First Day of Semester Link Dump

Science Daily brings you a list of the "Happiest States"...Take a look at where your state ranks, and then compare red and blue states. It's quite interesting. Top 5 in happiness: 1) Louisiana, 2) Hawai'i, 3) Florida, 4) Tennessee, 5) Arizona. Bottom 6: 46) California 47) Indiana, 48) Michigan, 49) New Jersey, 50) Connecticut, 51) New York.

Two articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education that I thought were interesting.
They first disillusion anyone thinking about making a career as a college professor/looking at grad school, saying, "If you cannot find a tenure-track position, your university will no longer court you; it will pretend you do not exist and will act as if your unemployability is entirely your fault. It will make you feel ashamed, and you will probably just disappear, convinced it's right rather than that the game was rigged from the beginning." Thanks.

Also, William Deresiewicz talks about how technology might be bringing us "The End of Solitude:"

• "The great contemporary terror is anonymity."
• "Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection. Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely. Now, it is impossible to be alone...[But] What does friendship mean when you have 532 "friends"?"
• "If boredom is the great emotion of the TV generation, loneliness is the great emotion of the Web generation."
  

In a similar vein, Lane Wallace asks the question: "More confidants, less confidences?" "You can go deep, or broad, but generally not both. Quality begins to degrade if increasing quantity is demanded in the same time frame. If you have 10 priorities, you really have none. The same goes for intimacy. Just ask anyone who's tried to balance multiple intimate relationships at the same time."