WITH CAVE ART? Giant Kraken Lair Discovered. “In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin explained.The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle. Even more creepy: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc ‘pavement’ seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait.”
Archive for 2011
October 11, 2011
VIRGINIA POSTREL: Web Bone-Marrow Bounty Takes on Paid-Donor Ban.
MAURICE STUCKE: Crony Capitalism And Antitrust. “In August 2011, the United States brought a landmark antitrust lawsuit to prevent the merger of two of the nation’s four largest mobile wireless telecommunications services providers, AT&T Inc. and T‑Mobile USA, Inc. But why are so many elected officials asking the Obama administration to intercede in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit to force a settlement? Why are they approving a merger that would likely lead to higher prices, fewer jobs, less innovation, and higher taxes for their constituents? Does it have anything to do with the money they are receiving from AT&T and T-Mobile?”
IN THE MAIL: From Theodore Dalrymple, The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Daily News: D.C. drove up your student debt: Washington aid policies have inflated tuition. “One of the major complaints of the Occupy Wall Street crowd, many of whom have taken on significant student debt, is that the cost of college is too darn high. And they’re right, but not because of greedy corporate fat cats. No, the real guilty party here is federal politicians, who for decades have been fueling high profits – and prices – at both for-profit and nonprofit schools. Wait. Big profits at nonprofit colleges? Yes, money has been piling up even at schools you thought had no interest in profit. And Washington, D.C., is the biggest hand feeding the beast.”
RICHARD EPSTEIN: California’s Kafkaesque Rent Control Laws. “New York is not the only economically failing state that treats rent control as the road to salvation for its financially pressed citizens. California matches it stride for stride.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Racist Republicans Flocking To Cain. “Either a lot of Democrats have been slandering millions of American voters as racist, or the Tea Party hasn’t gotten the word that Herman Cain is African American.”
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: District Court Awards One-Time Criminal Defendant $1.7 Million for Malicious Prosecution After EPA Agent Manufactured Evidence — With the Apparent Motive of Out-of-Town Travel to Spend More Time With His Mistress. “In her decision, Judge Doherty found that Agent Phillips intentionally misled the prosecutor, his bosses, and the court as to the evidence against Vidrine, all to enable a prosecution against Vidrine even though there was no real evidence against him.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): New Homes Designed For Kids Who Never Leave Home: “While most children that age don’t really want to live with a parent, Jones said, if they’ve got their own garage and can come and go through their own door, have their own washer and dryer and a microwave and place to barbecue outdoors, then it’s not so bad.”
HOLLYWOOD STARS suck up to torturing, murdering, abducting warlord. But he paid them. Maybe Bush should’ve tried that . . . .
JERRY BROWN VETOES BILL, thus allowing warrantless phone searches. “The Sunday veto means that when police arrest anybody in the Golden State, they may search that person’s mobile phone — which in the digital age likely means the contents of persons’ e-mail, call records, text messages, photos, banking activity, cloud-storage services, and even where the phone has traveled.”
UPDATE: A reader notes that the article fails to mention anywhere that Brown is a Democrat. It does, however, mention that the author of the bill is a Dem.
UFO-LIKE DRONE hits cruise mode. “A stealth U.S. Navy drone — one designed to take off from and land on moving aircraft carriers at sea — successfully retracted its landing gear and flew in cruise configuration for the first time, engineers announced today.” Now send these back in time and the flying-saucer craze is explained. . . .
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Law Schools Enroll More Students as Quality (LSAT Test Takers, Applications) Falls.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 3 Reasons You May Be Unemployed Forever.
AN EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Once again, consumers will pay for bad legislation.
AT AMAZON, bestselling laser printers.
ANDREW KLAVAN: The Green Jobs Answer Man.
OUT TODAY: Vernor Vinge’s new novel, The Children Of The Sky. They didn’t mail me a copy, but I had preordered it and it just showed up on my Kindle.
WALTER HUDSON: Pouring The Tea Into The GOP: “Some in the Republican establishment are cozying up to the Tea Party. Distrust on both sides should yield to mutual benefit.”
JOURNALISM PROF. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Joe McGinniss, ‘Deep Throat,’ and anonymous sources.
THE HILL: Democrats scramble to save face on President Obama’s jobs bill. “Democratic leaders in the Senate are scrambling to avoid defections on President Obama’s jobs package, which appears headed for defeat on Tuesday. A lack of Democratic unity on the president’s bill would be embarrassing for the White House, which has been scolding House Republicans for refusing to vote on the measure. Obama has been touring the country, aiming to put pressure on the GOP to act. But Senate Democrats have indicated they are feeling some heat. Last week, Democratic leaders revised Obama’s bill, scrapping his proposed offsets. Instead of raising taxes on families making more than $250,000 annually, Senate Democrats lifted that figure to $1 million. Despite the changes, the legislation still does not enjoy the support of all 53 senators who caucus with the Democrats. A handful of Democrats are undecided or leaning no on the bill.”
UPDATE: Reader Paul Burich writes: “The GOP is showing its absolute fecklessness right now when it should be on the offensive. The GOP should have LONG AGO produced a bill to counter Obama’s ‘Jobs Bill’ and marketed it relentlessly: roll back the last 5 years of regulations, a simplified flat tax for both corporations and individuals, roll back spending to 2008 levels via an across the board CUTS (not reductions in the rate of growth). The GOP has fallen into the Waiting for Godot (Supercommittee) trap. Does anybody actually believe that a group that includes John Kerry et al is going to produce anything meaningful? This is all very distressing–but not at all surprising. The GOP is only slightly less venal than the Dems, and considerably less bold.”
PHOTO ESSAY: The People of OWS: like the people of Wal-Mart, only not as smart. Kinda mean, really. “A political science degree? Isn’t that special! And still you can’t figure out why you can’t find a job? Here’s a little hint that might help you out on that 128th job app: spend less time on your demands, more time on how you might be of some use to your potential employer. You know, because they’ll be paying you, not the other way around?” But don’t be dissing Botswana. It’s pretty nice, actually.
And this is mostly an advertisement for the bursting of the higher education bubble. “Did greedy capitalists convince these hapless kids to spend a king’s ransom for a BA in World Politics? Did Exxon Mobil make them sign a contract to borrow $110K in exchange of a Masters in Global Social and Sustainable Enterprises? Did Bank of America trick the kids into borrowing more money than their useless degree is likely to generate in net worth in a lifetime?”
Once again, Republicans should be piling on the higher-ed bubble / student loan issue. Make fun of these people all you want — no, really, make fun of these people all you want — but underlying this are practices that in any other industry would be universally denounced as predatory.
UPDATE: Reader Jonathan Card emails: “I’m a consultant travelling to Kentucky for a contract. I was watching the local news last night and a local machinist shop was being interviewed about not being able to find enough workers. The money quote, that I thought you’d be interested in, was ‘You can buy gas from a college graduate, but I can’t fill a $70,000/year machinist position.’”
ANOTHER UPDATE: #OWSPickupLines. “You must be Wall Street, ’cause I’d sure like to occupy you.”
MORE: Did I bury the lede? A reader emails:
I should prefer this not be attributed to me. However, in your recent post on OWS and the higher ed bubble, you touched what seems to me to be the core of the issue — in the last paragraph.
“UPDATE: Reader Jonathan Card emails: 的知 a consultant travelling to Kentucky for a contract. I was watching the local news last night and a local machinist shop was being interviewed about not being able to find enough workers. The money quote, that I thought you壇 be interested in, was ‘You can buy gas from a college graduate, but I can’t fill a $70,000/year machinist position.'”
First: This is also my experience as an employer. I have more college graduates wanting to work for me than I can employ — but good machinists, good mechanics, good technicians are hard to find.
Second: When I was growing up, there was shop class with real tools, there were trade schools, vocational education, apprenticeships, any number of ways to train for what used to be called “the trades”. The need for these people HAS NOT GONE AWAY. What has gone away is the belief that they are viable career paths or respectable occupations.
Third: As Jerry Pournelle is fond of pointing out, not everyone enjoys the abstract and symbol-oriented thinking that university education is designed to train. Therefore, whether our objective is having a viable economy OR maximizing people’s happiness, it is simply not true that “everyone should go to college”. For some professions, college is (or should be, see below) incredibly valuable — for some, not so much.
Fourth: The way we distinguish among college graduates is, in part, whether they have developed “hands on” skills, shown signs of being able to complete real projects, built things, and so on. Once upon a time, people would do these as summer jobs or as hobbies before going to college or during college. That is rarer now. Many schools do offer good opportunities for various kinds of projects, competitions, and so forth that demonstrate these things. And of course hobbies and internship jobs still present such paths. The important thing is that these are all things people do VOLUNTARILY — you can get through your college experience and never have actually done any work in your field of study. Such people may be “educated” in some sense but are not often the kind of people we look to hire.
Indeed.
MORE: Jackson Toby: From The Middle East To America: Revenge Of The Unemployed Graduates. “A great many young graduates had struggled to earn degrees, occasionally in demanding curricula like engineering or information technology. Government and university officials had routinely made speeches assuring them that education would result in well-paid jobs in private companies or in the bloated bureaucracies of their governments. Instead, many found themselves unemployed or forced to take menial jobs. Universities had turned into unemployment factories. To get the few good jobs, outstanding academic qualifications were of some help but not enough. Graduates had to be lucky and also pay bribes or have family connections.”
ALSO: Portraits of Occupy Chicago Protesters.
TIM CAVANAUGH: Silencing John Lewis Is What Democracy Looks Like. “Here’s Lewis doing the slow burn as a mob of apparatchiks without portfolio debate whether to risk their ‘agenda’ in order to let him speak. If you want evidence for the case against pure democracy, this is it. . . . One important characteristic of mob rule is that it tends to get the outcomes the ruler wants, not the outcomes the mob wants. In this case, the group clearly voted to let Lewis talk, even if that meant risking a slight breach of the day’s agenda. But the point here was not to get a voting result but hive-mind unanimity. Of course unanimity can’t exist among human beings, so the real purpose of the exercise is to keep checking the crowd’s ‘temperature’ until you get the result you want. And what apparatchiks want, always and everywhere, is to put process above product.”
If this were a Tea Party group, people would be screaming racism.