according to internal government documents...
A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’
This isn't new, though indeed folks don't talk about it on campus, at all (at least at my college, and I surmise others, most others, in fact).
Props to WSJ for the excellent reporting here.
ICYMI, Christina Hoff Sommers has written on this stuff, here: The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men.
And from the article:
Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels. At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline. This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse. No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. “Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students. American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention. The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women. “Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?” Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter. “It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said. At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said. Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said. Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ” Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women. “We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply. The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal. No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?” Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.” The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men. The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school. “The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said. It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic...The number of men enrolled in college this year trails women by record highs, part of a nationwide education gap. Nobody wants to talk about it. https://t.co/RzPzSDIDPd
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 8, 2021
I don't trust this Framingham study.
I'm at community college. I've been teaching online since March 17th last year. I suspect just as many women have been working outside the home to support their families as have men.
Who know, though? I'd have to see the data.
Either way, boys and young men are indeed getting screwed. Gender identity theory, and whatever other brain dead ideological abominations, have left men high and dry.
Still more.
Monday, September 6, 2021
Actor Michael K. Williams Found Dead in His New York City Apartment
As they say, life imitates art sometimes, and in this case, it's particularly sad.
At the New York Post, "‘The Wire’ actor Michael K. Williams found dead in NYC apartment."
It's weird, but I just watched "The Wire" a few weeks back for my first time. Williams plays "Omar," a gangland stickup man, who by far is the most lovable character on the show, if that's the best way to describe him.
He won't soon be forgotten, as apparently he was universally beloved among television fans.
May he rest in peace.
Amazing Surf Photography
Amazing.
Click on the photo and notice that dude giving the hang loose sign.
So wicked.
Your Shot photographer Philip Thurston captured these two perfectly timed waves pic.twitter.com/L27VLNuAAn
— National Geographic (@NatGeo) August 5, 2021
Happy Labor Day!
Here's to all those hard-working Americans (that is, all of us who actually work, rather than suck at the teat of the sow of the American social welfare state).
On Twitter:
Also, lusty blonde.
And tremendous Tessa.
American Honor
Bernard-Henri Lévy, at the Tablet, "Even in the midst of deep humiliation, there are still signs of the exceptional nation I’ve loved since childhood."
Indian vs. Black: Vigilante Killings Upend South African Town
Ugly down there.
Just nasty.
At the New York Times, "As rioting and looting swept the country this summer, Indians in the suburb of Phoenix set up roadblocks to police their streets. Dozens of Black people passing through wound up dead":
PHOENIX, South Africa — The blows thundered down — bats, a hammer, a field hockey stick — as Njabulo Dlamini lay curled on the pavement, trying to summon the strength to move. He and five friends, all of them Black, had been driving in a minibus taxi through the streets of Phoenix, a predominantly Indian suburb created from the forced racial segregation of apartheid South Africa. A mob surrounded them, dragged them from the taxi, made them lie on the pavement and beat them furiously, according to witnesses and video footage obtained by The New York Times. Some of Mr. Dlamini’s friends managed to escape. Others were chased and beaten again by the crowd, which had been whipped up in recent days by WhatsApp warnings and reports of violence by Black people streaming into their community to loot shopping centers. Mr. Dlamini barely made it across the street. He later died of his injuries at the hospital, his family said. South Africa was convulsed this summer by some of its worst civil unrest since the end of apartheid. The imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma for refusing to appear before a corruption inquiry set off violent protests by his supporters. Soon, riots and looting erupted in parts of the country, fed by broad disgust at poverty, inequality and the government’s failure to provide even the most basic services, like water or electricity. Officials have called the violence an insurrection — an attempt to sabotage Mr. Zuma’s rival and successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in part by stoking some of the nation’s oldest racial tensions. Nationwide, more than 340 people died in the mayhem, many in stampedes or circumstances that remain unclear. But government officials have been alarmed by a dynamic that, they say, dangerously undermines the social order: dozens of vigilante killings by ordinary citizens. The vigilantism was especially pronounced in Phoenix, a working-class community of about 180,000 near the country’s east coast. The country’s police minister said that 36 people there — 33 of them Black — were killed in what some officials are calling a massacre. Fifty-six people have now been arrested in connection with the violence in Phoenix. “Most of the people who died were innocent people who were traveling,” said Sihle Zikalala, the premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, where Phoenix is. Mobs of mostly Indian residents, worried that their community was under siege, erected roadblocks on street corners. They indiscriminately stopped Black people, and sometimes beat or killed them, the police said, inflaming the long-fragile relationship between Black and Indian South Africans — two marginalized groups under white apartheid rule. “We need to confront racism in our society,” Mr. Ramaphosa wrote in a letter to the nation, specifically addressing the Phoenix unrest. “We need to have honest conversations not only about our attitudes to one another, but also about the material conditions that divide us.” The authorities have been far less open about their roles in the upheaval. Interviews with dozens of Black and Indian residents in the Phoenix area, as well as a review of previously unreported video footage, show that at least some of the violence and deaths could have been prevented if the police had provided basic security...
Five Sailors Dead in Navy Helicopter Crash off San Diego Coast (VIDEO)
Tragic.
At the Sand Diego Union-Tribune, "Navy identifies 5 San Diego sailors killed in helicopter crash off coast":
SAN DIEGO — Five sailors killed when their helicopter crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and fell into the sea were identified by the Navy on Sunday.
The six-person crew of the MH-60S Seahawk helicopter were conducting routine operations on the flight deck of the carrier Tuesday afternoon when the helicopter crashed.
One of the helicopter’s crew was rescued from the water following the crash and is in stable condition ashore. Five Abraham Lincoln sailors were injured in the crash; two were also taken ashore for treatment.
A three-day search for survivors was called off Saturday morning and the Navy switched to an effort to recover their bodies. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
The sailors killed include two pilots, an aircrewman and two corpsmen, the Navy said. All were attached to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, which is based at Naval Air Station North Island.
The Abraham Lincoln also is based at the air station.
The MH-60S helicopter typically carries a crew of about four and is used in missions including combat support, humanitarian disaster relief and search and rescue.
The Seahawk was conducting routine flight operations from the ship when it crashed about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The ship has been conducting exercises off the San Diego coast in preparation for a deployment next year, the Navy has said.
Lt. Sam Boyle, a spokesperson for the San Diego-based 3rd Fleet, said the Navy is making every effort to recover the helicopter and the remains of the sailors.
They are:
Saturday, September 4, 2021
Climate Change Debate
Longtime readers know I'm a hardcore "climate change" skeptic. (See my earlier post, "The Climate Emergency.")
That said, to me, this current concatenation of violent weather events, from East to West (here in the U.S., not to mention worldwide), reveals something very significant happening with weather patterns and events.
In my international relations class one year, I showed the Patrick Moore video, which resulted in literally a revolt in the classroom, with students enraged at someone, something, anything that challenged their pre-fed beliefs that the Earth is burning up.
It was an unpleasant experience. Honestly, it was so bad I hesitate to show that video in class these days, though Moore is exactly right: In science, the key is always skepticism --- and, most importantly, scientists can really never know all the potential causal factors that may result in any particular event, in political science, or climate science, or any field of inquiry.
Of course, this is the age of "cancel culture," and especially the dominance of leftist indoctrination in the schools, extreme political polarization, and a general postmodern trend toward the rejection of authority, especially among the young.
In any case, check out this scientific debate today, up at RealClearPolitics:
From Christopher Lingle, at the American Institute for Economic Research, "Climate Science: Seeking Truth or Defending Consensus?"
And from Adam Sobel, at CNN, "This Is a Dystopian Climate Change Moment."
Try to stay safe, dear readers.
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