MY COUSIN-IN-LAW BRAD RUBENSTEIN HAS A NEW APP OUT CALLED GO GUIDE. It’s a customizable app for conferences, trade shows, and events.
Archive for 2012
June 22, 2012
UNDER THE RADAR: OSHA shooting range ruling points to agenda besides worker safety.
UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes: “People were warned and this may well have been prevented by blocking Michaels’ nomination to OSHA. How many Republicans voted to confirm Michaels? They chose comity with other Congresscritters over the legitimate concerns of constituents or share the radical views of Michaels. Is there any wonder why people would like to primary these clowns?”
AT AMAZON, digital deals.
NOT UNDER THIS ADMINISTRATION, I’M AFRAID: Novel Power Plants Could Clean Up Coal.
DOES THE 4% RULE FOR RETIREMENT STILL MAKE SENSE? In these times, do any traditional financial rules still make sense?
ANTI-SMOKING LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: In St. Louis, Some Smokers Are More Equal Than Others.
TERROR UPDATE: Suspect in thwarted Capitol bombing plot pleads guilty. “Amine El Khalifi, 29, appeared in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., on Friday afternoon on charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against property that is owned and used by the United States. Those charges stem from the illegal Moroccan immigrant’s alleged role in a thwarted suicide bombing attack on the U.S. Capitol Feb. 17.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Grim job prospects could scar today’s college graduates.
Social scientists say these young adults are a lot like the Americans who came of age in the early 1930s, both in the economic upheaval they confront and in the attitudes toward success, contentment and risk aversion that they are forming. . . .
A Harvard University Institute of Politics survey in March and April found that more than three out of four college students expect to have a somewhat or very difficult time finding a job. And 45% expect student loans to affect their financial circumstances “a lot” after they graduate.
Their pessimism is based on the experience of the 20-somethings just ahead of them. A Rutgers University study this spring of 444 graduates who received bachelor’s degrees from 2006 to 2011 found that 51% were working full time. The rest were in graduate school, unemployed, working part time or no longer in the job market.
One in four were living with parents. Those who got jobs beginning in 2008, the height of the Great Recession, earned a starting salary, on average, 10% less than those graduates who entered the job market in 2006 and 2007, according to the Rutgers survey. All this has happened as the total amount of student loan debt in the USA surpassed $900 billion.
Gee, you could write a book on this phenomenon.
WHY GOOD PEOPLE can’t get jobs.
UPDATE: Reader Ray Wood writes:
I read the link at your post today by the name Why Can’t Good people Get Jobs. I empathize completely with Phil Bowermaster’s point #4: Students are not majoring in the right things. Case in point: I have been trying to fill a job that pays $160K per year, but you do need an engineering degree and some knowledge of facility decommissioning and decontamination (it is at a former nuclear research site). We used to have in this country many people who knew this kind of stuff. Now they are all retired or gone, and nobody wants to go into things like nuclear engineering. But if you want multiple job offers coming out of college, a degree like that is what you should be getting.
It’s good to think about such things when going to college — though you don’t want to be too specialized, as even high-value specialties can suddenly become obsolete. There was a story about a guy in my old law firm who built up a flourishing and lucrative Civil Aeronautics Board practice, but then came up for partner the year they abolished the Civil Aeronautics Board . . . .
WORRIES: Mutant-Bird-Flu Study Fuels Fears of Airborne H5N1. “Whether they could gather in one strain is now a pressing question, as is a more fundamental scientific question: Do the mutations represent a mechanism by which H5N1 could become contagious in humans, or just in ferrets? And if they are directly relevant to human infections, do they represent a primary route, or one of many possible paths?”
Can we get that universal flu vaccine soon?
WELL, THIS SUGGESTS HE UNDERSTANDS THE EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM: New Greek finance minister hospitalized after fainting.
GALLERY: The Best Medical Images of 2012.
HOW PRODUCT RECALLS can make you less safe.
IT’S A TOPSY-TURVY WORLD: Why Are Liberals Defending Obama’s Abuse of Executive Privilege?
WHY NOT USE TURING MACHINES to raise the costs for email scammers? Or, well, semi-Turing machines, anyway.
REMEMBER ALL THAT “NEW CIVILITY” BULLSHIT? ME NEITHER. Gay Activists Invited To White House Flip Off Ronald Reagan Portrait.
UPDATE: Daniel Blatt: Obama to differentiate himself from juvenile behavior of his (gay activist) guests? Don’t count on it . . .
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HAPPY COUPLE: Mary Cheney Weds Longtime Partner Heather Poe.
UPDATE: Reader Mark Shelden writes:
Cheney’s marriage brought back the debate between Edwards and Cheney when Edwards tried to bring Mary Cheney into the debate on gay marriage. VP Cheney’s response was classically classy. His daughter’s remark after the debate was pointed and prescient when she called Edwards “total slime.”
Yeah, she had that one nailed.
THE LUCKYGUNNER FOLKS are now blogging.
UH OH: Bad news: Jon Stewart not exactly buying the executive-privilege claim. “The White House spin isn’t working. Even Jon Stewart ridiculed it. Maybe NBC might consider following Stewart’s lead and report honestly on the story now.” Naw, that’s crazy-talk.
FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists Can Now Grow Functioning Liver From Stem Cells.
The researchers used stem cells created from human skin cells, then placed the cells on growth plates in a specially designed culture medium. Over the course of nine days, the cells started producing chemicals that a typical liver cell, otherwise known as a hepatocyte, would produce. They then added endothelial and mesenchymal cells—which form parts of blood vessels and other structural tissues within the body—to the mix, in the hope that they would be incorporated and begin to help the cells develop a structure akin to the liver.
The result was amazing: two days later, the researchers found the cells assembled into a 5-millimeter-long, three-dimensional lump. That lump was almost identical to something known as a liver bud—an early stage of liver development.
Stephen Green, take note.
A DEAD ROAD THAT’S STILL ALIVE: Route 66 still holds allure for travelers, industry. “Route 66 hasn’t been a real highway for almost three decades. The last section of the fabled U.S. route from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, was dropped as a federal highway in 1984. But its hold on travelers’ imaginations has revived motels, diners, souvenir shops, gas stations and other buildings along the old route.”
ONCE THEY WERE REGARDED AS NEUTRAL PROFESSIONALS: ABA Picks Sides on Judicial Nominations.