“The best thing we can say about 2022 is: It could have been worse.”
The Whiteness of Sailing
Sailing is like religion in Maryland’s capital, where children from well-to-do families learn early at exclusive yacht clubs the way kids elsewhere might learn to ski. But while Annapolis once had stretches of shoreline where anyone could fish or set sail, the small town now teems with tourists and nautically themed bars, its waterfront areas Whiter, wealthier and less accessible than ever. – Read this article.
Saltair
A brief history of Saltair, courtesy of the Salt Lake Tribune
For Your Enjoyment #47
At a recent national conference for hospital disaster planners, [physician Dr. Anna] Pou asked a question: “How long should health care workers have to be with patients who may not survive?” The story of Memorial Medical Center raises other questions: Which patients should get a share of limited resources, and who decides? What does it mean to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and does that end justify all means? Where is the line between appropriate comfort care and mercy killing? How, if at all, should doctors and nurses be held accountable for their actions in the most desperate of circumstances, especially when their government fails them?
– This post-Katrina Pulitzer-winning investigation is worth a read (image above)
The results were ... mixed. While one cat managed to complete its mono-route in under five hours, the other intrepid couriers took their sweet time, about 24 hours, before managing/choosing to return home. Sadly, this is where the cat pilot program ended, and the people of Liege never spoke of it again.
One day in the winter of 2017, Ben Taylor received this random Facebook message: “My name is Joel from Liberia, West Africa. I need some assistance from you. Business or financial assistance dat [sic] will help empower me.” Taylor didn’t buy it, and he replied with a small lie of his own. He told Willie he owned a photography business and could use some pretty pictures. “How about a nice Liberian sunset?” Taylor asked. Willie said he could take better pictures if he had a better camera. Taylor decided to play along and see what happened.
– This is an absolutely wonderful story and you should read it
The prospect of mass murder in a classroom is intolerable, and good-faith proposals for preventing school shootings should be treated with respect. But the current mode of instead preparing kids for such events is likely to be psychologically damaging. Preparing our children for profoundly unlikely events would be one thing if that preparation had no downside. But in this case, our efforts may exact a high price.
– A look at the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of active-shooter drills in schools
In 2012, researchers at Stanford University began compiling a database listing every mass shooting in America since 1966, creating a single repository for as many reports of mass-shooting events as they could collect online. Cross-checking, where possible, with individual prison rosters, I found that there were around 50 mass shooters still languishing in prisons across the US. I sent letters to each of them asking them that same question: what could have stopped you doing what you did?
– Another heavy but worthwhile read
At the time, BuzzFeed was better known among media types as a viral hit factory than it was for producing hard-hitting investigative journalism. But in the two years since its founding, BuzzFeed’s I-team has carved out a niche in the vanguard of news organizations doing high-impact digital journalism amid industry-wide disruption that has claimed investigative jobs at regional and local newspapers nationwide.
– BuzzFeed News is pretty legit
I began to wonder: had anyone ever studied what real children would do if they found themselves alone on a deserted island? I wrote an article on the subject, in which I compared Lord of the Flies to modern scientific insights and concluded that, in all probability, kids would act very differently. Readers responded skeptically. All my examples concerned kids at home, at school, or at summer camp. Thus began my quest for a real-life Lord of the Flies. After trawling the web for a while, I came across an obscure blog that told an arresting story: “One day, in 1977, six boys set out from Tonga on a fishing trip ... Caught in a huge storm, the boys were shipwrecked on a deserted island. What do they do, this little tribe? They made a pact never to quarrel.”
– ICYMI: The real Lord of the Flies (also: read the follow-up here)
Galloway, a Silicon Valley runaway who teaches marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, believes the [Covid-19] pandemic has greased the wheels for big tech’s entrée into higher education. The post-pandemic future, he says, will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities. MIT@Google. iStanford. Harvard x Facebook … The partnerships he envisions will make life easier for hundreds of millions of people while sapping humanity of a face-to face system of learning that has evolved over centuries. Of course, it will also make a handful of people very, very rich. It may not be long before Galloway’s predictions are put to the test.
– A look at the future of higher ed?
On Friday, Balkiz was released back into the forests near the Balkans — a region whose name translates to the “land of honey and blood.” “Godspeed to the beautiful girl who has won the hearts of us all,” Turkey’s minister of agriculture and forestry, Vahit Kirisci, wrote on Twitter. An accompanying video showed the brown cub frolicking down a grassy hill. “May she eat everything in moderation, even honey,” Kirisci added.
“This is a disaster. And the consequences for the ecosystem are absolutely, insanely bad.”
– “As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces An ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb’”, NYT June 2022
Spiral Jetty: Then and Now
Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, 1970 (top, artist photo) / 2022 (bottom, 071722)
