This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Wondermark — by David Malki !:
  
• The DNA Industry and the Disappearing Indian: DNA, Race, and Native Rights — Aviva Chomsky for TomDispatch: In reality, such testing does not tell us much about our ancestors. That’s partly because of the way DNA is passed down through the generations and partly because there exists no database of ancestral DNA. Instead, the companies compare your DNA to that of other contemporary humans who have paid them to take the test. Then they compare your particular variations to patterns of geographical and ethnic distribution of such variations in today’s world -- and use secret algorithms to assign purportedly precise ancestral percentages to them. So is there really a Sardinian or East Asian gene or genetic variation? Of course not. If there is one fact that we know about human history, it’s that ours is a history of migrations. We all originated in East Africa and populated the planet through ongoing migrations and interactions. None of this has ended (and, in fact, thanks to climate change, it will only increase). Cultures, ethnicities, and settlements can’t be frozen in time. The only thing that is constant is change. The peoples who reside in today’s Sardinia or East Asia are a snapshot that captures only a moment in a history of motion. The DNA industry’s claims about ancestry award that moment a false sense of permanence.
• Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers. It Hurts Students. — Nancy Bunge in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Some students understand the implications of all this. When I first told a class that one of the students would have to collect and submit the evaluations so that I couldn’t tamper with them, one of them asked, "Doesn’t that make you feel demeaned?" Another student wrote on an evaluation, "Why don’t you get off your ass and see for yourself what a great job she is doing?" And, indeed, the administration, not the students, should undertake the difficult task of appraising how well a class works. A colleague once remarked, "When we agitated for student evaluations in the ’60s, we never guessed we were handing the administration a club."
• Doonesbury — by Gary Trudeau:
  
• Education…education…education — The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies: Instead of higher education being about learning, exploration and creativity, it is increasingly becoming commodified; serving the interests of capital rather than the development of the individual for life and the benefit of society. Already, as Steve Watson notes, there is the potential for subjects that do not have a direct link to the world of work to disappear or be reconfigured for employability. And while universities struggle for funding and try to cut costs, students face the prospect of a lifetime of education debt without even the certainty of finding a good, well paying job at the end of it.
• Tom Toles for December 02, 2018:
  
• Why language might be the optimal self-regulating system — Lane Greene in Aeon: It is a delight to be able to use a good literally: when my son fell off a horse on a recent holiday, I was able to reassure my mother that ‘He literally got right back in the saddle,’ and this pleased me no end. So when people use literally to say, for example, We literally walked a million miles, I sigh a little sigh. I know that James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and many others used a figurative literally, but as a mere intensifier it’s not particularly useful or lovely, and it is particularly useful and lovely in the traditional sense, where it has no good substitute. So I do believe that when change happens in a language it can do harm. Not the end of the world, but harm.
• Evil Mansion — Phil Are Go:
  
• Urban planning is failing children and breaching their human rights – here’s what needs to be done — Jenny Wood in the Conversation: When children are asked about their favourite places to play, the playground is rarely their first choice. And most adults will often agree that they also favoured places other than the playground when they were children: parks, woods, riverbanks, fields and beaches were the places that captured imagination, not a few swings in an enclosed tarmacked space. Similarly, skateparks offer only limited recreation potential and tend to be favoured more by boys than by girls. Playgrounds often lack a range of equipment to suit children of different ages and abilities and are not always well maintained. Children also have to be able to reach the playground safely on their own, otherwise they have to be accompanied. This can limit the time children have to play outdoors and contributes further demands on the time of already pressured parents and carers. These exclusions and misunderstandings of what children really need contribute to environments that favour adults over children, and can leave children feeling disempowered, discouraged, inactive and dependent on the adults around them.
• Off the Mark — by Mark Parisi: