The air conditioner is often hailed as one of the modern world’s greatest inventions—yet nearly as often blamed for global disaster. It has changed everything from architecture to people’s food habits; saved countless lives and caused countless deaths. First appearing in 1902, when Willis Carrier, an engineer barely out of college, developed the “Apparatus for Treating Air,” everyone assumed it would instantly change the world. But the story of air conditioning and its rise to ubiquity is far from simple. In Cool, Salvatore Basile tracks two fascinating stories: the struggle to perfect an effective cooling device, and the effort to convince people that they actually needed such a thing. With a cast of characters ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Richard Nixon and Felix the Cat, Cool showcases the myriad reactions to air conditioning as it was developed and introduced to the world. Here is a unique perspective on a common convenience: how we came to rely on it today, and how it might change radically tomorrow. 289 pages.
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April Third Sunday Zoom Meeting
April 21, 2024 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Megan Lewis, the Digital Hammurabi, will be speaking on "My god is better than your god: Divine propaganda in the ancient near east."
Megan says of her talk: "When they learn about similarities between the passages in Genesis, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, people often jump to “it’s plagiarism!”. What’s actually happening is closer to modern-day propaganda! This presentation will take a look at Genesis, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other Mesopotamian literature to explore the imaginative and creative ways in which ancient people used and reused stories - both their own, and those of their neighbours."
The misalignment between universities and the labor market is compounded by the failure of many schools to teach students to think critically. Many students arrive poorly prepared for college-level work, and the universities themselves are ill-equipped to provide intensive classroom instruction.
Professors compete for tenure on the basis of the quality of their research and publishing track record. Teaching is mostly an afterthought. Professors who earn tenure negotiate lighter teaching loads. To fill the gap, schools hire less expensive adjuncts with little job security. Non-tenure track professors now make up three-quarters of college faculty, up from a quarter in 1975.
These precariously employed adjuncts depend on strong student performance reviews for job security, a system that incentivizes them to make few demands in exchange for high ratings. Students spend about half as much time studying and attending class as their counterparts did in 1961, but they are three times more likely to earn an A—now the most common grade in colleges across the country.
A quarter of college graduates do not have basic skills in numeracy and one in five does not have basic skills in literacy, says Irwin Kirsch, who oversees large-scale assessments for ETS, the company that administers the SAT.
Quality control for college degrees falls to accreditors, but they approve programs at hundreds of schools that fail to produce financial value for graduates, and have kept many schools in business with a single-digit graduation rate. About one in 40 U.S. workers draws a paycheck from a college or university, and in recent decades the powerful higher-education lobby in Washington has quashed dozens of proposals to measure the sector’s successes and failures.
Meanwhile, through a combination of state budget cuts, administrative bloat and runaway spending on campus amenities, the real cost of a four-year college degree climbed 180% between 1980 and 2020. The high cost increased pressure on universities to treat students as consumers purchasing a credential, instead of scholars receiving an education.
What are your experiences with recent college graduates? Do you think any of this is real or just the usual griping?
Message from the President of Rationalists of East Tennessee
I wanted to follow up in our newsletter about our March 17th Zoom program. The program was led by Norm Barrett and was a presentation of three YouTube videos by young atheists who are becoming, for a younger demographic, like what Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens were for many of us in the early-to-mid 2000s.
There are two videos by Andrew "Drew" McCoy, better known as the "Genetically Modified Skeptic."
I wanted these links in our newsletter as a resource to you all, should you find occasion to refer younger persons, doubting religion, to these resources which are perhaps friendlier to their generation's tastes.
I realize that both of these resources are by white males. Perhaps some of the subscribers to our newsletter and members can suggest additional resources from more diverse sources.
