ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Trump is not immune from prosecution for bid to subvert the 2020 election, appeals court rules (KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN, 02/06/2024, Politico)

The unanimous 57-page decision from a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is a major win for special counsel Jack Smith, who is seeking to put Trump on trial this year on federal felony charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

IT’S NH, JAKE:

A Top College Reinstates the SAT (David Leonhardt, Feb. 5, 2024, NY Times)

Three Dartmouth economists and a sociologist then dug into the numbers. One of their main findings did not surprise them: Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth. […]

As the four professors — Elizabeth Cascio, Bruce Sacerdote, Doug Staiger and Michele Tine — wrote in a memo, referring to the SAT’s 1,600-point scale, “There are hundreds of less-advantaged applicants with scores in the 1,400 range who should be submitting scores to identify themselves to admissions, but do not under test-optional policies.” Some of these applicants were rejected because the admissions office could not be confident about their academic qualifications. The students would have probably been accepted had they submitted their test scores, Lee Coffin, Dartmouth’s dean of admissions, told me.

That finding, as much as any other, led to Dartmouth’s announcement this morning. “Our goal at Dartmouth is academic excellence in the service of training the broadest swath of future leaders,” Beilock told me. “I’m convinced by the data that this will help us do that.”

It’s worth acknowledging a crucial part of this story. Dartmouth admits disadvantaged students who have scores that are lower on average than those of privileged students. The college doesn’t apologize for that. Students from poor neighborhoods or troubled high schools have effectively been running with wind in their face. They are not competing fairly with affluent teenagers.

The conservative Ivy.

DO AS WE ELITES DO, NOT AS WE SAY:

The Two-Parent Privilege is Real: A review of Melissa Kearney’s important new book.
JUSTIN VASSALLO, 2/02/24, Liberal Patriot)

In her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, economist Melissa S. Kearney takes an unflinching look at how the fragmentation of the ordinary American family is, in fact, both an overlooked dimension and driver of modern inequality. “It is not only that lacking two parents makes it harder for some kids to go to college and lead a comfortable life,” Kearney contends. “In the aggregate, it also undermines social mobility and perpetuates inequality across generations.”

Backed with abundant data, Kearney argues the collapse of marriage as a social institution among lower-income families has compounded the demographic consequences of stagnant wages and the loss of steady employment in many sectors and regions. This phenomenon, she writes, is inextricable from the education gap, the geographic narrowing of economic opportunities, and policy decisions that have reinforced the advantages of the already well-off.

That which is accessible to all is, be definition, not a privilege.

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES:

J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Cosmic Music of the Beginnings: The Inklings expressed interest in ancient mythologies that described the creation of the world through music. (Robert Lazu Kmita, February 6, 2024, European Conservative)

However, the theological theory about music that is most similar to Tolkien’s vision presented in The Silmarillion (in “Ainulindalë,” “The Music of the Ainur”) is that of the extraordinary medieval saint and prophetess, St. Hildegard of Bingen (c. 1098-1179). As Barbara Newman has shown in her introduction to the critical edition of the musical work Symphonia armonie celestium revelatione (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations), Hildegard asserts that God is the creator of music, while “the ultimate unmusical spirit was the devil.”

In one of her letters, Hildegard claims that, before committing the Original Sin, Adam’s voice had exceptional musical qualities: “In his voice was the sweetness of every harmonic sound, and of the whole art of music.” Upon hearing the music sung by Adam, the devil, terrified and filled with envy, recalls the beauty of God’s celestial hymns that he had heard before the fall. What follows, we know from the biblical text. From Hildegard’s vision, we learn about music of divine origin and about the fallen angel, who, unable to bear it, wanted to replace the divine harmony with his own musical creation.

The music of the Inklings
The closest of friends, Tolkien and Lewis, showed in some of their literary writings a special preference for a kind of doctrine about the creation of the world that can be named the ‘musical cosmogony.’ This might be a fitting and proper name for those ancient mythologies, including some mentioned above, that describe the creation of the whole world through music.

Beauty is objective

THERE’S A REASON THEY’RE SO OBSESSED WITH MASCULINITY…:

Goofy ‘God’s Army’ convoy on Texas border shows Trump’s MAGA movement is just one long con (Rex Huppke, 2/05/24, USA TODAY)

In Texas, the MAGA movement again reveals its impotence
So God’s Army’s foot soldiers came, in underwhelming numbers, and accomplished little beyond showing everyone how tragically gullible they are and making the locals twitchy. That’s MAGA in a nutshell: loud, threatening and, in the end, impotent.

…they lack manhood.