Tough Times at U of O

The College Fix reports my graduate alma mater University of Oregon has declining enrollments and a consequent financial problem. It needs to slash $65 million in spending. Steps taken include a hiring and pay freeze and the shuttering of two off-campus dorms.

Enrollment changes do not arrive unheralded in academia. Today's birthrate predicts the size of the entering freshman class some 17-18 years later. That's nearly two decades of foreknowledge.

The Great Recession of 2008 cut the birth rate and it never truly recovered. Universities have ignored the demographic reality and hoped to make up the difference with marginal students, including foreign students. 

Doing so has damaged the reputation and value of their product: degrees. It was administrative willful 'blindness' and the financial chickens are coming home to roost.

I am reminded once again of the truism that timing is (almost) everything. The DrsC got into academia in its boom years and exited before everything went pear shaped. We are thankful for our good fortune.

The Ugly Library

At Breitbart, someone compares Barack Obama's Presidential Library to a Klingon Prison. That's an apt analogy. 

COTTonLINE readers will remember I have compared it to the alien space ship in the Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig 2011 film Cowboys and Aliens. You can see my references with photos here and here. 

Whatever your analogy, the Obama library is a prime example of brutalist design. It is the antithesis of elegance. 

Perhaps that is the point. It wouldn't surprise me if post-racialist history treats the Obama presidency as almost as bad for the country as that of Woodrow Wilson.

Tiananmen Square Remembered

Instapundit posts a remembrance of when - 37 years ago - the tanks rolled into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to crush a student movement for freedom and democracy. Also linked are several other photographs of those events.

The DrsC feel a particular connection to that day for, by coincidence, we were in Taipei as tourists seeing Taiwan and planning to go on into the mainland via Hong Kong for further sightseeing. As you can imagine, folks in Taipei were agog at what was being reported.

The mainland had gone into a lockdown, and would be nervous about foreigners (us). So we changed our plans and stayed in Hong Kong. I had some nice dress shirts tailored in Taipei, with my initials on the cuff. Good times.

I believe it was on this trip we had a couple of "small world" experiences that stick in memory. In the elevator in the Taipei Sheraton we said hello to an ethnically Chinese colleague from our uni in CA who was there on business or scholarship. 

Maybe a week or so later we encountered a former B-school colleague in the lobby of Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport who, like us, was in transit. A conspiracy theorist would have felt stalked or tailed. 

I then and now believe it was coincidence of a sort. University faculty travel more than most folks which increases the likelihood of unplanned meetings. On a later trip, we bumped into a colleague of the other DrC at Narita airport near Tokyo. And yes, we have traveled a lot.

You Can't Make It Up

It is a beautiful shirt-sleeves day here in the high country, the aspens are in full fresh leaf and the sky out my office window is a clear pale blue with white puffy clouds. This summer's crop of mule deer have been in and out of the yard - no fawns yet, probably soon - and the young bucks are in velvet.

The car we leave here had the battery go flat over the winter, so we called AAA for a jump start and it started right up. We thanked the driver who left and set out to drive around for an hour to charge the battery. 

We got barely a mile from the house when the car's electronics went nuts, every warning light on the dash going off, the wipers wiping, the horn alarm sounding and the tach zooming up to 5000 rpm, which was obvious b.s. as our ears said the engine was just above an idle. 

We pulled over and the engine died, and wouldn't restart. So we called the tow truck back which wasn't too far away and it returned. 

We conferred with the driver, a nice local kid, and decided we'd tow it to the local repair shop maybe 7 miles away. Using the jumper he restarted the car, drove it onto the truck's platform and we got in his truck.

The formerly healthy tow truck started but would hardly run, max speed maybe 15 mph. It reminded us of when our diesel pickups had blown turbos and were lame. The driver was beyond apologetic.

We limped to our house, we got our healthy truck, and together we very sloooowly drove to the repair place. We checked in with the repair place, gave them our details, and came home for lunch, which we ate on the screened porch.

What are the odds of having a car go lame, followed by the tow truck going lame too? I said to the other DrC if we wrote this plot in a story, our editor would find it implausible, as in "you can't make this stuff up."

Weird Neonatal Science

RealClearScience links to an article about an alternate theory of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS. Its essential element is that the infant may dream of the prior experience in the womb, when breathing does not occur, and thus in REM sleep mode, simply revert and stop breathing. 

There is, the article claims, no practical way to test this hypothesis. However, recommendations to put infants on their backs, and not keep them too warm should help as this is likely to avoid sleep conditions that are womb-reminiscent: super warm and fetal positioned.

—————

I wonder if SIDS occurs in cultures that swaddle infants on a papoose or cradle board? These neonates tend to be kept warm, but upright and not fetal-positioned. It would be a good cross-disciplinary study between pediatrics and anthropology.

'Tis True

Joel Kotkin surveys our political situation and concludes with a quote, the authorship of which he doesn't claim. I like it a lot, here it is.

If you’re free to complain about fascism, you don’t live in a fascist country.

Remember this when some wild-eyed 'democratic socialist' claims we are threatened by MAGA fascism. 

CA Primary Today

It is a spring Tuesday in an even-numbered year, so there are primary elections happening. Those in CA seem to be attracting the most attention today, because they are stranger than usual.

The race for mayor in Los Angeles features two Democrats of varying degrees of leftism and having varying degrees of baggage, and former reality show star Spencer Pratt. You’d expect a run-off between the Democrats in strongly Democrat LA. 

However Pratt has been focusing on the uglies festering in the City of Angels: homeless violent drug zombies pooping everywhere and a fire department that lets whole neighborhoods burn down. Oddly, LA voters seem to be paying attention and Pratt has benefitted from very clever ads.

The governor race features several uninspiring Democrats with flaws and two interesting but similarly uninspiring Republicans in a so-called “jungle primary.” Believe it or not five candidates are polling in double digits and a couple more are hanging in with single digits. 

This time tomorrow we may know more, depending on how screwed up the CA vote counting process proves to be. As a CA ‘expat’ I retain an interest in what, in times past, was our most blessed state. 

Common Sense

A study done in Sweden found 1% of the population committed 63% of violent crimes. Understanding this, President Bukele of El Salvador built large prisons and imprisoned the violent thugs. 

El Salvador's violent crime rate dropped from very high to very low. Bukele became a model to follow.

This isn't rocket science, it is common sense. It is how you have a safe, livable country. 

Ice Cold Snark

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

(Democrats claiming US honored war dead were mere pawns)

Iran President Resigns

Possible actual news from Iran. President Masoud Pezeshkian has offered his resignation to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. The Jerusalem Post describes its content thus.

The letter had called out the fact that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had effectively taken over large portions of the government, and that the president and other high-ranking officials had been cut out of vital decision-making.

Pezeshkian, the letter emphasized, was unable to run the government or fulfill his responsibilities under the circumstances, and as such, requested to resign.

If the US has been negotiating with the government, as opposed to the IRGC, then whatever has supposedly been 'accomplished' toward a treaty is total manure and we've wasted our time. 

Let the bombing begin anew, destroy the infrastructure. Leave the IRGC hardliners in command of a pile of rubble that was once a partly civilized nation.

A New Game

I'm musing on the lack of patriotism among Democrats. It is an accusation Republicans formerly would not have made.

What changed? The "game" changed. With the help of Donald Trump, the Republican Party decided to stop being the political equivalent of the Washington Generals.* 

Politics becomes an actual contest when the opponent stops being a patsy. Imagine how the Globetrotters would feel if the Generals played to win.

When your long-time patsy develops a 'backbone' and stops going along with your act, even undoing parts of it, it is an awful shock. Democrats hating Trump and MAGA is the result.

Our nation repudiated the Democrat-dominated game, twice elected Trump, and started dumping parts of the New Deal, DEI, and woke. That isn't a nation of which Democrats can be proud, hence their lack of patriotism. 

Don't expect their heartfelt participation in our 250th anniversary coming up soon. The far-left Democrats feel jilted by their country. So do a few of the 'old Republicans' who preferred the role of patsy.

Personally, I like the new MAGA party a lot, even if DJT is sometimes over the top.

*Comedy foils for the Harlem Globetrotters' antics.

Later ... Also check out Sasha Stone's Substack entitled Donald Trump is the Counterculture. She's grappling with the same phenomenon.

The Trump Economic Policy

Two days ago Treasury Secretary Bessent delivered a speech at the Reagan National Economic Forum. Power Line's John Hinderaker has key excerpts in his column here.

Bessent is one of the stars of the Trump second term cabinet. He does an excellent job of spelling out the President's economic approach, with which I take no issue.

A key point Bessent makes is that sending manufacturing overseas weakens our military posture. Instead he maintains that "economic security is national security." And he stresses that seeking economic security is not isolationism.

The Hinderaker column is somewhat long but I found it a good read.

The Risks in Tanning

Instapundit links to an article about a resurgence of interest in tanning among the young. And it notes correctly that too much sun isn't good for the skin, so say dermatologists.

I write to add my caution to that of the skin specialists. I have a fair Northern European skin with undertones of pink. I grew up in rural SoCal and got sunburned way too many times as a youngster and teen. 

Then came along President Kennedy who popularized adult men going about without a hat at roughly the time I became an adult. So most American men not in uniform went hatless for decades. 

Needless to say I got too much sun, cumulatively, and have skin damage. Twice yearly visits to a dermatologist have been part of my life for decades. It seems normal to me as my not-young father did the same as I was growing up.

At every visit I have pre-cancerous spots to freeze off, sometimes on the arms but mostly on the forehead, ears and face. In at least 5 instances I have had basal cell carcinomas (cancers) removed surgically, via what is called a Mohs procedure. 

A couple more were done with radiation. I don't recommend radiation except as a last resort, which mine was not. So far I've had no skin cancers that were life-threatening, but the risk is real. 

Needless to say I now wear a hat whenever outdoors. Breaking the habits of a long lifetime aren't easy but  after a year or so hat-wearing began feeling normal. I now feel "wrong" outdoors in daylight without my hat.

Bottom line:  Tanning isn't worth the grief later on, in my experience.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Image courtesy of Instapundit.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

Day of the Living Memes.

Update

We took our niece to the airport in Jackson today, the roundtrip is probably 120 miles. It is a Friday and her flight went at 1 p.m. so we were driving in the late morning.

I'm hearing a lot of moaning about high gas prices, but guess what? It sure isn't keeping people off the highways, the traffic was substantial. Jackson was full of tourists, the airport parking lot was almost full, and lots of expensive petroleum products were being consumed.

As the other DrC notes at her blog, everything is showing various shades of green, a real treat for our eyes grown accustomed to the desert's tans, yellows, browns, and reds. 

The work of putting a winterized house back into operating condition continues apace. We work for a few minutes, then rest for a few more, it is getting done. 

Later (actually Sat. a.m.) … I forgot to mention, by moving 500+ miles north, and ‘uphill’ some 4000+ ft. we went backwards into Spring. At this time of year while NV already is hot, WY is not. In fact we are having rain today and the high won’t go to 60℉. 

We both experience springtime pollen allergies. Every year we get two doses of stuffy noses, first in NV, then again in WY. Obviously, while not fun, it is worth putting up with.

Friday Meme Fest

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Yale Chooses Quality

Yale has reinstituted the SAT/ACT tests for all new admissions, after abandoning them in 2020. This is excellent news and perhaps a harbinger of similar changes to come at other elite institutions of higher education. Their announcement states:

These test scores are strong predictors of a student’s future Yale academic performance, and there is evidence that they are less subject to bias than other elements of an application.

It was true before 2020, was true when abandoned, and is true today. Intelligence and learning are great predictors of success in college. 

College was, is, or should be, where the nerds finally come out on top while the slackers and those with average or less mental horsepower get weeded out. What Yale has done is a big step back toward that ideal state.

So sayeth the emeritus professor whose blog this is ….

Update

We made it! Yesterday was a long day, lots of miles, several stops for restrooms and lunch, one for fuel. Plenty of trucks on the road but traffic only dense through SLC, and never slow. It was tiring but with the west wearing its spring green, a pretty drive.

In the intermountain west distances are long and the Interstates are good. Much of the drive was done at a lawful 80 mph. This must feel very alien to people who visit from the crowded New England area.

We’re home in WY and the house made it through the winter with no problems. We found a windfall aspen down partially across the driveway but a good neighbor and his son solved that problem for us.

No longer young, or even middle aged, we need help here and there but have been fortunate to find it.  Our niece Karen, a retired deputy sheriff, flew to NV to help us with the drive north and has been a big help. She’ll fly home to CA tomorrow. 

NV is nice but our hearts are here in the high country, speaking of which, much of the Utah we drove across yesterday is at 5-6000 ft. elevation. Our place in WY is at 6300 ft. and we’ll notice the thin air when climbing stairs for a few weeks till our bodies produce more red blood cells. 

Now to settle in and enjoy a high country summer - it basically resembles late spring anyplace else.

Where the Jobs Are

COTTonLINE is interested in policies related to migration within the US. Power Line’s John Hinderaker brings us a chart assembled by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. It reflects the percent change in total personal income, adjusted for inflation, over the period 2000-2024, for blue states and red states.

The results are these: Red states have experienced a 71.2% increase. Blue states have only experienced a 49.2% increase over that same 25 year period.

Hinderaker summarizes what this means.

People are moving to red states for lower taxes, certainly, but more fundamentally, for better job opportunities. Those job opportunities are reflected in total personal income growing much faster in red states than blue states. Also, these numbers are pre-tax, so the disparity is even greater with respect to after-tax incomes.

Hat tip to Connie Francis for my title.  

Paxton Si, Cornyn No

Various sources are predicting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will handily defeat incumbent Senator John Cornyn for the Democratic nomination for Senator. Cornyn was elected to the US Senate in 2002, and was part of the group of Texas Republicans led by George W. Bush, who was elected in 2000.

I’ve asked myself if there was any desirable conservative policy with which Cornyn was closely associated. I could think of none.

Moving him off the national stage is a further piece of the movement to rid the GOP of the Bushies. They were the coterie of globalist, corporatist Republicans who liked illegal immigration and exporting manufacturing off-shore. Most view Karl Rove as the Bush éminence grise.

The MAGA version of the GOP tends to view the Bushies’ era with embarrassment, marveling at the lost opportunities and its membership in the Deep State.