Saturday Morning Links

* “All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,” he said. “If you’re under 40 (years old), you’ve not seen this stuff before.” The Polar Vortex Is Coming.

* Gasp! Most College Presidents, Coaches And Other Leaders Are White Men, Study Confirms.

* A letter from the disciplinary turf war at Duke University.

* Here’s Exactly How Much the Government Would Have to Spend to Make Public College Tuition-Free.

* Michael Bérubé factsplains the MLA convention.

* The only threat to academic freedom in this case comes from the attacks on the ASA, not the ASA resolution.

* Slate covers the MLA Subconference.

* Like Sendak and Gaiman, Tolkien insists that fairy tales aren’t inherently “for” children but that we, as adults, simply decide that they are, based on a series of misconceptions about both the nature of this literature and the nature of children.

* Community laughs in the face of your “ratings.”

* Where is the minimum wage increasing in 2014?

* Our brains don’t work: Lavishing Kids With Praise Can Make Them Feel Worse About Themselves.

* A tale of two pot users: OK for elites, illegal for others. David Brooks’ Polluted “Moral Ecology.”

* The Veronica Mars trailer has arrived.

* And the Internet is a massive time-travel killjoy. Why didn’t someone come back and warn us this would happen?