Archive for 2014
June 25, 2014
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, updated every hour.
IT’S GOING TO MAKE SOME PLAINTIFF’S LAWYERS RICH: College Lawyers Confront a Thicket of Rules on Sexual Assault.
In conversations with lawyers here at the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Attorneys, nearly all stressed that colleges want to protect students from sexual violence, and that it is the right thing to do. But even as colleges work to do so—and to meet the administrative and legal requirements that now entails—lawyers here expressed frustration that their institutions were being held to a different standard than even law-enforcement agencies and were being given increasingly complex rules that sometimes go well beyond their capacity.
That’s because colleges aren’t law-enforcement agencies. Student disciplinary procedures should be for things like plagiarism and cheating, not violent crimes — or made-up quasi-crimes. Meanwhile, reading about the administrative burdens (enormous) being placed on colleges by a policy that will exacerbate enrollment problems and male under-representation (which makes women less likely to attend) makes me wonder if this whole policy wasn’t formulated by someone sneakily trying to burst the higher education bubble.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Novel properties for nanotechnology rebar-graphene reinforced with carbon nanotubes.
JERRY SEINFELD on how not to be a jerk in the digital age.
INSERT “GOING DOWN WITH THE SHIP” JOKE HERE: Crash captain left helm for ‘drunken 3-way sex romp’. But the lameness of the airport security involved — and yes, there was airport security involved in this boat crash — is worse. Plus: “There’s a moral here: If you’re feeling amorous aboard a boat, I suggest you drop your anchor before you drop your pants.’’
SCHIZOPHRENIA, POT-SMOKING genetically linked.
MORE PROBLEMS WITH generic drugs from India, this time the generic of Toprol XL.
SO I JUST FINISHED CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL’S Ark Royal. It’s solid space opera, and if you like, say, the Honor Harrington books, I think you’ll enjoy it.
WHEN SCIENCE BECOMES UNSETTLED: Judge: Bad science led to murder-by-arson sentence. So this guy was in jail for over two decades because self-assured experts turned out not to know what they were talking about. “His case is one of dozens around the U.S. to come under scrutiny because of entrenched but now-discredited beliefs about how arson can be detected. The Arson Research Project at the Monterey College of Law in California has highlighted at least 31 convictions based at least partly on debunked fire investigations, including that of a Texas man executed in 2004, and experts believe there are many more. . . . ‘A lot of this was just guesswork and voodoo.'”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama’s New World Disorder.
IN THE MAIL: From Mercedes Lackey, The Fire Rose (The Elemental Masters Fairy Tales).
Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 73% Off “The Twilight Zone” Complete Series on DVD and Blu-Ray.
And, also today only: Norton Internet Security 2014, $18.99 (76% off).
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 412.
MILLENIALS SKIP THE RING AND THE MORTGAGE.
They’re living at home in growing numbers. They’re not buying homes, which creates ripple effects throughout the housing market. They’re having more babies out of wedlock than in it. Why can’t millennials get it together?
The first and most obvious answer is “jobs.” If you can’t find a stable job, it’s hard to move out of Mom’s basement. It’s hard to commit to a mortgage or a spouse. It’s hard, in other words, to launch into the middle-class life that constitutes the American Dream.
Millennials are some of the biggest victims of the financial crisis. Those without a college degree face high rates of unemployment, while those who have a sheepskin are more and more likely to be underemployed in a job that doesn’t require their degree. Even if the student loan crisis has been overstated, the rising cost of college tuition certainly doesn’t help.
Yes, kids can live through a few years’ worth of frustration; they’re young, they’ll get over it. The question is not whether it is frustrating, however, but whether it is permanent.
It is if they keep electing politicians who add to the tax and regulatory burden.
IT’S NOT A SINGLE SCANDAL, IT’S A SYSTEMIC SCANDAL: Stars And Stripes: Top 10 Outrageous VA Behaviors.
ROGER KIMBALL: De-Unionize The IRS.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Final US GDP contracts 2.9% vs -1.7% estimate; May Durables drop 1.0%. Unexpectedly!
WHAT IF THE IRS WEAPONIZED ITSELF? “For understandable reasons, the IRS scandal has largely focused on the political question of whether the White House deliberately targeted its opponents. To date there’s no evidence that it did. That’s good for the president, but it may not be good for the country, because if the administration didn’t target opponents, that would mean the IRS has become corrupt all on its own. . . . The Democratic party today is, quite simply, the party of government and the natural home of the managerial class. It is no accident, as the Marxists say, that the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the IRS, gave 94 percent of its political donations during the 2012 election cycle to Democratic candidates openly at war with the Tea Party — the same group singled out by Lois Lerner. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the VA, gave 97 percent of its donations to Democrats at the national level and 100 percent to Democrats at the state level.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE, SOCIAL MEDIA HOPLOPHOBIA EDITION: “The Richmond County, Georgia, school system has agreed to pay $1,000 and legal expenses to a mother who was barred from her child’s elementary school after she posted a photo of her state weapon carry license on Facebook. Police gave Tanya Mount a criminal trespass warning after she tried to visit the school. She says they questioned her not only about her carry permit but about the fact she is in the Army.”