Monday, September 12, 2022

Jonathan Lemire, The Big Lie

From Jonathan Lemire, at Amazon, The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020.




Washington Post: Americans 'Resigned' to Inflation, 'Feeling Better' About Dealing With It

 Yeah, I'm sure.

At AoSHQ, "Funflation!"


The Move to Eradicate Disagreement

From Graeme Wood, at the Atlantic, "What troubles me when the censorious types speak is not that they speak but that their response is to call for less speech."


Ukraine Takes Its Counteroffensive All the Way to the Russian Border

This is very big news. Now folks are worried that Ukraine might win the war.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Ukraine says it has liberated one village after another in the northeast as it pushes a counteroffensive whose success has surprised many":

KHARKIV, Ukraine — Ukraine claimed Monday that it took several more villages, pushing Russian forces right back to the northeastern border, part of a lightning counteroffensive that forced Moscow to withdraw troops from some areas in recent days.

After months of little discernible movement on the battlefield, Kyiv’s sudden momentum has lifted Ukrainian morale and provoked outrage in Russia and even some rare public criticism of President Vladimir Putin’s war. As Ukrainian flags began to flutter over one city emerging from Russian occupation, a local leader alleged that the Kremlin’s troops had committed atrocities against civilians there similar to those in other places seized by Moscow’s forces.

“In some areas of the front, our defenders reached the state border with the Russian Federation,” said Oleh Sinegubov, the governor of the northeastern Kharkiv region. Over the weekend, the Russian Defense Ministry said troops would be pulled from two areas in that region to regroup in the eastern region of Donetsk.

There were reports of chaos as Russian troops pulled out in haste.

“The Russians were here in the morning. Then at noon, they suddenly started shouting wildly and began to run away, charging off in tanks and armored vehicles,” Dmytro Hrushchenko, a resident of recently liberated Zaliznychne, a small town near the eastern front, told Sky News of the quick withdrawal.

It was not yet clear if Ukraine’s latest blitz could signal a turning point in the war. Some analysts suggested it might be, while also cautioning that there would likely be months more of fighting. Momentum has switched back and forth before.

Still, the mood was jubilant across Ukraine.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces said Monday that its troops had liberated more than 20 settlements within the last day. In Kharkiv, authorities hailed some return to normality, noting that power and water had been restored to about 80% of the region’s population following Russian attacks on infrastructure that knocked out electricity in many places across Ukraine.

“You are heroes!!!” Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov wrote early in the morning on the Telegram messaging app, referring to those restoring utilities. “Thanks to everyone who did everything possible on this most difficult night for Kharkiv to normalize the life of the city as soon as possible.”

The buoyant mood was also captured by a defiant President Volodymyr Zelensky on social media late Sunday.

“Do you still think you can intimidate, break us, force us to make concessions?” Zelensky said. “Read my lips. Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst for us are not as scary and deadly as your ‘friendship’ and brotherhood.’”

At the end, he exclaimed: “We will be with gas, lights, water and food… and WITHOUT you!”

In Russia itself, there were some signs of disarray as Russian military bloggers and patriotic commentators chastised the Kremlin for failing to mobilize more forces and take stronger action against Ukraine. Russia has continuously stopped short of calling its invasion of Ukraine a war, instead using the description “special military operation.” Instead of a mass mobilization that could spur civil discontent and protest, it has relied on a limited contingent of volunteers.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya, publicly criticized the Russian Defense Ministry for what he called “mistakes” that had made the Ukrainian blitz possible.

Even more notable, such criticism seeped onto state-controlled Russian TV.

“People who convinced President Putin that the operation will be fast and effective ... these people really set up all of us,” Boris Nadezhdin, a former parliament member, said on a talk show on NTV television. “We’re now at the point where we have to understand that it’s absolutely impossible to defeat Ukraine using these resources and colonial war methods.”

Yet amid Ukraine’s ebullience, the casualties kept mounting. Zelensky’s office said Monday that at least four civilians were killed and 11 others were wounded in a series of Russian attacks in nine regions of the country. The United Nations Human Rights Office said last week that 5,767 civilians have been killed so far.

In a reminder of the war’s toll, a council member in Izyum — one of the areas that Moscow said it has withdrawn troops from — accused Russian forces of killing civilians and committing other atrocities...

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Vivek Ramaswamy, Nation of Victims

At Amazon, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.




Californians Survive the Heatwave --- Barely

I was beginning to wonder when it was going to cool down. Phew, that was one hella heatwave. And Californians dodged a bullet, it turns out.

This article's from last week.

At the Los Angeles Times, "California averts widespread rolling blackouts as energy demands ease amid heat wave":

For nearly three hours Tuesday night, California officials warned of imminent rolling blackouts as the state’s electrical grid struggled to keep up with surging demand during a punishing heat wave.

The Golden State avoided widespread outages, though three Northern California cities experienced brief losses of power.

At 8 p.m., the California Independent System Operator downgraded its level 3 alert, the final step before calling for rolling blackouts, saying that “consumer conservation played a big part in protecting electric grid reliability.”

There were “no load sheds for the night,” the grid operator said; however, Alameda, Palo Alto and Healdsburg officials said they implemented short “rotating outages.”

In Alameda, municipal utility officials said at 6:20 p.m. that rotating outages were beginning. Power would be shut off to two circuits for one hour, according to Alameda Municipal Power.

Just before 7:30 p.m., utility officials in the Bay Area city said the second hour of power interruptions had been called off.

“No more rotating outages for tonight,” the utility said in a tweet. “Crews are working to get power restored to all customers shut off in the initial hour of outages.”

City officials in Healdsburg confirmed outages around 6:30 p.m.

“As directed by CAISO, rolling power outages to begin,” according to a Facebook post by the Sonoma County city.

Outages lasting about an hour per zone would cycle through each block until the energy shortage is over, the city officials said.

“Due to lower system loads, the need for rotating outages has ended,” city officials said at 8:10 p.m.

Palo Alto officials said around 7 p.m. that they had been cleared to restore power to about 1,700 customers after outages to meet Cal ISO’s “load-shedding requirements.” “We did not order rotating outages,” Anne Gonzales, an ISO spokesperson, said in an email to The Times on Tuesday night. “We held at [Energy Emergency Alert] 3 with no load shed, and [the alert] ended at 8 p.m.”

Gonzales did not respond to several requests for clarification by phone.

Shortly after 7 p.m., Cal ISO noted that peak grid demand had hit 52,061 megawatts, “a new all-time record.”

The alert did not affect Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers, as the utility operates its own grid and is separate from Cal ISO.

“We’re not suspecting any blackouts due to energy shortages and are not a part of any rolling blackouts [Cal ISO] has planned,” said Mia Rose Wong, a spokesperson for the municipal utility.

The DWP forecast Tuesday’s demand to be elevated but not enough to surpass available electrical generation and reserve capacity, Wong said.

Nevertheless, the utility advised its customers to conserve power and follow the state grid regulator’s guidance, including setting thermostats to at least 78 degrees and not using large appliances.

In addition to urging its customers to reduce energy use, the DWP makes excess power available to Cal ISO when available, Wong said, though it was not clear whether there was any excess power Tuesday night.

The heat wave is now expected to last through Friday, but the worst of it could be over for the southern half of the state — even as temperatures remain dangerously high.

For much of Northern California, the heat was expected to peak Tuesday, but temperatures are predicted to remain well above average through the week, according to the National Weather Service.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the weather service confirmed that downtown Sacramento had set an all-time temperature record. A preliminary high of 115 degrees broke the previous record of 114 set on July 17, 1925, meteorologists said. About an hour later, officials reported that the temperature had topped out at 116.

The state capital has seen a barrage of extremes over the last year, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and California climate fellow at the Nature Conservancy, said in a tweet Tuesday evening.

“First its longest dry spell on record, which ended with wettest day on record, followed by driest start to a calendar year on record, now followed by its hottest day on record,” Swain wrote.

In Hanford, the weather service office stated that as of 3 p.m., “all major weather reporting airports in the San Joaquin Valley have set daily record temperatures.”

Four cities in the Bay Area broke maximum temperature records tallied on any day of the year, according to the weather service.

San Jose’s temperature of 109 Tuesday beat the previous all-time high of 108, set Sept. 1, 2017.

Santa Rosa’s high of 115 broke the high of 113 set in 1913; Napa’s 114 broke the record of 113 set in 1961; and King City in Monterey County hit 116, breaking the record of 115 set in 2017.

Redwood City in San Mateo County hit 110, tying the record set in 1972...

Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One

From Bjorn Lomborg, at the Wall Street Journal, "They wouldn’t need huge subsidies to sell if they really were a good choice, and consumers know that":

We constantly hear that electric cars are the future—cleaner, cheaper and better. But if they’re so good, why does California need to ban gasoline-powered cars? Why does the world spend $30 billion a year subsidizing electric ones?

In reality, electric cars are only sometimes and somewhat better than the alternatives, they’re often much costlier, and they aren’t necessarily all that much cleaner. Over its lifetime, an electric car does emit less CO2 than a gasoline car, but the difference can range considerably depending on how the electricity is generated. Making batteries for electric cars also requires a massive amount of energy, mostly from burning coal in China. Add it all up and the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car emits a little less than half as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered one.

The climate effect of our electric-car efforts in the 2020s will be trivial. If every country achieved its stated ambitious electric-vehicle targets by 2030, the world would save 231 million tons of CO2 emissions. Plugging these savings into the standard United Nations Climate Panel model, that comes to a reduction of 0.0002 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

Electric cars’ impact on air pollution isn’t as straightforward as you might think. The vehicles themselves pollute only slightly less than a gasoline car because their massive batteries and consequent weight leads to more particulate pollution from greater wear on brakes, tires and roads. On top of that, the additional electricity they require can throw up large amounts of air pollution depending on how it’s generated. One recent study found that electric cars put out more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars in 70% of U.S. states. An American Economic Association study found that rather than lowering air pollution, on average each additional electric car in the U.S. causes additional air-pollution damage worth $1,100 over its lifetime.

The minerals required for those batteries also present an ethical problem, as many are mined in areas with dismal human-rights records. Most cobalt, for instance, is dug out in Congo, where child labor is not uncommon, specifically in mining. There are security risks too, given that mineral processing is concentrated in China.

Increased demand for already-prized minerals is likely to drive up the price of electric cars significantly. The International Energy Agency projects that if electric cars became as prevalent as they would have to be for the world to reach net zero by 2050, the annual total demand for lithium for automobile batteries alone that year would be almost 28 times as much as current annual global lithium production. The material prices for batteries this year are more than three times what they were in 2021, and electricity isn’t getting cheaper either.

Even if rising costs weren’t an issue, electric cars wouldn’t be much of a bargain. Proponents argue that though they’re more expensive to purchase, electric cars are cheaper to drive. But a new report from a U.S. Energy Department laboratory found that even in 2025 the agency’s default electric car’s total lifetime cost will be 9% higher than a gasoline car’s, and the study relied on the very generous assumption that electric cars are driven as much as regular ones. In reality, electric cars are driven less than half as much, which means they’re much costlier per mile....

Electric vehicles will take over the market only if innovation makes them actually better and cheaper than gasoline-powered cars. Politicians are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and keeping consumers from the cars they want for virtually no climate benefit.

Bengals Swag

On Ms. Paige on Twitter.




Don't Try This at Home

Unbelievably wild. 

And it's a Hoonigan.


Saturday, September 10, 2022

Tina Brown, The Palace Papers

At Amazon, Tina Brown, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil.




King Charles III Formally Proclaimed U.K. Monarch With Pomp and Ceremony (VIDEO)

At the Wall Street Journal, "Ancient ceremony was first to be televised, draw together all living former prime ministers":


LONDON—King Charles III was officially proclaimed monarch during a historic televised Accession Council ceremony on Saturday, as Britain’s new king undertook the first formalities of his reign while still grieving for his late mother.

For the first time, live television images were beamed from the throne room in St. James’s Palace as King Charles oversaw his first Privy Council meeting. For nearly all Britons, it was the first time they had seen the ceremony, giving them a glimpse at time-honored rituals that have ushered in kings and queens over the centuries.

LONDON—King Charles III was officially proclaimed monarch during a historic televised Accession Council ceremony on Saturday, as Britain’s new king undertook the first formalities of his reign while still grieving for his late mother.

For the first time, live television images were beamed from the throne room in St. James’s Palace as King Charles oversaw his first Privy Council meeting. For nearly all Britons, it was the first time they had seen the ceremony, giving them a glimpse at time-honored rituals that have ushered in kings and queens over the centuries.

The last time the accession ceremony took place was when Queen Elizabeth II acceded the throne in 1952, before televisions were common. The last prime minister to witness such a ceremony was Winston Churchill. Large crowds gathered around the palace, first built by King Henry VIII, to catch a glimpse of history in the making.

Charles became king the moment his 96-year-old mother died so the proclamation of his role as monarch is now a largely ceremonial process. Historically, however, it was a way of formally announcing the new monarch to the nation before the era of mass media.

“It is my most sorrowful duty to announce the death of my beloved mother, the Queen,” said King Charles, dressed in tails and standing before a red-velvet throne inscribed with the late Queen Elizabeth’s insignia “ER.”

“My mother’s reign was unequaled,” he said. “I shall strive to follow the inspiring example I have been set.”

More than a hundred privy councilors, including all living former prime ministers, watched on as King Charles signed an oath to guarantee the security of the Church of Scotland and declared the day of his mother’s funeral a national holiday. He was also flanked by his son and heir apparent, William, now the Prince of Wales. The Privy Council advises the monarch and is mainly made up of current and former British politicians.

Later in the day, the king’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, emerged together with their wives outside Windsor Castle to view a sea of flowers placed at the castle gates, and then greeted and chatted with well-wishers. It was a moment of unity after years of tension sparked by Harry’s and his wife’s, actor Megan Markle, decision to quit royal duties in 2020 to build a new life in the U.S.

Prince Harry has a tell-all book about his life as a royal coming out soon. That, combined with allegations by the Duchess of Sussex of racism in royal ranks, has strained relations between the two brothers, officials say.

All four, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, spent more than half an hour meeting visitors, shaking hands, accepting condolences and occasionally smiling.

Prince William issued his first statement since the death of his grandmother, praising her life of service. The prince, now the heir apparent to the throne, said that while he had lost a grandmother, he felt grateful he and his family got to spend so much time with her.

“She was by my side at my happiest moments. And she was by my side during the saddest days of my life. I knew this day would come, but it will be some time before the reality of life without Grannie will truly feel real,” he said. An Accession Council is usually called within 24 hours of the death of a British monarch and is customarily held at St. James’s Palace, which was the residence to British monarchs for 300 years up until Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837.

After the Privy Council meeting, the state trumpeters of the household cavalry gathered on the balcony of the redbrick palace to herald the new monarch. Then the Garter King of Arms announced the new monarch to the waiting crowds “with one voice and consent of tongue.”

“God save the king!” shouted the crowd in unison in response to the proclamation, before singing the national anthem.

“Three cheers for his majesty the king!” said the Garter King of Arms, to which the King’s Guard soldiers took off their bearskin hats and replied, “Hip, hip, hurrah!”

The announcement was followed by a flurry of proclamations across the country, including in the city of London, and gun salutes at the Tower of London and Hyde Park. Senior government ministers will gather in parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the new king.

At noon, Britons clogged into the streets around the historic Royal Exchange building in the center of London’s financial district, holding phones in the air to capture the pomp and pageantry. A procession of guards clutching weapons of centuries past—pikemen, musketeers, and the royal guards, wearing the classic red uniforms and tall bearskin caps—preceded a reading of the proclamation that declared Charles the new king.

Debbie Harris and her daughter Lucy, 14, traveled in from Essex with a pair of friends. They planned to head over to Buckingham Palace, where they would lay a bouquet of flowers for the queen. “I thought it’d be nice for her to come down to experience it,” she said.

Ms. Harris showed off a photo that hangs on her wall at home—her with her arm around a wax replica of the queen at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. “My father used to always buy the commemorative mugs and plates and everything as a family,” she said.

Later in the afternoon, the king met with Prime Minister Liz Truss and her cabinet, as well as leaders of the opposition political parties. Televised footage of those meetings were to be made public too, in a further sign of the king’s desire to make this process of transition accessible.

With the king now formally installed, the focus will turn to the burial of Queen Elizabeth. The queen’s coffin will in the coming days depart her Scottish residence in Balmoral where she died to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh—the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland.

The queen’s body will then go to St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the queen will lie at rest, allowing the public to view her coffin. From there it will be flown to London, where the coffin again will be put on display for the public to view before a state funeral at Westminster Abbey. She will be buried next to her late husband, Prince Philip, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle...

 

Friday, September 9, 2022

Sally Bedell Smith, Elizabeth the Queen

Sally Bedell Smith, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch.




King Charles' Television Address to the World (VIDEO)

Very emotional and profound.

At the BBC:

 

In Conversations, Many Young Britons in London Called the Monarchy Increasingly Irrelevant

By now, if you're even remotely attached to the news cycle, you heard word of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

I am a fan of the monarchy, and while no expert, I always teach the British case in my comparative politics courses each semester, and discussion of the history, role, and importance of the monarchy is a great part of that. So, though I'm a little late, expect a good number of posts on events happening in the U.K. over the next couple of weeks. This really is an end of an era.

The Queen's obituary is here, "Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch," and "Queen Elizabeth II obituary.

In related news, Britain's young people are apparently over the monarchy, because racism. 

At the New York Times, "In London, Mourning, Remembrance and Tributes. And Some Shrugs."

Though mourning and grief were visible in Britain’s capital on Friday, some young Britons were more muted in their reaction to an institution that many called increasingly irrelevant.

LONDON — Gertrude Dudley remembers sitting on her grandfather’s shoulders in 1953 at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch she came to know as “the fabric of Britain.”

On Friday, Ms. Dudley, 78, a retired entrepreneur, was mourning the queen’s death along with a friend at a London cafe. “This country is in such terrible state, she was the one stability,” Ms Dudley said. “Now she, too, has gone.”

Chrissy Mash, 29, who was shopping for groceries in London’s Islington borough, had a much different reaction, though.

“I am surprised by how unaffected I am,” she said. “The monarchy does not serve any purpose and if it does it is superseded by the damage of colonialism,” she said. “I don’t buy into the fanfare anymore, it’s an excruciating display of a violent past.”

Signs of mourning and grief were on display in Britain’s capital on Friday as residents woke up for the first time in 70 years in a country in which Queen Elizabeth was no longer the monarch. Billboards and cinemas in the city’s main thoroughfares displayed tributes, events were canceled, and small talk about the queen kicked off first dates and business meetings.

But while the death of Elizabeth was a unifying force for many, conversations with Londoners also revealed signs of a generational divide in which many younger people expressed indifference, if not hostility, to the complicated institution the queen represented.

According to a YouGov poll taken in May, 74 percent of respondents 65 and older believe the monarchy is good for Britain, compared with 24 percent of 18-to-24 year olds.

Some younger people expressed fatigue at yet another royal disruption after two years of many crises — including the coronavirus or the war in Ukraine. Others shared amused jokes about how the queen’s last public action was to appoint the Conservative Party leader, Liz Truss, as prime minister this week.

Signs of mourning and grief were on display in Britain’s capital on Friday as residents woke up for the first time in 70 years in a country in which Queen Elizabeth was no longer the monarch. Billboards and cinemas in the city’s main thoroughfares displayed tributes, events were canceled, and small talk about the queen kicked off first dates and business meetings.

But while the death of Elizabeth was a unifying force for many, conversations with Londoners also revealed signs of a generational divide in which many younger people expressed indifference, if not hostility, to the complicated institution the queen represented.

According to a YouGov poll taken in May, 74 percent of respondents 65 and older believe the monarchy is good for Britain, compared with 24 percent of 18-to-24 year olds.

Some younger people expressed fatigue at yet another royal disruption after two years of many crises — including the coronavirus or the war in Ukraine. Others shared amused jokes about how the queen’s last public action was to appoint the Conservative Party leader, Liz Truss, as prime minister this week.

Many people from older generations could be seen wearing black as a sign of mourning, or rushing to buy newspapers dominated by the monarch’s picture, and some recalled memories of a queen who has been for so long part of their lives.

Sitting in front of a candlelit photo of Elizabeth in London’s St James’ Church, Angela Kennedy, 71, a retired fashion journalist, said she struggled to cope with the loss of the queen, whom she had met and long admired.

“It’s very hard to take it in,” she said. “It’s truly the end of an era.”

Ms. Kennedy recalled how the queen had visited the media organization she worked for in the late 1970s. She said that while Elizabeth appeared more interested in magazines like Horse and Hound than fashion publications, she still gave the staff her time, looking “immaculate” for the visit.

“She represented a figurehead that was truly British,” she said, adding that she felt fortunate to live in a country with a monarchy like Britain’s. “I have just grown up with it, it’s just part of my life.”

Sitting in front of a candlelit photo of Elizabeth in London’s St James’ Church, Angela Kennedy, 71, a retired fashion journalist, said she struggled to cope with the loss of the queen, whom she had met and long admired.

“It’s very hard to take it in,” she said. “It’s truly the end of an era.”

Ms. Kennedy recalled how the queen had visited the media organization she worked for in the late 1970s. She said that while Elizabeth appeared more interested in magazines like Horse and Hound than fashion publications, she still gave the staff her time, looking “immaculate” for the visit.

“She represented a figurehead that was truly British,” she said, adding that she felt fortunate to live in a country with a monarchy like Britain’s. “I have just grown up with it, it’s just part of my life.”

That sentiment will likely be expressed at memorials being held for Elizabeth over the next 10 days, culminating in a funeral expected to take place at Westminster Abbey.

Outside St. Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, crowds gathered as a bell rang out at midday, once for each of Elizabeth’s 96 years, as they did at churches across the country. At the gates of Buckingham Palace, people laid flowers — among them the newly ascended King Charles III — and gun salutes honored the queen’s life. Fashion shows were canceled, as were labor union meetings, carnivals and protests.

Elizabeth Hastings, 69, who was named after the queen, was holding a newspaper with a picture of the monarch plastered across the front page as she walked to a yoga class.

“I was born in 1953, the year of the coronation,” she said, “I have been brought up with her reigning and I have read so much about her growing up,” she said.

Ms. Hastings said she met the queen in the 1970s when she worked at the foreign office in London, and she remembered her beautiful skin.

“Like a doll,” she said admiringly. “It’s a really sad day,” she added.

Dave Stanley, 78, a retired butcher, was walking his German shepherd in London in between the rain showers that intermittently washed over the capital on Friday. “I am choked,” he said. “I was a kid when she was crowned; now she is dead. It’s an end of an era. I can’t explain it. I have known her all my life. And now she’s gone.”

Felix Clarke, 31, a manager at a coworking space in central London, stood at his counter seemingly unaffected by the news of the queen’s death.

e said that while every death was sad, he saw the royal family as an institution “founded on a colonial and racist past.”

Earlier in the day, his mother and sister had shared their sadness with texts on their family’s WhatsApp group, but Mr. Clarke refrained from adding his own thoughts.

“I didn’t want to jump in and be rude,” he said...

 

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Max Fisher, The Chaos Machine

See, Max Fisher, The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World



'Hello It's Me

It's Todd Rundgren:

Michael Shellenbarger

Take Liz's advice:


The Honest Guide to College

It's Lee Burdette Williams, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "College students' mental health is suffering. Downplaying challenges of living away from home for the first time won’t make it any better":

About three million first-time college students will soon be arriving on campus—most of them coming directly from high school. About one million of them won’t make it through their first year or return as sophomores. This attrition is financially and emotionally devastating for families, and destabilizing for colleges. What goes wrong for so many students? And how can we stop the bleeding?

Financial challenges account for the largest chunk of these departures. But many others leave because the support services they and their parents feel they have been promised are often impossible for colleges and universities to provide. The number of students with mental health challenges has been rising for years—around 44 percent of all college students report symptoms of depression and anxiety. The rate of students taking psychiatric medication doubled between 2007 and 2019, and is now at 25 percent.

But what concerns my colleagues and me is the growing expectation among parents and students that college administrators are there not to guide young people, whatever their challenges, in mastering the tasks of adulthood, but to spare young people from them.

There are only about nine weeks between high school graduation and a student’s arrival on campus. That is very little time to prepare a teenager for the necessary shift from life under a parent’s management to (semi-) independent living. In as little as four weeks after classes begin, a first-year student who is unable to make that transition can end up unable to recover academically.

I have spent my career working with college students from enrollment through commencement. As a dean of students—at the University of Connecticut, and later at Wheaton College—I talked with numerous parents who were startled to discover that their child had not been attending class, had not been turning in assignments, maybe hadn’t bathed in days. The parents had expected more supervision; we had expected more personal accountability. Caught in that gap was a student about to lose a semester of academic credit and thousands of dollars of wasted tuition and housing fees, often covered by loans that still had to be paid back.

Here is my advice for students and their parents—as well as my colleagues in higher education—on ways to help make sure students are ready for college...

Keep reading.

 

As California Heat Wave Continues, Santa Monica Community College Loses Air Conditioning (VIDEO)

I've been teaching this week and it's been perfectly comfortable in my classroom. But there but the grace of God I go, it turns out. 

This heat wave is devilish. It's not just Santa Monica, of course. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "PG&E warns over 500,000 customers of possible rotating outages as California heat wave drags on." 

And at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:


Pauline

On Instagram.