A Professor’s Letter to Small-Town Graduates
Going to college can be the single most expensive decision of your life, but it won’t be the most important. You might want to reconsider why you’re going to college. Next, reconsider where you’re going afterward. And why you’re going
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Good Discrimination: Why Feminists Should Oppose Gender Identity in Athletics
She went skittering across the floor. Or, maybe I’m over-remembering a traumatic event. But she did slam into the decades-old, brightly colored vinyl pad against the brick wall, and hard. And the coach did call off practice. Immediately. I was
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The Selfless Selfishness of Parenting
I’m a stay-at-home dad. I care deeply about family. My own, I mean. Yours? Not so much. Sorry. Just being honest. There is a constant refrain from some on the Left—particularly in feminist circles, but in progressive circles generally—that stresses
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Target vs. Walmart: How to Tell if You’re from a Small Town
“Are you a Walmart person, or a Target person?” Just by asking the question, you’re revealing something about yourself. In our consumer culture, where one chooses to shop is considered a personality trait. A case in point is the distinction
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A Rural Flavor of CoLA
As legislative bodies get rolling after the new year, we will hear a lot about cost of living and its impact on Americans, particularly “hardworking Americans.” Cost of living is not the sexiest political topic, but it is important because
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Home, Sheet Home
Not all home-field advantages are created equal. Some don’t even exist. Major-league baseball has a beloved quirk: no two ballparks are the same. Different ballparks have different sizes of outfields (e.g. the huge outfields in Detroit), different heights of outfield
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We versus They
I’m one of those people who can barely understand lyrics to popular music. To mix metaphors, it’s as though I’m listening in a fog. Or, I can’t see through the noise. But recently some lyrics caught my attention. “Ants Go
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Adjuncts Go Marching
In theory, higher education is in crisis. In practice, don’t be alarmed. Higher education may indeed be in crisis, and for a variety of reasons, but one reason that gets a lot of attention is the hiring of faculty. Specifically,
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The Rivals That Never Play
Professional and college football teams do not compete on the field, but they do compete at the state capitol. Just ask the taxpayers of Minnesota, who recently agreed to pay for two brand new football stadiums. The stadiums sit just
Read MorePoll Faulting
In “Poll Faulting: A Surprising Reason Why Preseason Polls Can Be Wrong,” I examined an unexpected reason for error in preseason polls. The article is data-driven, but casual fans can follow. It appeared on USCHO.com–please check it out here.
Read MoreOut of Realignment
In “Out of Realignment: Looking at Competitive Balance in College-Hockey Conferences,” I examined how the “new” conferences in college hockey stacked up in terms of past success, both recent and not-so-recent. It’s data-driven, but the casual fan can follow. The
Read MoreLeveling the Ice
In “Leveling the Ice: Looking at Parity in College Hockey’s National Tournament,” I analyzed the common perception (at least among fans of college hockey) that more and more teams are winning in the national tournament. It’s data-driven, but casual fans
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For Fun: Local Flavor
When I’m somewhere with television, I like to watch cooking shows, even if not for typical reasons. And I don’t mean the traditional cooking shows, where a lady stands behind a countertop with 300 ingredients and seventy-eight bowls, with three
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Roughing It, Kinda
There was frost on the toilet seat. Not icicles, but frost—a micro-layer of crystalline sheen, the kind you can scrape off with a fingernail, but not a finger. But taking the time to scrape the frost off a seat in
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Suzy Homefaker
When my son was born, my wife and I decided that one of us should stay home with him. Because she makes more money than I ever did, I went from climbing the professional ladder to playing Chutes and Ladders.
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The Rurality of Hunting: A Consequence of…Agriculture
You know the old joke: A man goes fishing, and his wife packs him a lunch. He comes back angry, saying that she forgot to pack the lunch. She says, “I packed it in your tackle box.” The caricature of
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The Hidden Diversity of Rural America
The caricature of America includes a bunch of diverse metro areas strewn across an ethnic void of rural areas. The metros are oases of “culture” in the white-sand desert of Middle America. They’re islands of ethnicity in a sea of
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A Cashless Society? Not Out Here.
She trudged in the wet gravel, down the long driveway, in her shiny red galoshes. The dull red wagon rolled behind her, pressing tracks through the mud, its load of orange pumpkins quivering. The little ones bounced. As she approached
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Within Reach: The Myth of Unaffordable Housing
Be careful, fair readers—the Internet is full of some pretty bizarre stuff. Some of that stuff comes from an outfit called the National Low Income Housing Coalition. It’s okay to view on your work computer, but it’s bizarre, nonetheless. The
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Why All the Stoplights?
The light wasn’t turning. At least I was pretty sure, as the blizzard had spat snow on the red, yellow, and green circles, so the red light was more of a pink glow. The pastel pink seemed less commanding than
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