Archive for 2011
December 1, 2011
DRIVING the new Porsche 911.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on Toys & Games. Also on Video Games.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Illegal immigration: Are Obama deportations truly aimed at ‘criminals’? “US says it deported a record 216,000 ‘criminal aliens’ in fiscal 2011, but immigration court statistics show a drop in criminal deportation proceedings from the Bush years. How do those square?”
REPORT: Singularity Summit 2011, Part I.
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH, but not a right to respect.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Dwindling Power Of A College Degree. “Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.”
Of course, one reason why a bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that a bachelor’s degree has gotten much easier to get, as part of a conscious strategy of giving everyone the markers of intelligence and capability. Remember Reynolds’ Law:
The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.
It bears repeating. Meanwhile, on my earlier posts about vocational training reader Bob Crosley writes:
Can’t talk about promoting vocational training and skilled trades without talking about Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe and his web site to promote vocational work.
Also, check out this YouTube video of a speech he made talking about working with your hands and vocational work.
And the book “Shop Class as Soul Craft” is about leaving the corporate world behind and the unique satisfaction you can get from working with your hands.
It’s a great book. As he says when he went from running a think tank to repairing motorcycles: “In the corporate world, everyone second guesses what you do. But a motorcycle either runs, or doesn’t run. You either fixed it, or you didn’t.”
It’s a bit of a passion of mine, and I work hard to make sure my sons grow up respecting those that work with their hands.
Yeah. To be fair, my grandpa was happy to get out of the service station where he started as a teenager and become an oil company exec, which he did in spite of barely having a high-school diploma. But he never looked down on the people who worked with their hands. Somehow, as Jay Leno points out, we got a different attitude somewhere.
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME anybody saw Jon Corzine?
UPDATE: Reader Dwayne Warren writes: “Maybe he’s guest-hosting at MSNBC.” Heh.
FASTER, PLEASE: SCIPIO Trial Shows Cardiac Stem Cell Benefits for Heart Failure Patients. “Heart failure patients with a previous myocardial infarction showed an average of 12 percent improvement one year following an investigative treatment that infused them with their own stem cells. The results triple the 4 percent improvement average the researchers projected for the Phase I trial. Results of the trial have been published in The Lancet and concurrently presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Orlando, Fla. They are the first report of administering subjects’ own cardiac stem cells in humans. Previous studies have used stem cells harvested from bone marrow.”
I’m surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention.
YOUR BRAIN KNOWS A LOT MORE THAN YOU REALIZE. “Only a tiny fraction of the brain is dedicated to conscious behavior. The rest works feverishly behind the scenes regulating everything from breathing to mate selection. In fact, neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine argues that the unconscious workings of the brain are so crucial to everyday functioning that their influence often trumps conscious thought.”
YALE LAW STUDENTS PLANNING TO PROTEST CLARENCE THOMAS? “It’s not even clear what the basis for the protests would be. Ancient allegations by Anita Hill? Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence, which happens to be conservative? Hardly compelling stuff. This might explain why Justice Thomas is welcomed, not protested, when he visits other law schools. One would expect his alma mater to treat him at least as well as similarly situated institutions.” I blame racism.
FROM HOWARD LOVY, Nanotechnology news bites.
STANDING UP AGAINST BIGOTRY: Legendary investor to Obama: Is all this class warfare rhetoric really necessary? “Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. . . . But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is you and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as “class warfare”. Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance.”
IN THE MAIL: From Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength, 3rd edition.
WHEN ILLITERATE YAHOO STATE LEGISLATORS attack.
UPDATE: “My Governor’s a Jedi.”
NO WONDER THEY’VE BEEN RUNNING SCARED: FBI Criminal Informant Complicit in Brian Terry’s Death.
HMM: Unearthed: Gingrich Makes the Case for GSE’s on Freddie Mac’s Web Site in 2007/2008. Key line: “This is not a point of view one normally associates with conservatives.”
READER DAVID BRIGHT asks me to plug this novel by a nephew. Merry Christmas, nephew!
THEY LIKE IT TOOTHLESS: Kirsten Gillibrand’s Toothless Ethics Bill.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: IRS Can’t Find 100,000 Taxpayers to Deliver $1,500 Tax Refund Checks.
GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: ‘Staff convenience’ can motivate Medicare scripts. “Medicare Part D is paying for antipsychotic drugs prescribed to nursing home residents for illegitimate reasons — including nursing home ‘staff convenience’ — which endangers patients and costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to congressional testimony today.”
THE EMPLOYMENT HORROR OF NEW YORK’S LITERARY CUBS:
Rebecca Chapman, who has a master of arts in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, hit bottom professionally last summer when she could not even get a job that did not pay. Vying for an internship at a boutique literary agency in Manhattan, Ms. Chapman, 25, had gone on three separate interviews with three people on three different days. “They couldn’t even send me an e-mail telling me I didn’t get it,” she said. . . .
Ms. Chapman added: “My whole life, I had been doing everything everybody told me. I went to the right school. I got really good grades. I got all the internships. Then, I couldn’t do anything.”
On Facebook, Kate Coe cruelly comments: “Bad news, honey. You didn’t do anything before.” Cruel, but the bottom line is if you want to be a writer, write. Despite what they tell you at Columbia, nothing else matters.
Despite her upbeat take on the proceedings, Ms. Chapman admitted she wasn’t feeling chipper. It was her birthday. A happy occasion? For most, maybe — but not, she explained, when you are turning 25, having graduated summa from Cornell, with a master’s from Columbia, only to find yourself unemployed and back living at home with your parents.
You can write in your parents’ basement. And if you want to make it as a writer, you’d better. And if you want to make it as a literary agent, try making some sales for your unrepresented writer-friends. You can do that from your parents’ basement too.
UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster asks, what if you want to make it as an editor? Start your own webzine, I guess. But “editor” is an iffy career path at this point, especially if you mean “literary editor.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Virginia Postrel thinks I’m unfairly influened by the NYT’s spin: “It’s actually about young, aspiring literary intellectuals DOING THEIR OWN THING, using the web to write and publish the kind of work they want to do. They are taking the Army of Davids approach. The Times reporter decided to lead with the complaint, not with the actual subject of the article, which is the entrepreneurial workaround. Bitching about the economy is how you get stuff in the NYT. It’s not, however, what’s going on in the story.”
Good point, and I stand corrected.
NOW THIS IS CHANGE: Dem Recruit Attacks GOP Congressman for Backing Obama. “Here’s a telling sign of how much President Obama’s fortunes have changed since 2008 — a leading Democratic Congressional recruit is now attacking a Republican congressman for supporting the president.”