Jul
11
2007

URLs du Jour

2007-07-11

  • Inside Higher Ed reports on a big change in admission algorithms at Tufts:

    During the last year, Tufts University started a pilot project that represents one of the most significant shifts in undergraduate admissions policies for a competitive research university. The experiment involves additional essays used to identify applicants who are creative, who possess practical skills, or who have wisdom about how to promote the common good — characteristics Tufts says are consistent with its vision of higher education, but which may not be reflected in SAT scores or high school grade point averages.

    Good news for all you stupid creative high school seniors, especially those slackers with practical skills and wisdom! But it doesn't hurt to point out that Tufts' embrace of creativity only goes so far. Should you actually use that creativity in a way that some people find offensive …

    The president of Tufts University, Lawrence Bacow, looked the other way when a student-faculty committee put a conservative Tufts publication on trial for publishing two parodies. One was a mock Christmas carol making fun of racial preferences in college admissions, the other a satire on Islamic Awareness week.

    The publication, The Primary Source, was convicted of harassment for what would pass as free speech on most other campuses. The committee ordered the publication not to run any unsigned articles in the future, a rule not applied to other campus publications. The committee also hinted that funding would be cut if other controversial articles were published.

    If you're a student looking for a college, and you're really creative, you'd best try to creatively come up with a list that doesn't include Tufts.

  • This is sad news:

    A new psychology study at Washington University was no laughing matter: It found that older adults may have a harder time getting jokes because of an age-related decline in certain memory and reasoning abilities.

    On the other hand: a freelance humor researcher at the University of New Hampshire reports that if you find yourself sitting through an entire half-hour of Scrubs without cracking a smile, it's not that you're getting old; the show actually stopped being funny a number of years ago.

  • I recently visited Fuller Gardens in North Hampton, NH with my family. Janice Brown has the facts beyond the flowers and fish. (Shameless self-promotion: she links back to my picture—aieee!)

    Janice's Cow Hampshire blog has been named "Best of New Hampshire 2007", a richly deserved honor. Go look around.

  • The other "Best of New Hampshire 2007" blog is Amy Kane's Atlantic Avenue, a reliable source of sanity and beauty; here she reports and comments on the recent finding that, despite the widespread myth otherwise, men talk just as much as women. But, as she points out:

    I will generalize and say: I think women speak more words that men do not listen to.

    That's a good point … wait, what?!


Last Modified 2012-10-19 5:49 AM EDT