Category: Quick Hits

Surprising statistics from the Department of Education; it turns out that for-profit higher education, the tip of the spear of the Online Teaching Revolution, is comparatively terrible.

Students at for-profit colleges represent about 13% of the total higher education population, but a disproportionate number of federal student loans — about 31% of all loans –go to such schools, which are popular with adult students and veterans trying to launch careers. Nearly half of all college loan defaults are from students enrolled in such programs, according to Department of Education statistics.

Half – HALF! – of all loan defaults come from the 13% of students at for-profits. The dirty secret throughout this boom is that the Phoenixes and Kaplans and Strayers are really, staggeringly bad at educating students. I don't mean that only in the "online classes are terrible" sense (although god knows they are) but in terms of basic measures like student retention, graduation rates, and post-graduation success.

When 20% of your students are graduating compared to 55% across all public universities and nearly two-thirds at privates, you're barely a university.

It's refreshing to see the administration take some (baby) steps toward reining in this mess of an industry – and yes, the exact same standards and penalties should be applied to brick-and-mortar not-for-profit universities. If a four-year public school is graduating something like 5-10% of enrolled first-time students, the state legislature and university system need to consider, in a serious, non-condescending way, whether that student population could be better served by a two-year or technical school.

And while we're at it, why don't we stop requiring degrees for jobs that don't actually require a degree to do. And encouraging everyone to go to college even if they have neither an idea of why they're going nor a desire to go. And moving government employees up the pay scale based not on their good performance but on whether they buy a Master's Degree from some ludicrous online diploma mill.
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And allowing economic and political elites to use "Go to college!" as some kind of blanket solution to a crippled economy when what they really mean is "Hide out for four years, amass debt, and…maybe things will be better by then?"

But those are arguments for another day.

There's nothing quite like a good on-air meltdown to highlight the kind of tension and drama that make live television so compelling. And this might be the most spectacular televised suicide since Budd Dwyer: some nitwit fronting a fake women's PAC in Texas explaining that women are "too busy" to need equal pay laws.

"We believe that Texas women want and deserve equal pay," Christman admitted. "But honestly, Jason, we don’t believe the Lilly Ledbetter Act is what’s going to solve that problem for women.
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We believe that women want real-world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric.

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"

But after Whitely asked Christman to provide a better solution for equal pay, the PAC leader stumbled with some awkward rhetoric of her own.

“If you look at it, women are… extremely busy, we lead busy lives,” she explained.
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“And times are extremely busy. It’s just — it’s a busy cycle for women, and we’ve got a lot to juggle.”

“And so when we look at this issue, we think, what’s practical?” Christman continued. “And we want more access to jobs. And we want to be able to go to get a higher education degree at the same time we’re working or raising a family. That’s common sense. And we believe that real-world solution is a more practical way to approach the problem.”

Where do they find these fucking people.

Battening down for another snow-and-ice storm and about ready to capsize from fatigue, but forgive me just one more CPAC post. The only entertaining element of that subhuman zoo at this point is watching High Brow Conservatives – who mostly would not be caught dead at such a spectacle – attempt to parse the goings-on in a very Serious analytical fashion. The effect is not unlike listening to a seventh-year grad student in Cultural Studies explain at great length why Teen Wolf is actually a brilliant film.

The American Spectator – a geriatric rag of the Old Right if ever there was one – ran this unintentionally hilarious bit about the Ann Coulter vs. Mickey Kaus "debate" on immigration.
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In a credulous and apparently earnest appeal, the author asks, "Where's the Debate?" Apparently he tuned into CPAC expecting a serious policy debate to take place on stage…with said stage occupied by Ann Coulter and with multiple audience members dressed in faux-Colonial Patriot garb. Perhaps it was not even enough of a giveaway that the "liberal" in the debate is Mickey Fucking Kaus; for those of you not familiar with this skidmark on the underwear of American journalism, Mickey Kaus is the fake liberal you get after Alan Colmes turned you down by claiming he had too much dignity to consider appearing.

On the plus side…

(W)hen as she did at CPAC, Coulter speaks of illegal immigrants as those who lurk in "barrels" and "Pico de gallo" trucks, and (in jest?) argues that "death squads" should pursue those who approve of amnesty, two things happen. First, the media picks reports her words with gleeful rapture. Second, conservatism’s appeal takes a major hit with floating voters.

Perhaps Matt Lewis’s tweet summed it up best. "Could you blame Hispanics for hating conservatives after watching this?"

…the GOP Minority Outreach Program continues apace.

Also, there are Pico de Gallo trucks now?
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What an age we live in!

Since Hollywood officially ran out of ideas ten or fifteen years ago we've been treated to an avalanche of sequels, remakes, and adaptations of source material ranging from video games to classic works of fiction to comics. When you're remaking everything all the time you have to deal with the fact that the audience's expectations are affected by the earlier versions. I mean, after you've made 10 different Batman movies the next actor to take the role is limited by how the previous actors played it.

Sometimes casting decisions complicate things when a role is handed off from one actor to another. Some casting decisions are baffling, like choosing an overgrown fratboy like Vince Vaughn to reprise Anthony Perkins' role in Psycho. In other cases the problem is that an actor's appearance does not match the viewers' image of the character. Like, for example, when the upcoming remake of beloved children's movie-musical Annie casts a black girl in the title role. Being a previous Oscar nominee, I'm fairly certain that said actress can handle the not-terribly-complex film.

Admittedly, the fictional character of Annie is pretty closely associated with the "red hair and freckles" image. It might be odd to see someone else do it. But honestly, is it that big of a deal?

After all, they call the profession "acting" for a reason – it implies (stay with me here) "acting" like you're something you're not! An actress isn't Annie any more than she is Queen Elizabeth or a serial killer or a talking pig. Why I've even heard that sometimes all-male or all-female schools manage to put on plays where the people who fill some of the roles aren't even the right gender. Because it's acting, and you suspend your disbelief as an audience member. Since the role in question in Annie is a fictional character, I hardly see the problem.

Oh wait. It's that she's black, as these totally-not-racist white people helpfully explain.

Were it a biopic, the actor's race might be an issue. You wouldn't cast Wesley Snipes as Pope John Paul II or Ed Asner as Malcolm X.
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When we're talking about a character that doesn't exist except as a figment of our imaginations, is it really that hard to suspend disbelief to think that, for example, Idris Elba is a mythological Norse god? If you're stuck on that question, bear in mind that Norse gods are made up and never existed so no one has any idea what they look like.

Oh wait. I keep forgetting. Black. The problem is black, even though we're totally not racist.
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Sorry for punting tonight, but many moons ago I started to write up a piece about the Olympics as the ultimate modern White Elephant. You know, cities and countries fight tooth and nail to win the right to host these events and it almost inevitably leaves them deep in red ink.
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I find it very hard to believe, for example, that Russia turned a profit on the reported $51 billion they spent on Sochi.

Wherever the Olympics go, they leave behind massive debt and modern ruins.
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The elaborate "Bird's Nest" stadium from Beijing 2008 is now without a tenant; a handful of tourists per day pay a pittance to ride a Segway around inside it. The folks over at Sociological Images (which you should read regularly, by the way) have a good write up with links and photo galleries of what becomes of the often elaborate facilities cities build at great expense for the Olympics after the games end.

Not surprisingly, it usually involves crumbling concrete and graffiti. Remember when Fox News tried to make it sound like the U.
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S. was going to collapse because Obama didn't convince the IOC to host the 2016 Summer Games in Chicago? Sounds like the city dodged a bullet.

There are two reasons I like forcing college seniors to read Babbitt. One is personal; Babbitt's monologue to his son about choosing his own path in life rather than doing what others expect of him is advice that I feel like the average 21 year old soon-to-be graduate can benefit from hearing. The second is that it allows us to think about the American Dream and how it has changed over time. Some parts of Babbitt's life are foreign to college kids – turns out that people born in 1992 don't really feel that success involves joining the Knights of Columbus and the Elks Lodge – but others still apply. Having a big, gaudy house is still integral to showing other people that you've Made It.

Is it, though? Sometimes I think home ownership is a good investment and a component of Success.

Sometimes I think it's a massive con that I'm lucky to have escaped. Then sometimes I think that last one is an elaborate rationalization for the fact that I'll probably never be able to afford one.

If you're in your twenties or thirties today, what is the compelling argument for buying a home?

We're supposed to accept as the new normal an economy that offers no long term security and hardly pays a livable wage in the short term. Our political process still encourages home buying; one look at the tax code makes that clear.
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But from where are we supposed to be getting the incentive, not to mention the down payment, to take on a thirty year financial commitment? It seems counter-intuitive to tell people that their employment situation is basically day to day and then expect them to settle down.
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Too wiped out to write what I planned to write for Wednesday, but do make sure you check out the NY Mag piece by a reporter who sneaked into Wall Street's most secret fraternity during its annual induction of new sociopaths.

As I walked through the streets of midtown in my ill-fitting tuxedo, I thought about the implications of what I’d just seen.

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The first and most obvious conclusion was that the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced themselves from reality. No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial sector’s foibles.
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Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis.

The second thing I realized was that Kappa Beta Phi was, in large part, a fear-based organization. Here were executives who had strong ideas about politics, society, and the work of their colleagues, but who would never have the courage to voice those opinions in a public setting. Their cowardice had reduced them to sniping at their perceived enemies in the form of satirical songs and sketches, among only those people who had been handpicked to share their view of the world. And the idea of a reporter making those views public had caused them to throw a mass temper tantrum.

"Completely divorced themselves from reality" sounds about right.

At least the likes of Frick, Cooke, Morgan, and Old Man Rockefeller had no illusions about being anything other than loathsome bastards.

It's possible to beat Florida when considering in isolation any of the things that make a state terrible. For pure racism, there's Mississippi and most of Boston. For robber baron economics as a matter of state policy, there's Texas. For anti-immigrant xeno-racism, there's Arizona.
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For lunatic Bible thumpers with access to power, there's the Oklahoma-Nebraska-Kansas troika. For third-world looking urban blight, there's Ohio. For corruption, there's Illinois. But no state in this union can match Florida's ability to be close to the worst in every one of these categories simultaneously. Why be great at one thing when you can be really good at everything. In that sense, no state can top Florida for pure shitshow entertainment. It's like a cabaret act of backwardness; it's democracy's meth lab.

Any state with a law that legalizes shooting someone else with no legal burden on the shooter beyond asserting that he or she felt threatened is locked in a permanent struggle to top its own insanity. In that light, the only thing surprising about the verdict in the "loud music" shooting trial – beyond the fact that the middle-aged white shooter was actually found guilty of something – is that it makes even less sense than the Bath Salts guy eating faces.

I'm not a lawyer and I understand that the outcomes of trials are not always logically consistent. That is, they can lead to outcomes that seem illogical but make sense to those who understand all of the intricacies of the law involved in a specific case. While judges and juries can punt on logic, however, verdicts do have to be legally consistent. And I am struggling with all of the powers available to my tiny non-lawyer brain to figure out how a man opens fire on an SUV with four passengers, kills one, and is found not guilty of murder but guilty of attempted murder for the remaining three.
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When multiple charges come from a single act by the defendant, I don't understand how that act can simultaneously be attempted murder but not a successful attempt at murder.

This is on the jury, plain and simple. There is at least one person in that group of 12 Floridians who voted three times to convict Dunn of attempted second-degree murder yet he or she found the defendant not guilty of murder (first- or second-degree) or manslaughter. That…that is not possible. That is to assert, in non-legal jargon, that he committed a felony against the three teens whom the bullets missed and committed no crime against the one he managed to hit.

For playing loud music. But I digress.

If anyone out there can explain how this is even remotely plausible, I'm all ears.
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On the plus side, the judge declared a mistrial only on the murder charge so Dunn is going to prison on the attempted murder convictions regardless. We can only hope he cells with one of the tens of thousands of black men railroaded into Florida's prisons.

Well done, Florida. I don't know how the case with the guy murdering a movie patron for texting will top this. But I bet Florida finds a way.

So my city lost all water service for about 6 hours today. It is back on but we've been advised not to drink or wash in it for 36 hours without first boiling it.
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Oh, and the city ran out of salt and money to pay the city workers overtime to drive the plows, so our accumulated 8-10" of snow (it hasn't been above freezing in weeks) is turning into a solid, packed-down 3" crust of ice and rock hard snow. Oh, and when I walk to work Tuesday morning the air temperature is predicted to be -11 F.

I mention this as a way of saying "Fuck this place, I'm going to bed" and abrogating my responsibilities for the evening.

It's amusing to watch how much we – and I include myself pointedly here – throw hissy fits when our modern conveniences are taken away.
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Is this really that big of a deal? Is there not a water boil order in effect every day for like 70% of the world's population? Take away our water or power (or, god forbid, the internet) for a few hours and we act like we're in a walled city under siege, reduced after months of starvation to eating weeds and wallpaper glue.

Of course it's not a matter of what is absolutely essential but of what we are accustomed to. In my case I am bitchy enough to begin with at the prospect of getting up at the crack of dawn to go to work; adding any layers of inconvenience, however trivial, to that process is more than sufficient to raise my hackles.

I think this is what the kids call a first world problem.

So is everyone satisfied that debating a creationist about creationism at The Creation Museum, prominently displaying a man riding a dinosaur, is a waste of time? Was it everything you hoped, hearing a stupid person who believes that the Earth is 6000 years old make a bunch of nonsense arguments?
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Isn't it fulfilling to see a man attempt to take seriously another man who is utterly incapable of either logic or shame?

Part of the problem here is that most of us are raised to Be Nice about religion and religious people.

In general this is good advice.

However, this is counterproductive with fundamentalists. The pseudo-noble desire to Listen to Both Sides and to give their point of view a fair hearing quickly crumbles under the weight of the utter stupidity, in terms of historical and scientific accuracy, of their beliefs. Not their belief in god or in Christianity, but in their Beliefs about things that are actually empirically testable facts. There is no point in, and nothing to be gained by, debating someone who has "beliefs" about things that are matters of fact.

What Bill Nye did on Tuesday evening was to dignify a ludicrous argument from ludicrous people with a debate, serving largely to give creationists a platform to throw their bullshit at a large audience and to generally create the impression that this issue is up for debate. The odds of someone being persuaded by the logic of Mr. Nye's argument seem to be lower than the odds of some gullible professional skeptic – the kind that buys into 9-11 conspiracy theories because of a 3-minute YouTube video – being persuaded by a snippet of "But radiocarbon dating is unreliable!" water-muddying from a group that combines the smugness of lobbyists with the terrifyingly dead eyes of a religious zealot.