Happy 9/11 Day. Reminder to my right-leaning readers: "God Bless the U.S.A." is not the national anthem.
This Friday
Before fall's official arrival on September 23, a rare sighting of the Harvest Moon will happen on Friday, September 13th. That's when a full moon occurs closest to the autumnal equinox. According to Farmers' Almanac contributing astronomer, Joe Rao, this combination is a once-in-a-20-year occurrence, so your next chance to see one in the U.S. is August 13, 2049.
Typically, long-term treasuries offer higher yields. Harvey though focused in particular on the rare times when the yield on the 10-year falls below that of the 2-year or the 3-month–creating an inverted yield curve. The research bore fruit. In those moments when the atypical occurred for a period of a quarter or longer, a recession followed.
Distilling it down, he theorizes that when investors around the world sense incoming financial danger, they turn to the world's safest asset–the U.S. 10-year treasury, a move that drives the yield of that product down relative to that its short-term brethren.
Daughter Meg is a freshman.
Once again, the incoming freshmen are the highest-performing class in Hillsdale College history. . . .
The freshmen”‰–”‰186 men and 178 women”‰–”‰have an average high school GPA of 3.91, up from last year's 3.89. Their average ACT score, 31, was significantly higher than the previous record of 30.26 in 2017.
As Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn said in his Freshman Convocation speech, the incoming class is full of “ambitious, active students.”
But Arnn also reminded the freshmen that the Hillsdale experience is much different from”‰–”‰and harder than”‰–”‰other schooling.
“It's not practical to come here,” Arnn said. “You have to take yourself out of the world for four years. You have to make it with your whole heart, or else go somewhere easier.”
The 364 members of the Class of 2023 fit in the college's goal range of 360”‰”“”‰380 students per class. The admission rate tied last year's all-time low of 37%, a number which Senior Director of Admissions Zack Miller said can be attributed to the growing interest in Hillsdale from around the country.
“We haven't changed the type of student that we are recruiting,” Miller said. “What has changed is Hillsdale's popularity across the country and the number of interested students in a classical liberal arts education. Because there are no other schools like Hillsdale out there, we're seeing more students want to attend.”
Although the percentage of students from Michigan was not as low as last year's record 25%, it remained lower than percentages from the previous 7 years at just 29%. The remaining 71% of the class comes from 37 other states and 8 other countries.
The Surprising History of American College Dorms
Residence halls were a feature of most early colleges, but a fair number of universities dispensed with them. State universities located in towns of any size frequently looked upon dormitories as an extravagance and students entirely capable of renting lodging elsewhere. The first dormitory at Rutgers was only built in 1890. The University of Wisconsin at Madison had some housing but then eliminated it for decades.
Boardinghouses almost always existed on the outskirts of universities, but were generally viewed as fertile ground for immorality or even literal disease, and campus residences a better means of shaping the moral and educational lives of their students–which is all true to some extent. The sheer number of moral concerns affecting the lives of students receded as time went on, although stances on these questions have never gone away, and have risen again in prominence in the age of institutional social-justice claptrap.
The notion of cultivating a seamless educational environment no doubt has considerable value. A University of Wisconsin pamphlet advertised new dormitories as “designed to bring into the life of every undergraduate the cultural inspiration and force of the university.”
If it's about Simone Weil, I'm reading it. The Jewish mystic who loved the Catholic Church but couldn't bring herself to enter it..
One needn't have to write well about Weil, the supremely idiosyncratic mid-century French philosopher, mystic, and social theorist, for the gravity of her significance to pull both reader and writer beyond the event horizon of her thought. When a writer successfully conveys the heft of her ideas about attention and grace, it's obvious. When a writer is able to effectively argue against the grain of her thought–her gnosticism, say–that's useful also. And when a writer sort of falls on their face, totally failing to think either with or against Weil, that's illuminating in its own way too. Sometimes examples of other people missing the mark are useful lessons in what not to do.
