AN ALARMING DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA that everyone has missed.
Archive for 2012
January 8, 2012
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “I do have a non-blogging life, you know, however unlikely that may appear. Really. I do. Honest.”
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: A student on Stanford Free Classes. “Stanford ‘free’ classes aren’t free. Stanford students have to pay for them. The fact that I’m paying for them doesn’t bother me, the fact that people who aren’t paying for them have changed the class more than the ones who have, does. I’m sorry, but if I’m going to have to pay $50,000 a year to go to Stanford then the classes should be tailored to fit the students – not a working professional who wants to learn a little machine learning on the side.”
UPDATE: Reader Cindy McNew writes, cruelly: “You mean the person doing the paying, kinda like a, what’s the word, taxpayer, wants a say in the service that’s offered to others on his dime? Wow, what a concept.”
WANT TO SEE YOUR PREEMIES IN THE NICU? Not if Jay-Z and Beyonce Are In the House. Complain to the hospital accreditation board. Also, sue. And tell the papers — but I guess that’s already been done. And get the bodyguards’ names and go after their licenses.
IMPORTANT ADVICE for people interviewing for jobs. “While we’re on the subject, I would guess that winks, hugs, fart jokes (even really funny ones), and referring to anyone as ‘dude’ (especially the interviewer, especially if she’s a woman) might not give you the edge you’re hoping for. And even if you’re interviewing for your dream job at Facebook, I doubt that ‘poking’ the interviewer is a good idea.”
LUIGI ZINGALES: Who Killed Horatio Alger? The decline of the meritocratic ideal.
INFORMER NATION: In Newark, Turn In Your Neighbor For Owning A Gun, Get $1000.
ARAB COLONIALISM: Can Qatar bail out France’s banlieues? “While the investors and credit ratings agencies may be mulling over the economic turmoil gripping France, one set of investors is seeing opportunity. In Le Monde, Arthur Frayer profiled the efforts of Qatar to create a 50 million euro investment fund for the banlieues, France’s poverty-stricken, largely-immigrant suburbs.”
HOW MEN AND WOMEN ARE TREATED DIFFERENTLY, summed up in a t-shirt.
POLITICAL WIVES: Do They Hold All The Power? As the Schwarzenegger experience indicates, conservative politicians married to lefty women tend to “grow in office.” Not sure if it works the other way around.
AT AMAZON, a sale on luggage.
TONY BLANKLEY has died.
LONGEVITY UPDATE: The Surprisingly Mundane Genetic ‘Secrets’ of Earth’s Oldest People. “While genomic research on the super-old is in its very early stages, what’s fascinating is what the researchers are not finding. These people’s genomes are fundamentally the same as other people’s. They are clearly very special, but not in ways that are obvious. . . . When you look at older and older ages, in the tradeoff between environment and genetics, the genetics play a bigger and bigger role.”
BURGLARS ON WHAT’S NOT WORTH STEALING: “Burglars are generally drug-addled, unskilled and opportunistic. Yet they are capable of making economic calculations. And their behaviour reveals something about the state of the media business. Hollywood and the record labels believe they can hold off the threat from technology, both legitimate and illegitimate, and maintain the value of their products. Britain’s burglars disagree.”
CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN : White House mum about guns on Giffords anniversary. “For more than a decade, Democratic officials have sidelined numerous calls by allied activist groups for new curbs on guns. The shift followed the Democrats’ defeat in the 2000 presidential election, when gun-rights activists helped Vice-President Al Gore lose his home state of Tennessee to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.”
UPDATE: Prof. Jacobson: Remembering The Giffords Shooting, And The Reaction. And here are my thoughts from last year.
JOHN TIERNEY: How To Stick To Your New Year’s Resolutions. “The study, led by Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago, showed that the people with the best self-control, paradoxically, are the ones who use their willpower less often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can.”
FOUR VITAMINS that strengthen older brains: “Higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D and vitamin E are associated with better mental functioning in the elderly, a new study has found. . . . After controlling for age, sex, blood pressure, body mass index and other factors, the researchers found that people with the highest blood levels of the four vitamins scored higher on the cognitive tests and had larger brain volume than those with the lowest levels. Omega-3 levels were linked to better cognitive functioning and to healthier blood vessels in the brain, but not to higher brain volume, which suggests that these beneficial fats may improve cognition by a different means. Higher blood levels of trans fats, on the other hand, were significantly associated with impaired mental ability and smaller brain volume. “
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Detroit Feeling Greek As the Technocrats Close In. “The city of Henry Ford continues on its road to nowhere. Elected officials don’t want to make savage cuts in pay and benefits for some city workers while firing many others — for understandable reasons both political and humane. On the other hand, there isn’t any money and neither the state nor the feds will bail Detroit out.” And, of course, anyone who wants to seriously address the problem is a racist.
THE STATE HAS NOTICED that your children are getting fat.
GEORGE WILL: The Redistributionist Behemoth. “Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.”
INSIDE A BRITISH COLD-WAR BUNKER.
UP TO 40% OFF on the indispensable George Foreman grills.