Maggie's Farm

Evergreen State College freshmen enrollment drops to 300 students, professor says

That is pretty bad, considering they have an over 97% acceptance rate. 

College's 'diversity in astronomy' push is out of this world

This is the second time in one week (see Roundup in Breast Milk?) where I have read of scientific journals stifling studies due to fears of mob action: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

I blame the cowards more than the "activists." 

"As a Former Dean of Harvard Medical School, I Question Brown’s Failure to Defend Lisa Littman"

How do prosecutors decide who to pursue, and who not to pursue? It's complicated, but politics certainly plays a role.

Everything is a crime. That link is via Menton's  A Closer Look At Our Over-Criminalized And Badly Slanted Legal System

Nordlinger: Culture Tells: A Salzburg Journal, Part II

I admire and envy people like Nordlinger with the ear and talent just to be able to discern the sound of one conductor from another.  Their experience of ambitious music must so be different from mine, much as I am a music-lover. To me, it is all wonderful.

I am with Janssen who loves Schubert. That's one guy who wrote music I feel I can get my head around. Also Mendelssohn I guess.

Here's a masterpiece: 

No poo paper - communal scrub brushes. Yuk. 

The Quillette piece we linked this morning about paranoid thinking on the left fringes was good enough to mention author Doris Lessing's 1992 essay, Language and the Lunatic Fringe.

I recommend it. Things have gotten much worse since 1992.  

I have noticed the growing use of the word "problematic" lately. I find the use of that word to be problematic. What it means is that you might be in trouble with the Thought and Culture cops. 

"Socialism: Great theory. Wrong species."

E.O Wilson 

Sample questions from the "Principles and Practices of Engineering Exam" provided by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying.

That is via  Engineers refute allegations of gender bias in licensing exam

Photo from this piece. Furthermore, efforts to reduce accidents can backfire.  There is a book: Normal Accidents

There’s no doubt that individuals acting privately – in families, in friendships, in free markets – often say and do childish, stupid, and sometimes even destructive things. But there’s also no doubt that the forum that brings out, magnifies, and amplifies  – and, unlike in private settings, actively encourages – human childishness, stupidity, and destructiveness is politics. Compared to any randomly chosen government official, the typical consumer, worker, business executive, entrepreneur, and investor is more logical than Mr. Spock, more sober than a devout Morman, more intelligent than Einstein, more wise than King Solomon, more creative than Edison, and more resolute than Helen Keller.

Don Boudreaux, here 

Government power, a vast, organized, and living body, naturally tends to grow. It feels cramped within its supervisory mission. Now, its growth is hardly possible without a succession of encroachments upon the field of individual rights. The expansion of government power means usurping some form of private activity, transgressing the boundary that I set earlier between what is and what is not its essential function.

Frederic Bastiat, via Cafe Hayek 

A friend’s son has a job orienting college students on the subject of privilege...

So-called "imperial" measures, or British Imperial, are or were practical, while metric measures are somewhat more arbitrary.

The mile, as the word implies, was 1000 paces of a Roman soldier (mille passus), but the concept evolved and changed and now there are all sorts of miles despite the kilometer taking over in most places. The American mile is about 1700 yards, but the origin of the yard is obscure.

What countries do not use the metric system? 

Quiz: What do people mean by a "country mile"? 

North America has become a hodge-podge of earthworm species, mixtures of native earthworms and imported worms from Europe mostly.

Serious commercial farms don't have many earthworms:  The Coming Worm Apocalypse Should Terrify You.  Gee, I am not terrified.

People with serious, large compost piles often throw in a pile of Red Worms, but I like Nightcrawlers for my vegetable garden and flower borders.  Of course, they spread into turf and shrub areas too if the soil is nice. If your turf is lousy, with clay and no food (ie no lawn clippings or shredded leaves), they will not go there to do your aeration for you. 

You can buy them here, and other places. They will work hard for you, and reproduce quickly. Release them at night, preferable on recently weeded or tilled soil.

AKA doughnuts, aka donuts. It seems like almost every culture has some version of sweet or not-sweet fried dough.  The problem in the USA is people baking it instead of deep-frying it in fat. To me, that's just sweetened bread.

In the US, they were probably derived from the Dutch "oily cakes" as discussed by Washington Irving in 1809. 

Because I do not work in law-enforcement, I am not a fan of jelly donuts. The only kind I like are "plain" donuts, not too sweet, deep fried and crusty, with or without a dusting of confectioner's sugar or sprinkled with sugar crystals. If the bag doesn't show grease, they are no good.

Donuts and coffee. Good ones are hard to find these days. 

What do readers like in doughnuts? 

From The Atlantic, Why the Left Is So Afraid of Jordan Peterson. The Canadian psychology professor’s stardom is evidence that leftism is on the decline—and deeply vulnerable.

Most people have many more important interests than politics. For example, constructing a good productive and fulfilling life in the brief span allotted us. If anybody expects politics to deliver them a good life, they must dream on.