Love and the holidays

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Infographic Christmas!

Infographic Christmas!

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Happy Boxing Day!

From Visually.

Infographic Christmas!

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Infographic Friday

Fall Equinox or first day of Winter is today

Source:OurAmazingPlanet

Nothing in Tennessee

Cough--Pigeon Forge--cough, cough. But there are several not too far away including Asheville and McAdenville, NC; Helen, GA; and the redneck riviera: Myrtle Beach. We spent New Years Eve in Myrtle Beach last year. From MSN.Com.

America’s 50 most charming small towns for the holidays

29 - ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA 

If you’re near Asheville, North Carolina this holiday season, it’s worth making a trip to the North Carolina Arboretum, where thousands of colored LED lights transform the landscape into a dazzling holiday wonderland.

Happy National Sangria Day!

by WineEnthusiast.

From Visually.

The best vacation spot in Tennessee?

Nashville, according to MSN.com. I might have thought Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge, but those compiling the list might be less redneck than I. Corolla in the Outer Banks was North Carolina's, Beaufort was South Carolina's, and Richmond was Virginia's.

The Best Vacation Spot in Every U.S. State

Tennessee: Nashville

It’s called the country capital of the world for a reason. For a vacation full of live music, honkey-tonk and lots of bourbon drinking, head immediately to this bustling town.

Promises, promises

The number of high school students signing up for Tennessee Promise continues to grow. Good news from The Tennessean.

Most Tennessee high school students apply for Tennessee Promise program

Almost 85 percent of all graduating Tennessee high school students this year signed up for Tennessee Promise. 

The scholarship program provides two years tuition-free at state community or technical colleges, and the deadline for applications closed Wednesday night. 

The number of students applying in the program's 4th year — 62,860 of the state's more than 74,000 graduating seniors in public and private schools — eclipses all expectations for those that administer the scholarship.  

Overall, the number of students that applied is up about 4 percentage points over last year.  

'"I think we always believed it was going to be transformative," said Mike Krause, Tennessee Higher Education Commission executive director. "We didn’t believe it would become so central so quickly."

With so many students signing up, it brings about a moment where Tennessee Promise administrators are beginning to ask what's next, Krause said. 

About a third of all students will use the scholarship, he said. A third might not go to college at all. And the rest will head to a four-year institution. 

For those that don't go to college at all, Krause said the state must begin to look at more support for those at-risk and ensure they are being reached out to in an intentional way. 

"It's often students that are first generation whose parents maybe didn’t attend. It's about not having a frame of reference," he said. "If you can't visualize it, it's hard to convince them to take them to next steps."

Infographic Friday

From Visually.

I always did like Gallatin

The nicest place in America, according to Readers Digest.

Nicest Place in America 2017 Winner: Gallatin, Tennessee!

Gallatin is our winner for Nicest Places in America 2017. Aside from winning our online popular vote, Gallatin separated itself from the pack among our judges, who felt that the town’s story of racial reconciliation and grace through hardship really showed what “nice” is made of. It’s easy to be “nice” when things are going well. It’s much harder when folks face challenges. (Read more about Gallatin and why it’s the Nicest Place in America in 2017.) 

Sadly,

None of the happiest cities in the country can be found in Tennessee. Sigh. From The National Geographic.

These Are the Happiest Cities in the United States

Who are the happiest Americans? Ask this question anywhere from Montauk to Maui and you’re bound to pique interest (you may even pick a fight). While fans of the film Moana might sing the lyrics “Happiness is where you are,” for scientists studying the roots and fruits of happiness, location-specific qualities of place, community, and opportunity powerfully inform the way we feel about our lives. 

National Geographic, bestselling author Dan Buettner, and Gallup’s social scientists teamed up to develop an index that assesses measurable expressions of happiness and identifies where Americans are living their best lives. Designed by Gallup senior scientist Dan Witters, the study established 15 metrics—from eating healthy and learning something new every day to civic engagement, financial security, vacation time, and even dental checkups—that signal happiness. The National Geographic Gallup Special/Blue Zones Index draws on nearly 250,000 interviews conducted with adults from 2014 to 2015 in 190 metropolitan areas across the U.S. 

The winner: Boulder, Colorado. Bolstered by a sense of community, access to nature, sustainable urban development and preservation policies, and perhaps even that clean mountain air, Boulderites overwhelmingly feel “active and productive every day,” according to Buettner’s research. Per capita, more people walk to work in Boulder than in any other city in the U.S. Low rates of smoking and obesity, and high rates of exercise, contribute to the satisfaction locals feel. Life is not always rosy in the Rockies—stress is on the rise; on average, 49 percent of locals surveyed reported feeling stress—but the qualities that keep Boulder on top make this city America’s happiest.

Happy Hanakkah!

Down by the lazy river

My curiosity piqued by an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I googled my alma mater's lazy river. Sure enough. Had it been around during my time at Iowa, I would have been too busy to use it much. But maybe I could have taken the kids.

The Lure of the Lazy River

Lazy rivers, while still relatively rare in higher education, are becoming a staple at public universities known for big-time college sports and vibrant social scenes. You’ll find them at the Universities of Alabama, Iowa, and Missouri and at Texas Tech. The University of Central Florida has plans to build a lazy river just for athletes, as part of a "Recovery Cove" that will also include miniature golf and beach-volleyball courts.

Infographic Friday

Threats to public research universities

Like my alma mater, The University of Iowa. From The Atlantic.

The Decline of the Midwest's Public Universities Threatens to Wreck Its Most Vibrant Economies

But university research is in trouble, and so is an economy more dependent on it than many people understand. Federal funding for basic research—more than half of it conducted on university campuses like this one—has effectively declined since 2008, failing to keep pace with inflation. This is before taking into account Trump administration proposals to slash the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgets by billions of dollars more. 

Trump’s cuts would affect all research universities, but not equally. The problem is more pronounced at public universities than private ones, and especially at public institutions in the Midwest, which have historically conducted some of the nation’s most important research. These schools are desperately needed to diversify economies that rely disproportionately on manufacturing and agriculture and lack the wealthy private institutions that fuel the knowledge industries found in Silicon Valley or along Boston’s 128/I-95 corridor. Yet many flagship Midwestern research universities are being weakened by deep state budget cuts. Threats to pensions (in Illinois) and tenure (in Wisconsin) portend an exodus of faculty and their all-important research funding, and have already resulted in a frenzy of poaching by better-funded and higher-paying private institutions, industry, and international competitors. 

While private institutions are better shielded from funding cuts by huge endowments, Midwestern public universities have much thinner buffers. The endowments of the universities of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois and Ohio State, which together enroll nearly 190,000 students, add up to about $11 billion—less than a third of Harvard’s $37.6 billion. Together, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, which enroll about 50,000 students combined, have more than $73 billion in the bank to help during lean times. They also have robust revenues from high tuitions, wealthy alumni donors, strong credit, and other support to fall back on. Compare that to the public university system in Illinois, which has cut its higher-education budget so deeply that Moody’s downgraded seven universities, including five to junk-bond status.

This ominous reality could widen regional inequality, as brainpower, talent, and jobs leave the Midwest and the Rust Belt—where existing economic decline may have contributed to the decisive shift of voters toward Donald Trump—for places with well-endowed private and better-funded public universities. Already, some Midwestern universities have had to spend millions from their battered budgets to hang on to research faculty being lured away by wealthier schools. A handful of faculty have already left, taking with them most if not all of their outside funding. 

“We’re in the early stages of the stratification of public research universities,” said Dan Reed, the vice president for research and economic development at the University of Iowa. “The good ones will remain competitive. The rest may decline.” Those include the major public universities established since the 1860s, when a federal grant set aside land for them in every state. “We spent 150-plus years building a public higher-education system that was the envy of the world,” said Reed, who got his graduate degrees at Purdue, in Indiana. “And we could in a decade do so much damage that it could take us 30 years to recover.”

A useful word from the Urban Dictionary

Disastrophe

A combination of the words 'disaster' and 'catastrophe' indicating a very serious and very tragic event. A tragedy of epic proportions.
The flood was a disastrophe for that region of the United States.

Creating the narrative

When the narrative is you. I always said my English major helped me tremendously in both graduate school and in my career. Writing abstracts was a snap. I could write a persuasive essay/email/justification/budget request. Constant email usage has deteriorated my skills somewhat, especially proofreading skills, but my writing is still a powerful tool. From the Pacific Standard.

STUDYING HUMANITIES TEACHES YOU HOW TO GET A JOB

"If you're studying interpretive dance, God bless you, but there's not a lot of jobs right now in America looking for people with that as a skill set," Kentucky governor Matt Bevin declared in September, at a conference about higher education. Bevin's skepticism about the humanities and arts isn't an anomaly; politicians regularly joke about the supposed uselessness of non-STEM training. In 2014, President Barack Obama told students to major in trades rather than art history. In 2011, Governor Rick Scott of Florida said that it wasn't of "vital interest" to his state to have students major in anthropology. And so on. Math, engineering, science, trades: Those are practical, politicians agree. Literature, art, and anthropology? Those don't help you get jobs. 

In fact, the reverse is true: The skills you learn in the humanities are exactly the skills you use in a job search. The humanities teach students to understand the different rules and expectations that govern different genres, to examine social cues and rituals, to think about the audience for and reception of different kinds of communications. In short, they teach students how to apply for the kinds of jobs students will be looking for after college. 

This is not the usual argument in defense of the humanities. Usually, those rebutting STEM-obsessed politicians point to the spiritual role of the arts, or evoke the general benefits of critical thinking. "The humanities conserve and safeguard those aspects of our being that intersect with the meanings of human existence beyond industry," Sarah Churchwell, chair of public humanities at the University of London, writes. Churchwell isn't wrong: The humanities do have value that isn't easily reflected in dollars and cents on the market. So do non-humanities fields, for that matter. Math and science and nursing and engineering can all create a sense of curiosity, wonder, and civic engagement. But these fields also have potential career benefits—and the humanities have as well.

Activate the caregiving algorithm

Slate magazine on automation and future occupations. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords....

The Last Human Job

What abilities will set humans apart from machines? 

It’s been a question at the center of decades of science fiction, and one that’s taken on increasing real-world urgency as we try to anticipate how the advancing artificial intelligence revolution will transform the way we work and live. 

An emerging consensus suggests that two characteristics make humans distinct from machines: care and empathy. Machines may trounce humans at repetitive, predictable, and production-heavy jobs. But technology still falls behind with tasks that require context, nuance, constant adaptation, and emotional intelligence. 

Because of this, research organizations—including the University of Oxford, McKinsey Global Institute, PwC, and the Shift Commission—predict that even though millions of jobs will likely be partially or fully automated in the coming decades, care-focused professions will, at least in the short term, largely remain the domain of human workers. (Disclosure: The Shift Commission is co-chaired by New America, a partner with Slate and Arizona State University in Future Tense.)

Infographic Friday

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