Stephen Colbert is a very funny guy. In his deadpan style, he cracks some good jokes about the conviction of Trump on 34 counts. Trump’s blaming the outcome on Joe Biden, but the decision to convict him was made by a dozen jurors, a jury of his peers. All the jurors were approved by Trump’s legal team.
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Alexandria Petri is a humorist for The Washington Post. This article is one of her best!
Good afternoon, fellow Americans, from the interior of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain. I am a parasitic worm. You might be wondering how I got here, or perhaps not! Most people who learned that a piece of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain was missing because a worm ate it responded with what I would characterize as “disappointment but not exactly surprise.”
Maybe you heard about me from the New York Times. Or possibly you got the news directly from the Kennedy campaign announcing that the worm that ate part of the candidate’s brain and then died in there would not affect his ability to serve as president. You know what they say: no such thing as bad publicity! Indeed, RFK Jr. has gone so far as to offer to eat five more brain worms. This is not the first time one of his statements have given me pause.
When I first arrived here, I was so excited to discover all the knowledge that the human brain must hold. But when I looked around, all I saw were conspiracy theories and mercury poisoning. Candidly, if you had said, “What do you recommended the holder of this brain do next?” I would not have said, “Run for president.” I would have said, “Get somebody else to do that. This person should go sit down.”
That is why, today, I have an announcement to make. I am eliminating the middle man and running for president myself. Yes, I am the worm that ate part of RFK Jr.’s brain, and I’m asking for your vote. I am the only candidate brave enough to say: I am a parasitic worm, and I don’t understand what is best for the country.
To those who ask, “Why should I vote for you? You are a worm somewhere around one-third of an inch in length with a knob-like attachment at one end called a scolex that sometimes is mistakenly referred to as its head!” I say: That is more medical transparency than you are going to get from any of the other candidates! I bet they have not even disclosed whether they have body cavities. (I don’t! I’m an acoelomate!)
To those who reply, “We don’t actually know that! That’s just what the symptoms are consistent with! We haven’t done a complete examination of the exact type of worm that died in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain after eating part of it,” I say: That is fair, and I am worm enough to grant it to you. Thank you, and I hope to receive your vote in November. Please just write in “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s WORM, NOT THE MAN, THE WORM” on your ballot. As long as you are throwing away your vote, throw it away on a worm. That’s also my slogan.
There are many issues on which people are basing their votes in this election. Bodily autonomy. Keeping our democracy a democracy. Do you want to know my stance on the issues? I will tell you: I have no stance! I am a worm who died no later than 2012. I do not possess higher brain functions, although I have attended several, at which I feasted.
And that is exactly the sort of plenty I promise you will enjoy under rule by worm. Just look at life under Leto II, God Emperor of Dune! Jabba the Hutt (an honorary worm) ran Tatooine with very few problems for a very long time until the intervention of a rude woman in a metal bikini.
If there are worms in the brains of the other candidates, I hope they will join me in issuing statements of their own. Perhaps a simple statement covering whether they exist and whether they consider what they may or may not have eaten to be mission critical.
RFK Jr. has justified his candidacy by saying that people are overwhelmingly frustrated with the options presented to them and need a third choice. Well, I see that third choice and raise you a fourth choice: a candidate you can trust not to have any brain worms because that candidate is a brain worm. I am also not currently under indictment for any reason.
So, good people of these United States, I exhort you: Ask not what this parasite can do for you. Ask what you can do for your parasite!
Gary Smith, the Fletcher Jones professor of economics at Pomona College in California, has solved the financial problems of higher education with a Swiftian “modest proposal.” Read it.
Two imminent threats to higher education are bloated bureaucracies and clever chatbots. Herewith, I humbly propose a straightforward way to solve both problems.
I will use Pomona College, where I have taught for decades, as a specific example of how easily my proposal might be implemented. In 1990, Pomona had 1,487 students, 180 tenured and tenure-track professors, and 56 administrators — deans, associate deans, assistant deans and the like, not counting clerical staff, cleaners and so on. As of 2022, the most recent year for which I have data, the number of students had increased 17 percent, to 1,740, while the number of professors had fallen to 175. The number of administrators had increased to 310, an average of 7.93 new administrators per year. Even for a college as rich as Pomona, this insatiable demand for administrators will eventually cause a budget squeeze. Happily, there is a simple solution.
Pomona’s professor-administrator ratio has plummeted from 3.21 to 0.56. A linear extrapolation of this trend gives a professor-administrator ratio of zero within this decade. This trend can be accelerated by not replacing retiring or departing professors and by offering generous incentives for voluntary departures. To maintain its current 9.94 student-faculty ratio, the college need only admit fewer students each year as the size of its faculty withers away. A notable side effect would be a boost in Pomona’s U.S. News & World Report rankings as its admissions rate approaches zero.
And just like that, the college would be rid of two nuisances at once. Administrators could do what administrators do — hold meetings, codify rules, debate policy, give and attend workshops, and organize social events — without having to deal with whiny students and grumpy professors.
The college could continue to be called a college, since the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “college” as “an institution offering instruction usually in a professional, vocational, or technical field.” There would just be a shift in focus from young students looking to delay entering the job market to administrators looking to build their résumés as they move up the administrator ladder.
Colleges do not need traditional students or professors. In fact, these are generally a drain on resources in that student revenue does not cover faculty salaries. The elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.
In general, administrators are paid for by a college or university’s endowment. As of December, Pomona’s endowment was $2.8 billion. The annual payout from its endowment is set at between 4.5 and 5.5 percent of the average value of the endowment over the preceding five years. A 5 percent payout would provide each of 310 administrators an annual allotment of $450,000, which would easily provide generous compensation, a wide variety of benefits, and frequent travel to conferences and workshops worldwide.
There would continue to be some expenses for clerical staff, cleaners and so on, but renting out the now-empty dormitory apartments and selling the now-empty classrooms to private businesses and government agencies would almost certainly not only cover these expenses but also add to the endowment and allow the hiring of additional administrators.
The college might slightly modify its mission statement, which currently begins: “Throughout its history, Pomona College has educated students of exceptional promise.” An updated mission statement might begin: “Pomona College is dedicated to sustaining and advancing the careers of administrators of exceptional promise.”
Obviously, each institution of higher learning would use its own endowment, properties and other assets to determine the equilibrium number of administrators that could be supported.
If all colleges and universities follow my suggestion, there will be a small problem in that college students will no longer have colleges to go to. This is easily resolved by tapping the second existential threat to higher education — ChatGPT and other chatbots. All higher-education courses could be done online via bots with no need for expensive classrooms, dorm rooms and other physical facilities.
Instead of paying college costs currently approaching $100,000 a year, students could earn their degrees conveniently and inexpensively from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover, they would be given access to bots that they can use to take tests and write any essays required by the instructor bots. The students’ test answers would no doubt be perfect, and their essays would be persuasive and error-free, which would allow all students to be given A grades without having to disrupt their lives by attending classes, listening to lectures or reading. Win-win.
College and universities would be places for administrators to advance their careers. Education would be student bots interacting with instructor bots.
Everything will be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
This is what may be the finest example of chutzpah thus far in the year 2024.
The story was written by my favorite education journalists in Florida, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin. They specialize in exposing scams.
A state legislator sought permission to make her home tax-exempt, claiming it was part of Central Christian University, whose campus is elsewhere. The “university” has 15 students. Until last year, Rep. Amesty was the university’s vice-president; her father, who lives in the home, is the president. Her request was denied.
The Orlando Sentinel reported:
The small university run by Rep. Carolina Amesty’s family lost its bid Monday to make the $1.6 million home where she lived during her first campaign exempt from property taxes.
The school had sought an educational exemption on the five-bedroom pool home near Windermere where Amesty, an Orlando-area Republican, lived with her parents until last year.
Central Christian University filed for the exemption in 2023 while it was delinquent on its prior year’s taxes. At the time, Amesty was the university’s vice president.
A special magistrate ruled in November that Central Christian had not shown the home in an upscale golf course development was anything but a private family residence for Amesty’s parents and recommended Orange County deny the sought-after tax exemption…
Amesty, who is running for reelection this year, has been the subject of two Orlando Sentinel investigations, the first involving the unpaid taxes on the home and unpaid utility bills on a shuttered restaurant she owns.
The second story, published last month, showed five men who said they’d never worked for her family’s small, unaccredited university were listed as faculty members in catalogs the school submitted to the Florida Department of Education. Amesty also notarized an employment form indicating that a veteran educator worked there, but the man said he never signed the form.
During her first campaign for the Florida House, Amesty frequently touted her role at Central Christian, although she is no longer an employee there, her attorney told the Sentinel earlier this year.
At the November hearing before the magistrate, Amesty and other Central Christian officials argued that the house should be exempt because Amesty’s father resides there and uses it for some university business.
They compared the home to the presidents’ houses at Rollins College and the University of Miami.
But the magistrate said there was no evidence Central Christian, which last summer told the state it had 15 students, used the 5,400-square-foot home for university activities…
The testimony at the hearing, the magistrate wrote, “did not support that the Property was regularly or frequently made available to students or faculty for classes, meetings or workshops, or that students or faculty regularly visited or made use of the Property.”
Central Christian late last year paid its delinquent 2022 property taxes, which totaled more than $18,000, according to the Orange County Property Appraiser’s website.
The school also paid its 2023 tax bill, which was about $25,000, the website shows.
Julian Vasquez Heilig, Provost of Eastern Michigan University, writes a blog called Cloaking Inequity. Today he proposed a new concept for a charter school that takes advantage of Michigan’s lakes to explore its environmental challenges.
He writes:
In the heart of Michigan, nestled within the vast, freshwater seas that are the Great Lakes, I’m excited that my revolutionary idea for a new charter school is taking shape. Aquatica: The Great Lakes Underwater School, is a new charter school set to launch in the fall of 2024. The school is not just a new chapter in my life and an educational innovation; it’s a bold reimagination of what a deeper learning environment can be. By submerging students in the literal depths of Lake Michigan, Aquatica aims to foster a profound connection with the natural world, leveraging the immersive power of water to enhance learning and cultivate a generation of environmental stewards.
The Vision Behind Aquatica
The vision for Aquatica was born from my desire to transcend traditional classroom boundaries, creating a space where education and the environment intersect in the most direct manner possible. In a world where ecological concerns are increasingly pressing, Aquatica stands as a beacon of innovative thought, merging the necessity of environmental education with the transformative potential of experiential learning. The school’s location in the Great Lakes near South Haven, a critical freshwater resource, underscores the urgency of its mission: to educate students not just about the world, but on how to care for it.
A Curriculum That Goes Beneath the Surface
Aquatica’s curriculum will be crafted to take full advantage of its unique underwater setting. The school will offer a holistic STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) curriculum, enriched with a strong emphasis on environmental science and sustainability. This multidisciplinary approach ensures students receive a well-rounded education, while the unique context of learning under water provides unparalleled opportunities for deep, really deep, experiential learning.
Aquatic Sciences classes: Students have the unparalleled opportunity to study aquatic life and ecosystems up close, turning Lake Michigan into a living classroom where lessons in biology, chemistry, and environmental science come alive.
Sustainable Engineering classes: Tasked with designing solutions to real-world challenges, students apply the principles of engineering within the context of sustainability, learning the importance of creating systems that protect and preserve natural resources.
Underwater Robotics classes: By integrating technology and environmental exploration, this class empowers students to engage with the underwater world in innovative ways, fostering skills in robotics, coding, and environmental conservation.
Technological Integration for Deeper Learning
Technology plays a pivotal role in bringing my vision of Aquatica to life. Advanced technological tools, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), will allow students to interact with their surroundings in ways previously unimaginable. AR applications will enable learners to identify species, understand ecosystems, and conduct virtual experiments, all without leaving the underwater classroom. VR, on the other hand, will transport students to distant environments, from coral reefs across the world to the polar ice caps, expanding their understanding of global environmental issues.
Environmental Stewardship at Aquatica’s Core
At its core, Aquatica is more than just an educational institution; it’s a statement about the importance of environmental stewardship. The charter school’s design and operation are models of sustainability, utilizing renewable energy sources and minimizing its ecological footprint. More importantly, the curriculum will be designed to instill a sense of responsibility towards the environment, encouraging students to think critically about their impact on the world and empowering them to take action towards its preservation.
To learn more, open the link.
The National Education Policy Center used to publish clever jokes or parodies on April 1 every year. But this year is different. Reality is so bizarre that NEPC challenges readers to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Try it.
This April 1st, we want to begin with an acknowledgement that April Fools’ Day stories have become redundant, even obsolete. Some of our past stories which were meant to be so absurd that they couldn’t be reasonably believed turned out to be prophetic. In 2021, for instance, our April Fools’ story told readers of a “turducken voucher” bill in Florida:
A traditional roast turducken is a chicken stuffed in a duck and then stuffed in a turkey. For Florida’s legislative chefs, the chicken is a traditional voucher, the duck is a neovoucher (which is funded through tax-credited donations), and the turkey is an education-saving-account (ESA) voucher. The legislators then pushed previous limits by squeezing their whole bundle of Turducken fowl goodness into a wild goose: a charter school.
Just a few years later, we see versions of this turducken hitting dinner tables in states throughout the nation. Oklahoma has authorized a charter school that looks a lot like a voucher scheme, with the charter run by a church providing religious instruction and proselytizing, and even allowed to practice faith-based discrimination against members of the LGBTQ+ community (currently being challenged in court). Missouri is among the states that have adopted a voucher program stuffed with a neovoucher funding mechanism for an ESA program. And of course Florida’s always-creative legislators continue to push the voucher envelope, although ironically by consolidating programs as they’ve expanded (so at least we got that part wrong).
Faced with reality’s stubborn impudence, we offer this year’s April 1st newsletter as a challenge to our readers to distinguish counterfeit parodies from actual news stories from the past year (answers are provided below). We’ll take you to three states: Missouri, Texas, and (of course) Florida.
Missouri
Option #1: A bill introduced in January in Missouri would require an annual human growth and development unit, beginning in the third grade, that includes a high-definition video, which must be at least three minutes long, of fetal development. Schools must also show these students a specific video called “Meet Baby Olivia,” showing an animated fetus that develops over the course of (another) three minutes. Olivia is a “new human being” who came “into existence at fertilization.” The video helps its audience develop an affinity and attachment to Olivia, who is shown wearing a cross necklace as a fetus, by telling her in-utero story.
Option #2: A bill introduced a month ago in Missouri would jail teachers for using trans students’ preferred pronouns. Any person acting in an official capacity in a school, who uses trans students’ chosen names or pronouns, would be considered to be “contributing to social transition” and subject to a maximum of four years in prison. That educator would then have to register as a sex offender.
Texas
Option #1: A new law in Texas allows school districts to replace school counselors with unlicensed chaplains. These religious chaplains could, according to the law’s supporters, help prevent shootings by returning God to schools. The chaplains can volunteer, or schools can choose to use funding that would otherwise go to school safety to pay the chaplains for work in mental health roles. Legislators rejected an amendment to the bill that would have barred proselytizing or attempts to convert students.
Option #2: Mike Miles, the state-appointed superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, announced that he would be “repurposing” the libraries of “priority” schools into “team centers,” where misbehaving students would watch “virtual” lessons and would earn $3/hr helping to make license plates for the state. The money earned by the students would be split 50-50 with the local school districts to help compensate for their behavior.
Florida
Option #1: Most readers also already know that this has been an interesting year for Moms for Liberty in Florida. In particular, co-founder Bridget Ziegler went from promoting Don’t Say Gay legislation to having a three-way sexual encounter with a woman plus Ziegler’s husband, who was then Florida’s GOP chairman. But how many remember that the Hillsborough County school district switched to using only excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays to avoid “raunchiness” that they feared would violate one of Florida’s state-of-the-art censorship laws? Or the complaints by a Moms-follower against Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb (which was recited by Gorman at the 2021 Biden inauguration), which resulted in a Miami K-8 school restricting the poem to the middle-school section of the library?
Option #2: Most readers will remember last year’s (true) news story about the governing board of a “classical” charter school in Florida asking the principal to resign after horrified parents learned that a photo of Michelangelo’s statue David was included in a lesson on Renaissance art. Readers might also remember the state’s adoption of middle-school history guidelines that included the job-training benefits of slavery (teaching that Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills). But readers may have missed the story from a couple months ago of the chair of a Moms for Liberty chapter who complained, citing the state’s new Don’t Say Gay law, that an elementary school library in Indian River County, Florida possessed illustrated children’s books showing nudity in drawings. For instance, Maurice Sendak’s book In The Night Kitchen included drawings she called “pornographic.” The Moms for Liberty chair agreed to a compromise, whereby the district drew clothing over the naughty bits in the offending illustrations. For instance, here is a before-and-after from the Sendak book:
This is a video listing some of Trump’s biggest business failures.
What’s especially amusing about the video is the archival footage of Trump, boasting about the success of a venture he just launched and praising himself for his latest venture. It’s the best, the most, the greatest. Then it goes bust. As you watch, you realize that his greatest talent is as a pitchman, the guy who gets you to buy or invest in his latest moneymaking scheme. He is the guy selling snake oil to cure everything that ails you. They did not include “Trump University,” surely a major fraud and a financial disaster. Trump claimed that those who enrolled in his online “university” would learn how to get rich, learning his secrets. He hoodwinked widows and vets. Trump was ordered to repay $25 million to people who registered for his fake university.
Two Brits have a website called Josh & Archie. Being audacious pranksters, they hatched a scheme to trick Tucker Carlson. One sent Carlson’s office an email claiming that he was the employee of the Royal family who doctored the photo of Kate Middleton and her three children. He said he was fired.
He soon heard from the booker for the Tucker Carlson show, who asked for the original photo and proof that he worked for the Royal family.
Josh and Archie created a document proving that he worked for the Royals. It had a fake Latin motto that happened to be the motto of a supermarket chain. And his employment contract included a clause saying that if his work was unsatisfactory, he agreed that one of his limbs would be amputated.
Apparently no one scrutinized his evidence with care, and he scored an interview with Tucker Carlson. Carlson was delighted with the interview.
But before it aired, Josh and Archie went public. They said they didn’t want to cause any further trouble for the Royals.
When I learned about this list of honorees, I thought it was a joke. It’s not.
An award named for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, an icon of liberalism and feminism, will be presented to a surprising list of men and women by the Opperman Foundation at the Library of Congress.
A prestigious honor named after liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and originally established to recognize “women of distinction” is being awarded this year to a surprising group of multiple genders that includes Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and Martha Stewart, among others.
The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award, also known as the RBG Award, will be presented by the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation at an April 13 gala at the Library of Congress, ITK can reveal.
In addition to conservative media mogul Murdoch, Tesla CEO and X owner Musk, and lifestyle guru Stewart, the award will be given to actor Sylvester Stallone and financier Michael Milken.
First established in 2020 as a recognition solely for women, previous recipients of the RBG Award have included Queen Elizabeth II, singer Barbra Streisand and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.
But this year, organizers expanded the award named after the liberal leader of the Supreme Court to include “trailblazing men and women” who “have demonstrated extraordinary accomplishments in their chosen fields.”
Dwight D. Opperman Foundation chair Julie Opperman said in a statement that Ginsburg “fought not only for women but for everyone.”
The Supreme Court justice, a champion of women’s rights, died in 2020 at 87.
“Going forward, to embrace the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy, we honor both women and men who have changed the world by doing what they do best,” Opperman said.
Who are Murdoch and Musk “fighting for”?
The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, create videos intended to get into Trump’s head. This is one of their best.
Diane Ravitch's blog 