Althouse

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• The moment of sunrise — 5:21 to 5:22.
• "Several studies suggest education is detrimental to critical thinking. As students progress through their degrees, they get better at supporting their own arguments..."
• "For years I’ve told people I have seasonal affective disorder in the summer. I dread the heat..."
• "I was like, I want to dance with Audrey, because I wanted it to be another Black woman... And I want to be in love. I want a Juliet and Juliet... Seeing a choreographer say women aren’t supposed to lift men — well what if they can, though?"
• Inside the creative process... God:
• "Mocking an ideologically-based group can’t be made a basis for denying academic privileges in any open society worthy of respect. If accurate, this report shows Stanford Law School to be unworthy of treatment as an academic institution."
• "Is Glenn Greenwald the New Master of Right-Wing Media?/The leftist scribe has become 'a practitioner of manufactured controversy' for outlets like Fox News, say his stunned former colleagues."

The moment of sunrise — 5:21 to 5:22. Posted: 03 Jun 2021 08:16 AM PDT

"Several studies suggest education is detrimental to critical thinking. As students progress through their degrees, they get better at supporting their own arguments..." Posted: 03 Jun 2021 08:11 AM PDT "... but don't improve at looking for evidence that might undermine their opinions and help them come to a more balanced point of view. I did my undergraduate degree at Oxford, an institution which obsesses this country's elite. While the university undoubtedly rewarded many highly intelligent students, I also came to believe the other principal factor for getting ahead was a bland adherence to the academic value system of hard work and a consuming preoccupation with grades.... For some reason, I spent most of a term studying 17th-century sermons. That is a wonderfully eccentric use of a 19-year-old's time and one of the reasons I hope English degrees flourish for ever but I hesitate to assert that it buys me the right to feelings of moral or intellectual superiority." From "Academic intelligence is absurdly overvalued While previous societies admired courage or manual dexterity, we judge only on exam results" by James Marriott (London Times). If you, like me, wondered what's in 17th-century sermons, here's a big page of links to English sermons from the 17th century. Lots of John Donne sermons here. Sample: If I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord's hand made me of this dust, and the Lord's hand shall re-collect these ashes; the Lord's hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of clay was framed, and the Lord's hand is the urn in which these ashes shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. And being so, the breath of God, I may breathe back these pious expostulations to my God: My God, my God, why is not my soul as sensible as my body?

"For years I’ve told people I have seasonal affective disorder in the summer. I dread the heat..." Posted: 03 Jun 2021 07:50 AM PDT "... and especially the humidity. I can't stand the feeling of being sweaty. Small talk about the weather often feels as political as politics. And almost no one, other than my father and one of my daughters, is in my weather party. My husband recently pointed out, while I was considering in incredulity the ubiquity of saunas in Finland, that maybe many people enjoy perspiring. I cannot even begin to imagine such a state. Are there people who actually enjoy feeling overheated?" Says a commenter at "Seasonal Affective Disorder Isn't Just for Winter/Feeling blue even though everyone seems to be basking in perfect summer weather? There might be a good reason for that" (NYT). We are animals, and we're suited to an environmental niche. As humans, we have a lot of freedom to choose where to live, but we don't have complete choice and the choices we make are not entirely based on where we, as a physical entity, feel best. Where is exactly the right place for you — and do you really have the time to figure that out before you settle somewhere or other?  I feel pretty physically comfortable in Madison, Wisconsin — comfortable enough to feel wary about going elsewhere. The NYT commenter dreads humidity, but I'm afraid of dryness! From a distance, the American West has long attracted me, but when I've found myself there, physically, I've felt assaulted by the glaring sunlight and aggressive aridity. I'm an animal. The place affects the mind — and the mind can call that "seasonal affective disorder" or whatever — but it's the body in the place that causes the mind to react. You're not disordered, you are an animal designed to survive.

"I was like, I want to dance with Audrey, because I wanted it to be another Black woman... And I want to be in love. I want a Juliet and Juliet... Seeing a choreographer say women aren’t supposed to lift men — well what if they can, though?" Posted: 03 Jun 2021 07:35 AM PDT From "Lesbians in Ballet: 'Has Anyone Like Me Ever Walked These Halls?'/Ballet's strict gender norms put pressure on women to conform. But dancers who don't are finding they're not alone" (NYT).

Inside the creative process... God: Posted: 03 Jun 2021 06:18 AM PDT ... a brilliant TikTok... @ghosthoney so brave and beautiful 🐙 ♬ Meditation with natural sounds and music that closes your eyes - Red Blue Studio I like to drift through TikTok videos. You'd be surprised how many I do, when I get mesmerized. But I'm getting good — I think! — at picking out ones to text to Meade. Yesterday, I batted 1.000. I sent him 3, and all 3 made him laugh out loud. That meditation on God's creative process was one. Here are the other 2. When Europeans dress up as Americans: @kelseydarlingxx When Europeans dress up like Americans. #czech #american #viral #prague #fypシ ♬ The Banjo Beat, Pt. 1 - Ricky Desktop The difference between how you pass a stranger when you're out hiking and the way your dad does: @mfbenji #greenscreen #comedy #impression #hiking #dad #dadjokes ♬ Nature Love - Nature Sounds

"Mocking an ideologically-based group can’t be made a basis for denying academic privileges in any open society worthy of respect. If accurate, this report shows Stanford Law School to be unworthy of treatment as an academic institution." Posted: 03 Jun 2021 05:40 AM PDT Tweeted Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, quoted in "A Stanford student bashed the Federalist Society with a satirical flier. He nearly missed getting his diploma" (WaPo).  Stanford reversed its position after getting excoriated on the web yesterday. Below, you can see how the flier looked. It is subject to being mistaken as the real notice for the event, but that's how satire is done, and it's not as though there was a risk of anyone doing anything harmful if they were foolish enough to believe the "fake news."  And why should Stanford Law strain to protect its community? It can't be that it thinks they're dumb. Maybe it decided to respond to the complaint of the Federalist Society — a conservative group — so it could bank credit for political neutrality as it bumbles boldly forward in the culture wars. Here is the flyer that led Stanford to place a hold on Wallace's diploma following a complaint by a Stanford Federalist Society leader. pic.twitter.com/sUg3Jvta3I — Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) June 2, 2021

"Is Glenn Greenwald the New Master of Right-Wing Media?/The leftist scribe has become 'a practitioner of manufactured controversy' for outlets like Fox News, say his stunned former colleagues." Posted: 03 Jun 2021 05:05 AM PDT The Daily Beast goes after Glenn Greenwald.  Besides obsessively repurposing Greenwald's complaints about other media personalities—sometimes publishing multiple Greenwald-related pieces in the same day—[Fox News] also creates entire outrage cycles from Greenwald tweets, transforming tiny kernels into the media equivalent of a bag of popcorn….  "I did not see this coming," said The Nation's national affairs correspondent, Joan Walsh, who was editor-in-chief of Salon more than a decade ago when Greenwald gave up practicing law to spend five-and-a-half years as a star writer there. "It's kind of sad. He won awards for us. He was a beacon during those dark days [of the Bush-Cheney military adventures and Barack Obama's first term]. He was a lovely colleague, he really was. The difference between the cantankerous guy we sometimes had to wrangle with—it wasn't all roses—and this person? Who's this?"

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