THIS IS GOING TO DO A LOT FOR ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF WEALTH STORAGE, I SUSPECT: Europe Announces Stunning Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors To Get Instant 10% Tax Before Banks Reopen This Week. I wonder what it’s going to do for banks elsewhere in Europe? I can imagine that it might make depositors nervous.

CORRECTIVE ACTIONS after the Y-12 break-in.

NOT CARRINGTON-LEVEL, ONE HOPES: An Earth-Directed Coronal-Mass Ejection From The Sun.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals on Video Games.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, INTERNATIONAL EDITION: Australian Work Force ‘Over Educated.’ “Politicians and university chiefs in Australia are keen to sell the benefits of ever more degrees, but the labor market isn’t buying it, according to a study that shows large numbers of overeducated workers. Economists Ian Li and Paul Miller found that almost 50 percent of surveyed graduates were doing jobs that did not demand their qualification.”

When you subsidize something, it will be overconsumed.

UPDATE: Reader Brock Cusick emails:

Although there are diminishing returns at some point, I really doubt that Australians are “over educated”. It’s much more likely they are miseducated. I bet if you checked with Australian employers you would find numerous unfilled openings in roles like “master welder”.

The important point here is this: government spending (including subsidies) frequently buys the wrong things.

Good point. If I correctly understand how the Australian system works, you don’t have to pay back your educational costs if you earn below a fairly generous threshold. This probably encourages a lot of majors that don’t do much for employment and earnings.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bek Wright emails:

Your understanding of the Australian student loan scheme (HECS) is spot on. The income test for repaying the degree conceals the critical question any student must ask. Is this degree going to give me a qualification of real material and intellectual benefit in the job market?

HECS distorts the link between the quality of the degree and the benefits it may confer in the job market. The real cost of a students’ choice of major is hidden, via HECS. Thus, when they graduate and the consequences finally hit them, they are left with a sizable debt, and no qualification of significant earning potential.

I believe in simplicity and transparency. And crunchiness over sogginess.

GLAD TO HELP! Reader Mark Fay emails about the Tumi luggage sale link I posted last night:

Daily reader never used the Amazon link before. Going to Italy for Spring break and back in July for daughter’s wedding. Planned to go to Nordstroms this afternoon to pick up two Tumi Tegra Lite cases.

Saved $169 each case plus no tax, no shipping, no drive to Nordstroms.

I profit a lot from Instapundit. Never before this directly!

THANKS!

And thanks right back.

THIS SOUNDS GOOD: Warm Shredded Lamb Salad With Mint And Pomegranate.

CROSS-BRANDING: Whole Foods To Open Health Resort.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Do We Suspend Children From School? Don’t They Want To Go Home? “Surveys consistently show that parents support suspension, because it keeps those students perceived as bad apples away from their peers. Principals continue to rely on suspension, in part because it creates the appearance of toughness. Parents can’t complain about inaction when a principal regularly suspends or expels bad actors. Administrators may also favor suspension because it edges problem students out of school: Students who have been suspended are three times more likely to drop out. Some researchers refer to a student who gives up on school after repeated suspension as a ‘push out’ rather than a dropout.” Also, you can’t paddle them anymore, most places.

WHO TO CALL if you lose an aircraft.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? The Plan to Bring the Iconic Passenger Pigeon Back From Extinction.

Today scientists are meeting in Washington, D.C. to discuss a plan to bring the passenger pigeon back from extinction. The technical challenges are immense, and the ethical questions are slippery. But as genetic technology races ahead, a scenario that’s hard to imagine is becoming harder to dismiss out of hand.

About 1,500 passenger pigeons inhabit museum collections. They are all that’s left of a species once perceived as a limitless resource. The birds were shipped in boxcars by the tons, sold as meat for 31 cents per dozen, and plucked for mattress feathers. But in a mere 25 years, the population shrank from billions to thousands as commercial hunters decimated nesting flocks. Martha, the last living bird, took her place under museum glass in 1914.

Ben Novak doesn’t believe the story should end there. The 26-year-old genetics student is convinced that new technology can bring the passenger pigeon back to life. “This whole idea that extinction is forever is just nonsense,” he says. Novak spent the last five years working to decipher the bird’s genes, and now he has put his graduate studies on hold to pursue a goal he’d once described in a junior high school fair presentation: de-extinction.

Novak is not alone in his mission. An organization called Revive and Restore is enlisting the support of preeminent scientists—and even the National Geographic Society, which is hosting the TEDx meeting on the topic today, to investigate putting the passenger pigeon back in the sky.

Hmm.

GOOD GRIEF: Europe Does It Again: Cyprus Depositor Haircut “Bailout” Turns Into Saver “Panic”, Frozen Assets, Bank Runs, Broken ATMs. “Late last night, after markets closed for the weekend, following an extended discussion the European finance ministers announced their ‘bailout’ solution for Russian oligarch depositor-haven Cyprus: a €13 billion bailout (Europe’s fifth) with a huge twist: the implementation of what has been the biggest taboo in European bailouts to date – the impairment of depositors, and a fresh, full blown escalation in the status quo’s war against savers everywhere.”

UPDATE: More bad economic news from southern Europe.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “My Husband Is Having An Emotional Affair.”

AT AMAZON, 20 MP3 Albums $1.99 Each.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHOOSING THE RIGHT SEAT.

TAKING A POSITIVE ANGLE: Ben Barton: A Glass Half Full Look at the Changes in the American Legal Market. “The obvious reason for optimism is that America will be significantly better off if we spend less on legal services. . . . Legal services will be cheaper, more accessible AND better. These changes are bad for lawyers in the same way digital photography was bad for Kodak. Nevertheless, it is outstanding news for the country as a whole. Less obviously, the trends identified in Larry Ribstein’s ‘Death of Big Law’ and the ripple effect through law schools will, ironically, lead us to a leaner, happier profession. For years the hope of securing a job in Big Law, the easy availability of student loans, and the misperception of what lawyers do and what law school is like have drawn many ill-suited individuals into law. This has had a number of deleterious effects on those individuals and on the practice as a whole. Current market forces and news coverage, however, will eventually result in a profession staffed by individuals who chose law despite a substantial headwind, rather than because they did not know what else to do and they thought it would guarantee a high salary for life.”

Download it while it’s hot! (Bumped).

PREDICTIONS FROM 1988 about life in 2013.

FORGET PEAK OIL: Peak Mexican? When I saw the headline, I thought it was about the switch to net negative immigration, but no.

WELL, ONCE THEY WENT AFTER PICKUP ARTISTS AS A “HATE GROUP,” THEY KINDA JUMPED THE SHARK: The SPLC’s bogus “Hate List.”

Meanwhile, let’s not forget the Southern Poverty Law Center’s own “kill map,” which has produced actual shootings.

SETTING AN EXAMPLE: Obama Flies a 747 to Chicago to Deliver Speech About Using Less Oil.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Detroit Dems Enrich Wall Street As City Goes Bust.

During the long grim slide, much of Detroit’s population fled the implosion; those who remained suffered through declining city services. Schools, police, fire, infrastructure: all the vital services cities are supposed to provide have gone into steep decline.

But while the city’s mostly low-income and mostly African-American residents struggled to survive civic decline, the ill wind from Detroit blew somebody good: well connected Wall Street firms have feasted on the Motor City’s carcass.

Ever since the long death spiral began, Detroit has relied on periodic bond sales to keep its bills paid. The thinking was clear: borrow now, pay it back later when the city’s finances recover. Of course, Detroit’s finances never recovered, and now it’s on the hook for much of this borrowing, in addition to the fees that these banks charged.

And these are serious fees. Bloomberg reports that since 2005, Wall Street banks have charged the city a whopping $474 million. As a comparison, that’s about as much as the city’s current entire police and fire budget for this year. . . . Democrats are shocked, shocked by the news that there is gambling going on in America’s blue cities. They do their best to avert their eyes from the close political ties between corrupt urban political machines and exploitative Wall Street banks. In the lame progressive mindset that characterizes these decadent times, Wall Street is bad, and urban politicians are good. There can’t possibly be some sort of symbiotic relationship between them.

Read the whole thing.

HOW BEER gave us civilization.

AT AMAZON, bestselling Kindle books in science fiction & fantasy.

Also, up to 25% off on rifle scopes. Be sure not to put them on backward. . . .

And a price cut on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, now only $269.00.

TECH WRITER targeted for SWATting. “Online security reporter Brian Krebs published an article Wednesday about ‘a Web site that sells access to consumer credit reports for $15 per report,’ perhaps illegally. His popular Krebs on Security site was then targeted by hackers and . . . On Thursday, he became one of the first journalists to be on the receiving end of a vicious hoax that prompted a raid on his Northern Virginia home by a swarm of heavily armed police officers.”