Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

IT’S A BIG DEAL WHEN THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY IS ADMITTING THIS: How Florida Universities Became World-Class.

In the Washington Monthly’s 2025 Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars, seven Florida universities rank in the top 100 (out of more than 1,400 schools). These include Florida International University (number eight), University of Central Florida (17), and New College (25), all of them public institutions. Four Florida state universities also make the Monthly’s 2025 Best Colleges for Research ranking, including the University of Florida (number 27) and Florida State (76). And 10 of the top 20 colleges on the Monthly’s Best Bang for the Buck ranking for the Southeast are in Florida.

Why do so many Florida universities do so well on the magazine’s rankings? Part of it is that Florida is a populous state with lots of universities. But Michigan and Pennsylvania have about the same combined population as Florida (23 million). Yet only two Pennsylvania colleges, both private—Haverford (19) and Swarthmore (37)—make the top 100 in the Monthly’s Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars, and none from Michigan do.

Of course, they’re quick to inform us that it has absolutely nothing to do with Ron DeSantis.

I’VE BEEN ARGUING THIS FOR A WHILE:

Flashback.

DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS ARE SCUM, EPISODE 4,224,378:

POOR SALESMANSHIP: Cracker Barrel and The Democrats Chose To Cater To The Affluent Niche…And Failed. “They aren’t thinking about you anymore. You’re not of their ilk. The marketing shift made by Cracker Barrel was motivated by the same reason the Democratic Party wanted to change their voter base target. Both wanted to cater to a more affluent audience and were willing to gamble losing their traditionally working-class base for this gain.”

This was motivated more by social snobbery than by a coherent plan for success.

ICYMI: SpaceX successfully completes 10th Starship test mission.

The booster separated from the rocket about three minutes after launch, performed a controlled flip after stage separation and then initiated a boostback burn, all while using three engine configurations. The test mission undertook multiple landing burn tests, tested the booster’s payload deployment and conducted several re-entry experiments aimed at returning the rocket’s upper stage to the launch site to be caught. . . .

After deploying the satellite simulators, SpaceX relit a single Raptor engine while in orbit before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

The test affirms the engine’s ability to be used during orbital missions to break out of orbit and return to Earth, according to SpaceX.

The engine successfully relit about 38 minutes into the test launch, and the Starship began re-entry two minutes later.

The re-entry tested the Starship’s newly designed heat shields before it splashed down in the Indian Ocean after slowing from about five times the speed of sound during re-entry as part of a stress test to assess its limitations.

Iterative learning. It’s a thing.

KURT LASH ON the originalist cases for and against birthright citizenship.

That you can argue both sides of this issue from an originalist standpoint supports my argument, many years ago, that Robert Bork’s support of originalism on the ground that it determines outcomes was thoroughly wrong. There are plenty of other good reasons to support originalism, but it’s not a machine that spits out the correct answer every time, or even nearly every time. It’s just another language for arguing about the law. Arguably a better one (I think so) but still just that.