Each year, I purchase a Moleskine day planner. While sometimes I use it for, you know, planning, mostly I write about things that have already happened. This catalog of events and their immediate impressions on me can make for interesting reading at the end of the year. Just what made that mid-March ski run from the summit "ludicrously good"? Nathanael of 9 months ago didn't say. The better reading is about the books, articles, and even the early thoughts for some of these essays: when I put a little effort into it, the journal is rewarding.
The journal has a fair amount of selection bias. There's not a lot in the routine weeks. Even at the time, five days of work, some reading in the evenings, and a weekend of shuttling kids around doesn't make that much of an impression. I also tend to exclude the frustrating wastes of time. Who journals about what went wrong? Sometimes I'll even write at the time for the sole future reader (also me) and put a veneer on my own thoughts, to make them seem better later. Thanks to my poor memory, I'm pretty easily fooled.
I use the journal to make my attempt at New Years resolutions seem a little more thoughtful and believable. It often works (books: read!). It more often helps me realize how silly my plans for the future are. Most of the project lists are about a fifth done by the end of the year. A surprising portion of the aspirations carry forward to the next year almost endlessly. (They're obviously undone.) Clearly something changes between my inking in of the plans for the year and the days of the year itself. Time seems to always prove me wrong.
Isn't that how it should be? We make plans; the gods laugh; we live with whatever our best actual attempt can be. As humans, we can listen to what reality tells us. Its feedback is priceless—it's better to change your mind than to try the opposite. We're mostly not powerful enough to bend reality; our minds can be far more supple.
For the reading this week, we have two pieces on the inverse: what it's like when you try to make reality something it's not. First, the story from Michigan of its $250 million (and counting) spend on DEI programs and personnel. The institution is attempting a massive change. It seems, according to the reporting, that they are in a rut of endlessly trying the same tactics to achieve different results. They wanted a more fair institution. They've gotten something far short of that. Second, we have a fascinating piece that follows on the theme of the replication crisis. Most studies in social science are difficult or impossible to replicate; many in the hard sciences are as well. We know far less than we thought. In the business world's "science," something akin to pop psychology but with more degrees, we find something even worse: the studies aren't even real. They're lies. Even the bold folks trying to shed some light on the lies have been found to be lying themselves. When you're trying to become or, worse, to stay a famous professor, it's easier to lie than to change your mind.
The final thing to read is a beautiful story about minds and nature being changed. The Los Angeles river was turned into a concrete trough and culvert decades ago. Floods haven't gotten any rarer; nature has. The people responsible for the river changed their minds: in bringing back a few sections of wetlands, they're finding nature returning. And, perhaps, a little more ability to withstand floods. It's amazing what can happen when you let what's true be your guide.
A decade and a quarter of a billion dollars later, students and faculty are more frustrated than ever.
The rot runs deeper than almost anyone has guessed.
Could the waterway that the city was built around make a comeback?