(Commentary by Catrin Waters, student and volunteer with the High Atlas Foundation) Before you read this, I challenge you to pause and ask your body the question: how do you like the thoughts I think about you? When we make an active choice to listen to ourselves, we access the power of introspection. But as you likely realized within the first sentence of this article, that often isn’t comfortable. It is almost taboo to honestly ask yourself how you are, and even rarer to have the skills needed to be able to listen to the response.
Republican likely voters are more enthusiastic about voting in this election than Democratic likely voters 61% to 55%. J. Miles Coleman, a political analyst at the UVA Center for Politics, said that’ll be telling. “They may just want it more,” said Coleman.
(Subscription may be required) Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the Crystal Ball, a UVA political analysis newsletter, said these races are now part of the national conversation as much as elections for Congress or governor. "Election administration in general has become a bigger topic because of Donald Trump's frankly irresponsible claims about the integrity of the election, but also Democrats and others defending themselves against those claims," he said.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, an election handicapper based at the University of Virginia, provided a similar analysis, noting that Biden's agenda, while popular in some districts, could be a liability in others where Republicans will attack the safety net expansion as government overreach. “Having some success to point to always seems preferable to failure,” Kondik said. “But let’s say the Democrats pass the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation package — maybe it helps them, or maybe it gives Republicans something to point to as they argue for checks and balances next...
(Video) Jennifer Lawless, chair of the University of Virginia politics department, appeared on GoLocal LIVE, where she discussed the latest in national politics – including how in recent years Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has continued to be brought before Congress to address the company’s actions.
The steps taken by the Swedish academy are “like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping and infected wound”, added Kelsey Johnson, an astronomer at the University of Virginia.
(Commentary; subscription may be required) Spurlock said she hates hearing people say that phonics is too difficult for anyone but experts. The technical vocabulary is scary to many parents. She said: “The ‘leave phonics to the experts in the schools’ attitude is leaving poorer children behind.” Some experts would object to that statement. University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham told me parents may find the sequential phonics books helpful, but they ought to be careful. “It’s easy to get wrong, and possibly send your child down a path where they really dislike reading,” he told m...
(Transcript) Ruth Mason is professor of law and taxation at the University of Virginia, and she and I talked about what President Biden has called a race to the bottom when it comes to corporate taxes.
(Commentary) One of my favorite writers, Matthew Crawford, has taken up these questions. Crawford, a political philosopher-turned-motorcycle mechanic-turned research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, advocates for human agency in his first book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” There, he laments the loss of manual competency after discovering that he derived more satisfaction from wrenching on a bike than from his brief tenure as head of a think tank.
(Subscription may be required) The heartbeat law bans abortion after the fetal heartbeat is detected, allowing individuals to sue anyone who violates the law. A federal judge has halted its enforcement, but Texas is appealing. Lois Shepherd, a health law professor at the University of Virginia, says she expects to see litigation against S.B. 4, noting the Food and Drug Administration allows the medication to be used for up to 10 weeks – not seven.
(Subscription may be required) Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, isn’t convinced that creating a new federal agency would solve the Facebook problem. “People keep going back to the 20th century to try to figure out how to address this phenomenon we’ve never seen in human history,” he said, adding that it was a “regulatory infrastructure that assumes good faith” on behalf of platform companies.
(Commentary; subscription may be required) Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor at the University of Virginia and foremost expert on the social and cultural implications of Facebook’s political dominance. On a recent podcast with Virginia Heffernan, another media scholar, Siva characterized Haugen’s testimony as equivalent to the smoking gun documents that felled the tobacco industry.
(By Richard Ross, assistant professor of statistics) Teaching courses with high enrollments (more than 200 students in a semester) is a daunting task for a variety of reasons – and giving feedback to students is particularly challenging. One-on-one conferencing is practically impossible, and it seems to me that many students learn just as much from the feedback that I give as they do from completing assessments. Subsequently, these courses pose the question: How can we give meaningful and rich feedback at such a scale?
(Co-written by Helena Zeweri, assistant professor of global studies) Ever since the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan, the question in much of the Western media has been, “What will happen to the women of Afghanistan?” Indeed, this is an important concern that merits international attention. The Taliban has already imposed many restrictions on women. At the same time, however, much of the Western media coverage appears to be reinforcing the idea that the U.S. military intervention helped expand the rights for Afghan women, while erasing the impact of years of resulting corruption and violence on ...
The University of Virginia Department of Drama has canceled its production of “Diversity Awareness Picnic,” its first scheduled presentation of the new 2021-22 season.
Doctors at UVA Health are encouraging people to screen their breasts for any sudden changes. The most common clinical symptom of breast cancer, according to Dr. Carrie Rochman, is a palpable lump. “Other signs of breast cancer can be related to the skin overlying a lump in the breast,” she said. “It might look thickened, it might look red, and there might even be changes on the surface on the nipple.” The doctor says getting a mammogram can be intimidating, but it’s worth it.
The UVA Medical Center is putting more than $30 million into merit raises and pay increases in the next fiscal year to reward and retain current workers and improve recruitment of new employees, according to an official.
(Editorial) More good news from higher education: In the face of nursing shortages, Piedmont Virginia Community College will expand its nursing program. PVCC offers a two-year curriculum in practical nursing. The expansion is made possible by a $300,000 gift from an anonymous donor and another $400,000 from the UVA Medical Center.
UVA researchers say reducing mortality risk among obese individuals is better achieved by increasing physical activity than working to lose weight. “When you go from not being fit at all to being even slightly fit, you see large reductions in your risk of disease,” contributing researcher and UVA kinesiologist Siddhartha Angadi said.
The University of Virginia-led project will seek to 3-D print high-temperature parts made of previously unused niobium alloys, which could enable huge time and cost savings for more complex geometries. The hopes are that these proposed 3-D printing capabilities will eventually be applied to scramjets – a class of hypersonic jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow.