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Category Archives: Education
Trump’s Math Error Goes Unchallenged
By the press. And so he gets away with it. Again.
What Day Is It Assorted Links
1. Q&A With Avi Schiffman: the MI Teen Behind Viral COVID-19 Site. His viral website is here.
2. Japan schoolgirl uses own savings to handcraft 612 masks for people in need.
“Hime used about 80,000 yen of her own money to buy materials for the masks from around late February and spent up to five hours a day making them, using the free time she had when her school was closed due to the coronavirus.
‘I’m not that good at sewing but tried hard to make them as I want to help people,’ she said.
Will > skill.
3. Two 20-somethings extend ‘invisible hands’ in virus outbreak.
“Elkind, a junior at Yale, and a friend, Simone Policano, amassed 1,300 volunteers in 72 hours to deliver groceries and medicine to older New Yorkers and other vulnerable people. They call themselves Invisible Hands, and they do something else in the process — provide human contact and comfort, at a safe distance, of course.”
Built on “tikkun olam”, Hebrew for “world repair” a beautiful concept synonymous with the notion of social action.
4. There’s no better time for cities to take space away from cars.
5. The two Demos who should be the faces of the Democratic coronavirus response. I question the premise that we need separate, party-specific responses. The virus is non-partisan.
Saving ESPN
Boxing match. Cuomo versus Trump. Pay per view. Now.
Paragraph to Ponder
Tom Scocca channels my exact thoughts while watching today’s press conference in “This Isn’t Trump’s Katrina. It’s Stupid, Slow-Motion, 9-11.”
“If the media were treating the outbreak fairly, Donald Trump would not be able to stand at the presidential lectern and talk about how prepared he’d made sure America was without someone shoving him aside to hold up a picture of a dying nursing home patient, or to read a plea from doctors who don’t have enough masks. The only questions to ask him are: Why are you still here? And how many more people are going to be dead before you leave?”
This Isn’t Working!
An Israeli mom of four snaps on the second day of homeschool.
Higher Education Teeters
Every sector of the economy is going to be severely tested by pandemic closings and related fallout.
As one example, the pandemic will test every college and university and could be a deathblow to some of the growing number of economically distressed colleges and universities. Here are a few of the pandemic’s probable ripple effects:
- fewer campus visits of prospective students, leading to a decline in applications
- far fewer international student applications
- reduced yields of accepted students because families will be unable to afford even deeply discounted tuition, room and board
- a loss of good will as upset families seek refunds from March-May tuition, room and board
- shrinking endowments meaning less “passive income” to pay salaries, keep the lights on, and maintain campus facilities*
- reduced alumni giving due to widespread loss of income and wealth
- due to a spike in unemployment, graduates will struggle even more to find white collar jobs that pay a “livable wage” and provide benefits, further complicating the sine qua non of higher education
Educational institutions change slowly, but the pandemic is likely to accelerate The Great Contraction. The most distressed institutions will close shop. Others will seek partners with whom to merge. Every college and university has to become much clearer about the two or three things they do especially well. Even if they successfully refine their missions and curricula, a growing number of faculty, administrators, and staff will lose their jobs.
Tough times indeed.
*the total amount of deferred maintenance is an excellent indicator of relative fiscal health
Trusting The Base Will Forget
From the New York Times.
WASHINGTON — For weeks, President Trump has minimized the coronavirus, mocked concern about it and treated the risk cavalierly. On Tuesday he took to the White House podium and made a remarkable pronouncement: He knew it was a pandemic all along.
“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters.
Here is what Mr. Trump actually said from the beginning of the pandemic.
Jan. 22, asked on CNBC whether he was concerned about a global pandemic: “No, not at all,’’ Mr. Trump said. “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb. 26, at a White House news conference, about the number of reported cases of the virus: “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
Feb. 27, at a White House meeting: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
March 7, seated next to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., club: “I’m not concerned at all.” (At least three members of the Brazilian delegation and one Trump donor at Mar-a-Lago on March 7 later tested positive for the virus.)
March 16, in the White House briefing room, warning that the outbreak would last until summer and then suddenly disappear: “So it could be right in that period of time where it, I say, wash — it washes through. Other people don’t like that term. But where it washes through.”
Daniel Dale describes it as “. . . another of Trump’s brazen attempts to rewrite a history that played out in public view.”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/fact-check-trump-always-knew-pandemic-coronavirus/index.html
I’m Good
For two more weeks.
If I Could Only Follow One Person on Twitter
Normally, my favorite people on Twitter tend to be intellectuals or comedians, but these days, if I could only follow one person it would be Canada’s gift to the (dis)United States, Daniel Dale. He does an incredible job of repeating exactly what the President says almost in real time and then dispassionately explains all of his fabrications. Highly recommended. I expect him to be at 700k followers in short order.
In related news, for whatever reasons, I can’t get any traction on Twitter. I’m only about 697,350 followers behind D2. When you follow him, follow me too so that little gap doesn’t grow more vast.
Pressing Pause 