FEWER MURDERERS, FEWER MURDERS?

Our President recently claimed credit for a century-plus low in the annual murder rate.  Reason's Alexandra Stinson suggests otherwise.

While it's still too early to officially say, all signs indicate that 2025 will have the largest drop in murder rates in recorded history. The Trump administration will likely take credit for this feat, but this probably would have happened regardless of who was in the White House.

It's the nature of presidents to claim credit for stuff that happens during their term, whether they had anything to do with it or not, and to lay the blame on somebody who came before.  The fall in murder rates has been present for a few years.

The decline is noteworthy, but it is not especially surprising, given recent trends. "We're seeing the largest one-year drop in murder for the third straight year in 2025," crime data analyst Jeff Asher told Reason's Billy Binion earlier this week. "We're seeing the murder rate at the lowest level that we've ever recorded it."

While we won't know the exact drop in the 2025 murder rate until official data come out in August or September of this year, Asher expects the decline to be "somewhere in the 18 to 20 percent range." This would "supplant 2024, which supplanted 2023 as the largest one-year drop ever recorded."

The exact reason for this decline is unknown. Some have theorized that trauma care at emergency rooms has improved, which has led to fewer casualties from shootings. That's "a factor," says Asher, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

So far, nobody has revisited John Donohue and Steven Levitt's "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," which was a featured story in Freakonomics, subsequently drawing substantial counter-arguments.  The authors published a follow-on paper in 2020 suggesting the correlation my post's title hints at.  "Legalized abortion is estimated to have reduced violent crime by 47% and property crime by 33% over [1991 to 2014], and thus can explain most of the observed crime decline."

LET'S PRETEND THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ASTERISK.

Inside Higher Ed "resident scholar" Shaun Harper assures us as much.  "Jay-Z, Kamala Harris and Professors of Color Aren’t DEI Hires."  As you'd expect at the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, inside what passes for higher education, he goes straight to the motive questioning.  "There is no such thing as a DEI hire in U.S. higher education or any other industry. It is a racist notion."

Now it might be, as he asserts, that Sean "Jay-Z" Carter produces some pretty good Super Bowl halftime shows.  It's not to us oldsters that the producers pitch those things, so I don't have a rock in this house.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY.

"'Bigorexia' Is On The Rise. Here's What Parents Should Know."  Caroline Bologna in the Puffington Host.  I know I should not mock, but seriously??

Parents today are generally aware of mental health conditions that relate to body image, including common disorders like anorexia. But experts warn a lesser-known issue is on the rise, particularly among boys: muscle dysmorphia, aka “bigorexia.”

“Bigorexia is a psychological condition and type of body dysmorphic disorder which involves a distorted self-image that focuses specifically on muscle size and physical appearance,” Kara Becker, a certified eating disorder therapist and national director of eating disorder programs at Newport Healthcare, told HuffPost.

With bigorexia, the afflicted person is obsessed with becoming more muscular and preoccupied with the idea that their body isn’t brawny enough ― even if they actually have the physique of a bodybuilder.

“Individuals may have an inaccurate view of their bodies, often believing they are smaller or less muscular,” said Amy Gooding, a clinical psychologist at Eating Recovery Center, Baltimore. “This belief and subsequent preoccupation can lead to unhealthy behaviors, including obsessive exercise, and may lead to changing one’s eating to be as lean as possible.”

Let's make the concept of "toxic masculinity" more complicated, shall we?

“While there’s more awareness around eating disorders, muscle dysmorphia can be overlooked for several reasons ― one reason being that it can lead to behaviors often encouraged in the weight room,” Gooding said. “Lack of awareness of the disorder may lead to the disorder being missed in someone who is struggling, as this is one of the less well-known disorders. Those who struggle may hesitate to reach out for help due to shame, secrecy or the normalization of the behaviors in the community.”

Years ago, it was the "beauty myth" driving young women to obsess over their weight.  Gentlemen all know that "does this dress make me look fat?" is a trap, whether the lady asking the question is reasonable or high-maintenance; and now the therapeutic culture is proposing a parallel "fitness myth" in which the guys engage in competitions, perhaps on social media, perhaps with the assistance of image-enhancing software, to look more ripped than everyone else in the weight room.  Predictably, Miss Bologna ends by invoking "body positivity."  That's so last decade.

SOON WE'LL BE SLIDING DOWN THE RENT GRADIENT OF LIFE.

An Ed Driscoll post at Insta Pundit dips into Culture War themes, but you can put a Thünen ring around the meming.

Unironically doing the meme pic.twitter.com/OkvK0HY8Ec

— Nemesis 2026 (@Nemtastic1) February 11, 2026

The underlying regional economic analysis is simple enough.

Look, this is not difficult.  Note, there is no shortage of housing per se, there is what the authors refer to as a shortage of "affordable housing," and they persist in their delusion that if you pass a law that makes housing "affordable," there will be affordable housing.  Sorry, no.  On Manhattan, and in San Francisco, and anyplace else where there are serious agglomeration economies favoring high-value-added work, the real estate on which those rent-stabilized apartments sit will be seriously expensive.

When the rent gradient comes for your neighborhood, maybe you have a platform to engage in grievance-mongering.  If you're novelist Naomi Jackson, you surely do.

“I once lived in a Black mecca. But by the summer of 2022, my toddler son and I were often the only Black folks on the playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a fact that felt both alienating and surreal,” the novelist Naomi Jackson writes.

Jackson was born in Crown Heights to… pic.twitter.com/aZD8o4wYbN

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) February 11, 2026

As Captain Ed's post notes, had any author who does not enjoy protected status written the following, the cancel mob would be all over her and she'd likely not place another novel with a major publishing house.

My formative years were in Flatbush, which is called “Little Caribbean” even though it becomes less and less Caribbean each day as new Asian, Latino, African, and African American residents move in, making the communities where I grew up feel both less familiar and more diverse. Even the name Little Caribbean, as effective and important as it is as a marketing tool, makes me mildly nauseous each time I encounter it on a lamppost or a street sign; it seems to commemorate a community that doesn’t quite exist anymore.

In that Brooklyn, in the late 1980s, all the kids were, like me, the children of Caribbean immigrants. One would still occasionally see a Black Pentecostal church parade on a Sunday afternoon — white-turbaned women, drums and a horn section playing loud gospel music. In that Brooklyn, I squirmed as my stepmother stopped on nearly every block to greet a neighbor; on Saturdays, when our family’s kitchen was closed, we ordered jerk chicken and festival from the now-defunct Danny and Pepper’s or boiled crab and corn from Mr. Chin, the Chinese Jamaican man who cooked his victuals in a Dutch pot on Rogers Avenue and surprised me when he spoke in patois one day.

That's the nature of the neighborhoods with cheap housing.  Milwaukee's Old South Side used to be Milwaukee's Polonia, and thrifty homeowners would start by building a one-story shack, later they'd jack it up to put additional rooms underneath, and they'd build what the local vocabulary referred to as a "back cottage" later.

TODAY IN FAR-TOO-EARLY FOOTBALL PROGNOSTICATIONS.

"How close are the 30 other NFL teams to a Super Bowl?"  Recall, dear reader, that the smart money had little love for the Seahawks and Patriots, both coming off bad seasons.  For what it's worth, the Vikings are sixteenth out, the Bears twelfth, the Lions eighth, and the Packers fifth.  Put two of the late season outs, the Bills and the Rams, as the most likely pairing on Valentine's Day a year out.

Maybe I'll return to this story in about a year, as the playoff picture shakes out.  Who knows, because betting money is involved, the football season forecasts might be more accurate than the usually hysterical forecasts at the beginning of hurricane season.

NO KIDDING.

Minding the Campus contributor Liza Libes correctly diagnoses the Ivies' value proposition.  "Not a better education, but elite social formation."

No kidding.  "As long as the alternative to the 'you teach yourself, you have smart classmates, let me find a shorter proof of Fermat's Theorem' model of higher education (itself a mischaracterization of what goes on in the best universities) is a non-challenging degree program driven by an access-assessment-remediation-retention mindset, the oversubscribed Ivies, wannabes, and state flagships are going to have no reason to do things differently."  Not much has changed in going on nineteen years.

THE BATTLE OF ATTRITION THAT IS ORGANIZED SPORTS.

Iowa State gymnastics cancels remainder of season.  The story does not get into season-ending injuries or academic troubles.

“After a careful and thoughtful review of the program over the last week, it became apparent that we do not have enough student-athletes available to safely compete, and thus have made the painful decision to cancel the remainder of our gymnastics season,” Senior Associate Athletics Director for Student Services Shamaree Brown said in a press release. “The health, safety and overall welfare of our student-athletes is paramount, and it is our responsibility to ensure that they are able to safely train and compete at the highest level.”

There's little at the Iowa State athletics website explaining what led them to that decision, the team photo from the start of the season shows a sizable cohort of gymnasts, and, interestingly, their gymnastics academy affiliation, rather than their high school, is noted in the roster.  A release from earlier in the season notes numerous graduations with new gymnasts on the team, but makes no mention of the newcomers suffering injuries in practice or performance.  Sports these days put a lot of strain on the bodies of young people.

WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS, MAKE TZATZIKI.

A week after the Sycamore Tom and Jerry's restaurant serving Chicago-style gyros and all sorts of other foods suffered a catastrophic fire, the owners announced plans to continue in business, using temporary quarters (a restaurant that has had multiple owners offering multiple varieties of food: thanks, Illinois taxes) until they build a new eatery at their existing location.

In a social media post Saturday evening, the restaurant said it secured a temporary location at 265 W. Peace Road in Sycamore – the former Eggsclusive Cafe – with plans to reopen by early March. Work is underway to prepare the space so the restaurant can resume serving customers as quickly as possible.

Sarah Meyer, Tom & Jerry’s general manager, said the restaurant’s management team first looked at the space on Feb. 1 before signing a lease two days later. She said workers have been inside the location most days since.

“We are still overwhelmed with grief, but I think at this point we are all so busy making plans that we are just forging ahead,” Meyer said.

The Sycamore Road restaurant suffered an electrical firing in the ceiling.  Details about the anticipated reopening, which might be by increments such as no drive-through or a limited menu, will be forthcoming.

A REBUILD IN PROGRESS?

Northern Star sports reporter Joseph Segreti notes, "Women’s basketball has work to do."  Well, yes, last spring we noted the basketball purgatory that had emerged in DeKalb.  Between graduations and the transfer portal the new coach didn't have much to work with.

Year 1 of Jacey Brooks’ tenure as the NIU women’s basketball coach has been nothing short of underwhelming when compared to the Huskies’ recent seasons.

Currently sitting at four wins on the season, the Huskies (4-17, 2-8 MAC) have had their fair share of struggles in their final season in the Mid-American Conference.

Previous teams were inconsistent.  Mr Segreti counts a number of ways in which the current team is not putting up good numbers.  He then notes that the team is currently rebuilding.

Brooks is in just her first season as head coach, so growing pains are expected before success begins.

Brooks followed up longtime Huskies women’s basketball head coach Lisa Carlsen who was a model of consistency during her time in DeKalb.

Brooks also inherited a roster missing several key pieces from last season due to graduation, such as former forward Brooke Stonebraker, former guard Sidney McCrea, former guard Laura Nickel and longtime superstar Huskie guard Chelby Koker.

The incoming class of transfers and freshmen have shown signs of success.

That "model of consistency" was "consistently mediocre."  Let's check the history.

The last of the Kathi Bennett recruits graduated at the end of the 2019-2020 season, during which several promising young recruits got a good deal of playing time.  Between the corona shutdowns and injuries, those players got a participation trophy to shine up in 2023.  "Northern Illinois University's women's basketball team got off to a good start last November, and despite reverting to their usual form during conference play received an invitation to a tournament held at Transylvania University in Kentucky, where they lost three games."  The athletics department have a little pride left: there was never a banner raised in the arena calling attention to that tournament.

That is, Lisa Carlsen got within five minutes of an N.C.A.A. tournament bid with players Kathi Bennett recruited for one system who excelled in another system.  The way in which they got there foreshadowed future developments: they overcame a big deficit to oust Ohio, then gave away a ten point lead to Toledo in the tournament finals.  In following years, there were a few more big runs to overcome halftime deficits, but those were fewer than the ten-point leads given up to lesser teams.  Despite the promise subsequent recruits showed, something went wrong after the season of corona shutdowns, and account injuries, those promising young recruits didn't have as many chances to play together as might have been.

Last Saturday was the second game of the Mid American - Sun Belt conference crossover series.  Northern Illinois hosted Texas State, and they were among the Mid-American teams that won a majority of those games.

"I'm really proud, excited and happy with our effort for 40 minutes today," said head coach Jacey Brooks as NIU snapped a four-game losing streak. "The last two seconds made me the most proud. Basketball is a game of runs and when we got on a heels we were still battling. When Texas State made a big shot, we made a big shot. I saw so much growth from our team today."

Sometimes, it takes longer to put the pieces together.  Next up, the University of Massachusetts, again playing in the Mid-American as Northern Illinois prepare to move to the Horizon League.

HERE WE GO AGAIN.

Two weeks ago, as the polar vortex January winter did what it did, we noted, "Amtrak, which did not cover itself with glory a year ago, is cancelling trains even before the storm: how is it that weather forecasters can anticipate storm arrivals more precisely than Amtrak?"

OUR PATHETIC GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS.

Last week, we called attention to the very different ways the establishment press covered the professional protest communities unleashing their high school auxiliaries and Turning Point U.S.A. working with school districts that might have been willing to entertain the idea that in a quarter millennium maybe we got a few things right.

The fun continued into the weekend.  "Auburn High School students protest."

A large group of students was seen just before 3 p.m. Friday, lined up along Auburn Street with some standing on the medians in the middle of the street.

At 3:14 p.m., it is reported that police were telling students to leave.

Just a few minutes later, police squad vehicles were seen blocking a portion of Auburn Street.

According to a Rockford Public Schools spokesperson, “The students did not inform Auburn administrators that they would be leaving class to protest outside.”

Very anodyne reporting, no news of counterprotesters to interview, which is no surprise as Normals have jobs.  Moreover, Rockford's "institute day" (students excused from class for teachers to go to meetings ostensibly for faculty development) was today, a Monday, and, unsurprisingly, there was no news of any protesting students assembling to call attention to immigration enforcement or Nancy Guthrie or anything else.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN.

Italy's Olympians used Rossini's "Figaro" (from Il Barbieri di Siviglia) as their walk-up music.  Although the opening performances featured giant circus heads of Rossini as well as Verdi and Puccini (what, no Vivaldi?) there were no references to Bugs Bunny.  Cold Spring Shops hereby correct that oversight.

The competition was under way before the opening ceremonies, with, for example, the United States mixed doubles curling team qualifying for the medal round Sunday, beating Sweden in a match that was much more edifying than any Super Bowl halftime show or the counterprogramming.

THERE IS STILL NO SUCH THING AS PRICE DISCOVERY.

Our President, with great fanfare, has rolled out his TrumpRX website, promising people who pay cash for their prescriptions "Find the world's lowest prices on prescription drugs."

Well, not necessarily.

It's not clear how much of an impact TrumpRx will have on the prices most Americans pay for prescription drugs.

Most people pay for their medication through insurance rather than out-of-pocket, so the discounts offered by TrumpRx may not change what they pay. The site notes: "If you have insurance, check your co-pay first—it may be even lower."

A CBS News radio report I heard on two different stations this morning was even more negative, something like "prices on the site are higher than most co-pays."  What that nitpickery does not address is whether the co-pay is the full cash outlay confronting a person who shows an insurance card, or whether his insurance company has negotiated a price where the insurance carrier is also co-paying something.

SENDING IN THE VARSITY.

Yesterday's compare-and-contrast post featuring protest culture in the government schools of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin noted an after-school event at Genoa-Kingston High School organized by the school's chapter of Turning Point U.S.A. that was a voluntary event too far for the professional protesters.  As we published yesterday, we did not know who the outside speakers were.  Later last night, the fourth estate saw fit to let us know.  "Erika Kirk, Linda McMahon speak at Genoa-Kingston High School ‘History Rocks!’ event."  That's right, the current chief executive officer of Turning Point and the Secretary of Education whose mission is to roll back that department.

“I was able to lead a portion of the presentation and introduce Mrs. Erika Kirk onto the stage,” said Oliver Piotrowski, Genoa-Kingston High School Club America Chapter President. “The overall vibe was very patriotic. People were cheering. People were very happy to be there. They were happy to have the opportunity to see Erika Kirk and Secretary McMahon.”

Around 2 p.m. Thursday, a group of protesters gathered near the high school. Some demonstrators held signs protesting against Trump administration policies, while others showed up to voice their opinion over the decision to hold the event at the school.

That's right, one paragraph describing what happened at the event, and the balance of that story devoted to the same protest-centric coverage we noted yesterday.  The print coverage in DeKalb's Daily Chronicle also mostly rehashed the protesters' positions.  "Turning Point USA, history event draws protests in Genoa."  There was reporting from inside the event, students posting their videos on social media.  And people wonder why Washington's Post downsized itself and the other traditional newspapers are as if skin suits.  Outside the event, the cold civil war continued.

Numerous cars passing by on Route 72 honked in apparent approval of the protesters.

The driver of a car with two American flags flying in the back and “Trump” written on a side window passed by the protesters multiple times while revving the engine.

The education secretary came to Genoa from another school event, at Chicago's Hope Academy, which Chicago's Tribune describes as a "private Christian school."  That event was also part of the "History Rocks!" tour, which is your tax dollars at work with a little help from non-governmental organizations of a traditional patriotic persuasion.

CONTEMPLATING THOSE THREE MAPS.

I concluded my "Tale of Three Maps" with a call for additional research.

Internal migration, and shifting voting patterns, might not be the "red state boom and blue state depression" Red State's Nick Arama hails, let alone the flight from bad governance Town Hall's Guy Benson cheers.  "These shifts are a direct result of bad governance in blue states and cities. Right/leaners and normies aren’t melting down and forming militia style mobs to harass and stalk leftist leaders. They’re just leaving."

There's definitely room for additional research, perhaps conducted, if that is still possible, in a dispassionate way.  Note, for instance, how Mississippi rates among the least free and not losing seats, while Tennessee rates among the most free and not gaining seats.  What is a parsimonious set of explanatory variables to capture internal migration?

None of which stops City Journal's Steven Malanga, in "Blue States’ Demographic Nightmare," from thinking, yet again, of a permanent electoral realignment.  I'm old enough to have seen that sort of triumphalism, from court intellectuals of all political persuasion, come a cropper as complex adaptive systems do what they darn well please.

IS THE CHILDREN LEARING?

Instead of Senior Skip-Out day, high schoolers of all grade levels organize, with the concurrence of their teachers, protests against immigration enforcement.

The protests began before the first protester had a fatal encounter with law enforcement in Minneapolis.

Protests against the Trump Administration's immigration enforcement tactics were held across the country [January 20] — with dozens of those protests happening in Southeastern Wisconsin.

The demonstrations were organized by The Women's March in what they called the "Free America Walkout," encouraging the public to walk out of school or work in protest of ICE.

In Milwaukee, hundreds of Rufus King High School students walked out of class [January 20] morning and could be seen walking through the Rufus King neighborhood.

"It's really important for all these students to be out here because ICE's policies are not only affecting politics, they're students like us, students around the nation, and it's causing a lot of fear, which becomes an issue in our communities because everybody deserves to be safe and feel safe in their own communities." Kali Maafree, a Rufus King student, said.

Rufus King is notionally a magnet school, although its academic performance is on a par with many urban schools.  There might be forces at work other than active immigration patrols making people feel less than safe in their own communities.  "That's not an urban design problem, that's what happens when you celebrate transgressivity and call bad behavior authenticity.  The same community members who would like to stop the bad driving are also now at work to reduce the gang gunplay.  There is still hope for a hurting world."  You only have to walk two blocks south or three blocks west of the King campus to find the bad driving.

CAPTURED BY RENT-SEEKERS.

In the fall of 2017, I took advantage of the off-season hotel rates to explore the rapid transit projects of the Cities.  Those included the Northstar commuter line, running between the baseball stadium in Minneapolis and a parking lot in Big Lake.  My impressions:  "Most laid-back commuter train I've ever seen. Train pulls into Minneapolis and probably half the passengers on the upper deck just sat there. I will confess to getting a bit antsy, even though I let the Chicago mob detrain before I leave my seat, that's usually a wait of two or three minutes."

The coaching stock was laid out in the German regional train fashion, with grouped seats facing tables, mostly used for electronic devices rather than a low-stakes card game.

And now the service has shut down.  "Doomed From the Start" according to Charles "Strong Towns" Marohn.

In 2001, a county commissioner named Peter McLaughlin came to my graduate transportation class to pitch a project called Northstar Commuter Rail. He was one of the central political figures behind the effort, and his presentation reflected that. He talked about coalition-building, federal funding formulas, and the work required to align the two. What he didn’t talk much about was how the system would function as transit.

At the time, commuter rail sounded exciting. I went into the class curious. I left unsettled.

During the lecture, I asked some basic questions about viability. Why would the line stop in Elk River instead of continuing to St. Cloud, the major regional center north of Minneapolis? McLaughlin’s answer had nothing to do with ridership, service, or making the system work. It had everything to do with where the politics and the funding allowed the project to go.

This was long before Strong Towns. I didn’t yet have the framework to name what bothered me. I just knew that if the goal of the presentation was to convince me this was a good transportation project, it had the opposite effect.

Northstar opened in 2009. Today, it’s widely regarded as a failure. Ridership never materialized as promised, service was steadily scaled back, and last month the state shut the line down, once its obligation to repay the federal government for the grant funding expired.

Mr Marohn was asking the right questions.  There have been many Strong Towns posts dealing with highway improvements over the years, and the ones that go bad, and there are many, tend to be the ones where there's funding available for a specific sort of improvement, such as an overpass or a diverging diamond interchange or a cluster of rotaries and getting the money is more important than, oh, keeping pedestrians and bikers safe and reducing the severity of motor vehicle collisions.

MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING AND AMWAY AT YALE?

Campus Reform associate editor Alessia Degraeve files "Yale College Republicans President explains how rampant grade inflation is an institutional strategy."

Manu Anpalagan, the Yale undergraduate who spearheaded a revival of the Yale College Republicans chapter, argues that grade inflation at Yale University is not an accident, but a conscious institutional strategy.

Grade inflation at Yale is often described as a cultural drift or a lingering side effect of the COVID-19 era policies. But Anpalagan argues those disparities persist because they serve the university’s institutional incentives.

“I believe this rampant grade inflation and decline in coursework rigor is a calculated decision by university officials,” Anpalagan told Campus Reform. “Administrators know that highly motivated students will seek to continue their education by going to law school, medical school, and other graduate programs.”

Within graduate school admissions, even marginal GPA differences can determine outcomes. Inflated grades make Yale students more competitive on paper—and, in turn, make Yale itself look more successful.

“Every additional tenth or even hundredth of a point in your GPA can really help,” Anpalagan said. “So if the university makes it easier for students to get better grades, and that in turn helps their chances of getting into graduate school, it ultimately reflects well on the undergraduate institution as well.”

Higher graduate school placement rates feed directly into the metrics universities use to advertise success: alumni outcomes, post-graduation salaries, and national rankings. In that environment, Anpalagan argues, grade inflation functions as a reputational tool rather than an educational one.

What effect those higher departmental rankings in Yale's evergreen disciplines has on the life prospects of Yale graduates who go on to advanced work in those evergreen disciplines might be another matter.  The Campus Reform article focuses on the distorted signals that accompany inflated grades.

We were calling attention to the likely diminished life prospects of those honors graduates nine years ago.

"Like many colleges and universities, Yale relies on graduate students and other low-paid contingent faculty members, like adjunct professors, to teach much of its coursework."  Yes, and Professor Klein's essay reveals another dynamic at work, higher education as multi-level marketing with more earnest pitchmen.

We've also noted the likely diminution of creativity as students do what gets them the good grades and continued funding, rather than beavering away at the frontiers of knowledge to identify anomalies: and there is no shortage of anomalies, let alone of interesting questions.

Yes, and the graduate students so trained on the taxpayer dime learn the arts of grantsmanship, and, should they be fortunate enough to land a tenure-line job, they can then write grants and recruit and develop the next generation of Amway representatives researchers.  Whether the work so funded is better than the work professors develop on their own initiative remains to be seen.

That "fortunate enough to land a tenure-line job," dear reader, is not throw-away carping by an admittedly jaded onetime academician.

Perhaps when Amway comes to Yale, that will concentrate minds.

Reality dawns on Rebecca Gordon.  "Is Higher Education a Pyramid Scheme?"

Yes, yes, it is, and we told you so a long time ago.  (So long ago, in fact, that the links have expired at that old post.)  It wasn't just a pyramid scheme at the lower levels of the academic food chain, even then.

How are those Yale graduates doing with their academic placements, whether they continued at an Ivy or accepted financial aid from solid departments that might not "look as successful" in sending their baccalaureate graduates on to graduate or professional schools?

CANDLEMAS AT ST. OLAF.

Public television set aside part of Christmas Eve to acknowledge that Christmas Eve refers to a religious event, and their programming frequently includes elements of the St. Olaf College Christmas Festival.  Think future Lutheran Church Ladies working on their handbell technique, and I think the programmers work the Anglican Lessons and Carols (those stand out in my memory as the segment local public television most regularly carries) in with the Norseman Band and Viking Chorus.

The St. Olaf Candlemas service, however, took place at Notre Dame University.  South Bend are in the lake effect snow belt downwind of Lake Michigan, and January has been productive enough of lake effect snow that some civil engineering students, inspired by a classmate's igloo, built a chapel out of snow blocks.  Their efforts motivated resident campus priests to offer a Candlemas service, with Mass.

They didn’t only have a Candlemas Mass, the Catholic Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, marking 40 days after Christmas, when Mary presented Jesus in the Temple. They also sang hymns at the snowy structure, dubbed “St. Olaf’s Chapel," as well as the university’s alma mater, "Notre Dame, Our Mother."

University publicists were on hand to share the news.

Love thee, Notre Dame 🎶

Last night, more than 1,600 Notre Dame students braved 19° temps for Mass at St. Olaf’s Chapel, built by Coyle Hall residents from the 38 inches of January snow. pic.twitter.com/TpYiTblTR2

— University of Notre Dame (@NotreDame) February 3, 2026

Candlemas, forty days after Christmas, is the end of the Nativity season.  There are some people who leave their Festive Season decorations up until Candlemas (that's taking long chances with natural greenery inside) rather than removing them after Three Kings.

There's some pretty good snow sculpting talent at Notre Dame, judging by the photos in Bob Hoge's article.

A TALE OF THREE MAPS.

Michael Li of the Brennan Center looks at what might be serious shifts in the balance of power in Congress as well as the electoral vote should current population changes accurately anticipate the 2030 Census.  The Brennan Center report offers an interactive map.  I did a screen capture.

Those estimates have the fretful psephologists, such as Politico's Andrew Howard, fretting.

Democrats could face a gloomy Electoral College atmosphere next decade, according to new population estimates released Tuesday that show red-leaning states like Texas and Florida making major gains and California as a big loser.

By combining the census bureau’s new state population estimates for 2025 with previous years’ data, experts quickly projected the number of House seats — and Electoral College votes — states will gain or lose after the 2030 Census in the process known as reapportionment. And while those projections differ slightly, they all had bad news for Democrats: GOP-leaning states will gain electoral power and Democratic-leaning states will lose it if the trends continue.

Such maps presume no change in the size of the House of Representatives and no change to state allocations of electoral votes.  Such tweaks are less important than the change in regional balances of power.