It’s hard to contemplate American public life in the 21st century and not arrive at the unhappy conclusion that we are led by idiots. The political class has lately produced an impressive string of debacles: the Afghanistan pullout, urban crime waves, easily foreseen inflation, mayhem at the southern border, a self-generated energy crisis, a pandemic response that wrought little good and vast ruin. Then there are the perennial national embarrassments: a mind-bogglingly expensive welfare state that doesn’t work, public schools that make kids dumber, universities that nurture destructive grievances and noxious ideologies, and a news media nobody trusts. — Barton Swaim Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Wall Street Journal
Why is Sexual Harassment the Only Workplace Malfunction That Merits National Attention?
Many workers in Silicon Valley have said tech companies aren’t doing enough to promote women and minorities, or to stamp out misogyny and harassment. — wsj.com “Not doing enough” . . . I remember last year a female engineer at Uber wrote in a blog post that she was being harassed and mistreated and Uber actually hired the former attorney general of the United States to launch an investigation. One woman! The assertion that Uber in particular and Silicon Valley in general are cesspools of misogyny is based on confirmation bias and small sample sizes. Uber has more than 16,000 employees in 600 cities and 65 countries. If you’re inclined to believe that women are more virtuous and vulnerable than men, then the reported experience of one person out of 16,000 may be enough to confirm you in your view of the world. A man (or woman) hears what he… Read more →
Some Links on Work-Life Balance
Carol Bartz discusses the myth of work-life balance (Video) “Bartz Says ‘Work/Life’ Balance is a Myth,” Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2012. Beyond policies: Office culture must change (Article) Susan Dominus, “Rethinking the Work-Life Equation,” New York Times, February 25, 2016. The problem may be long hours not work-family conflict (Article) Robin Ely and Irene Padavic, “Work-Family Conflict is Not the Problem: Overwork Is,” Huffington Post, November 6, 2013. Managing work and life is an increasingly global problem (Report) EY, Global Generations: A Global Study on Work-Life Challenges Across Generations (2015). We know flexibility works, the challenge is execution (Article) Stew Friedman, “‘Having It All’ Is Not a Women’s Issue,” Harvard Business Review, June 26, 2012. The best way forward (Article) Gigi Liu, “From Work-Life Balance to Work-Life Integration– The New Way Forward,” Entrepreneur, March 31, 2016. When and where you work is increasingly the norm for many professionals (Article) Laura Vanderkam, “Work-life Balance is Dead —… Read more →
Spot the Fake News: Obamacare Subsidies
I read four news stories on the same topic — the end of Obamacare subsidies to insurance companies. The Wall Street Journal plays it straight down the middle: President Donald Trump’s executive order on health care issued Thursday marks the first major salvo in what the White House promises will be an extensive, targeted campaign to unravel the Affordable Care Act administratively. As does Bloomberg: President Donald Trump said he is moving “step by step” on his own to remake the U.S. health care system because Congress won’t act on his demand to repeal Obamacare. The Trump administration took its most drastic measure yet to roll back the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, announcing it would cut off a subsidy to insurers hours after issuing an executive order designed to draw people away from the health law’s markets. See if you can spot the fake news in the Politico version:… Read more →
Identity Politics = Liberal Suicide?
Mark Lilla is professor of the humanities at Columbia University. He’s got a book coming out, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. As you might have surmised from his job title, Lilla is a liberal himself. His concern is “the divisive, zero-sum world of identity politics” and its negative effect on liberalism in America. Here’s an excerpt of an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal: As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate. Over the past decade a… Read more →
Ted Cruz: Lucifer in the Flesh?
I think this comparison is terribly unfair — to Lucifer. Read more →
Why Don’t Asians Care About the Oscars?
From the Washington Post: Very white Oscar nominations leave Academy president ‘heartbroken and frustrated’ From the Los Angeles Times: Oscars 2016: It’s time for Hollywood to stop defining great drama as white men battling adversity From the Wall Street Journal: Black Actors and Directors Shut Out of 2016 Oscar Race Why don’t Asians seem to care about the Oscar whiteness crisis that continues to rage unabated? Maybe they’re too busy with jobs and school . . . Read more →
We Have Entered a New Screwball Phase
Peggy Noonan had a good article in the Wall Street Journal this week about, among other things, two departures: Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, and Joe Biden as a presidential candidate. On Harper’s successor: [Incoming Canadian prime minister] Justin Trudeau has been a snowboard instructor, schoolteacher, bartender, bouncer, speaker on environmental and youth issues, and advocate for avalanche safety. Sensing “generational change” and gravitating toward “a life of advocacy,” he entered politics and served two terms in Parliament. He has been head of the Liberal Party two years. He is handsome, has a winning personality, exhibited message discipline during the campaign, and is a talented dancer. There’s a sense we in the West have entered a new screwball phase. On Biden and old-school Democrats: Joe Biden’s decision not to run for president left me sad. He would have enlivened things. He has always reminded me of what Democrats were like… Read more →
This Photo of A Guy Tap Dancing in a Pink Floyd Shirt Explains a Lot
A Wall Street Journal article on college students, the weak job market and high debt loads is illustrated by this photo of a guy in a Pink Floyd t-shirt taking a tap dancing class. The crazy thing is that not only are these kids running up debt and killing their job prospects, they don’t even appear to be having a good time doing it . . . Read more →
Climate Change is Making People More Stupid
(HealthDay News) — Add another possible woe to the growing list of consequences of climate change: Kidney stones. A new study of American cities suggests that rising temperatures may increase the number of people who develop the painful urinary obstructions. — Will a warmer climate mean more kidney stones? – MSN Healthy Living You have to read all the way down to the second-to-last sentence of the article to find this: The study uncovered a connection between higher temperatures and risk of kidney stones, but didn’t prove cause-and-effect. The article implies cause and effect only to fess up right at the end and admit that there is no cause and effect. In the absence of cause and effect, what exactly is the point? In the epilogue of War and Peace, a peasant notices a “connection” between smoke and locomotives and infers cause and effect: the smoke causes the locomotive to… Read more →
British Healthcare Fact of the Day
In Britain, even though they’re already paying for the National Health Service, six million Brits — two-thirds of citizens earning more than $78,700 — now buy private health insurance. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 travel out of the U.K. annually, spending more than $250 million, to receive treatment more readily than they can at home. — WSJ.com Read more →
Making Life Look Good
Do we try to make our life exciting so it looks good for our friends or do we really get to live our life? — Fred Ritchin, a photography professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, in response to a growing obsession over taking and sharing camera-phone images Read more →
Why Aren’t Women Interested in Computer Science?
According to this recently published research paper, women aren’t interested in computer science because of media portrayals like “The Big Bang Theory,” in which technologists are depicted as socially awkward, interested in science fiction and video games and physically unattractive. If that seems like a compelling line of reasoning, you can read a more complete write-up in this WSJ.com article. What I’ve never been able to figure out is why people are so interested in why women aren’t interested in computer science . . . Read more →
Indian Givers
Via Best of the Web Today: Read more →
World Ends: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit
Willing to Try Anything
Best of the Web Today: Crunch Time – WSJ.com Read more →
To Be Safe, Never Say Anything to Anyone
Via Best of the Web Today: Read more →
Aside
Scott Adams on the Benefits of Boredom – WSJ.com
The Price of Taxing the Rich
Nearly half of California’s income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population’s during the recession. When they crashed, they took California’s finances down with them. — WSJ.com Read more →
Twitter: 2009-10-01
IT Workers Being Converted into Teachers: http://bit.ly/BEMVv # RT @Aimee_B_Loved: I try to hide my disappointment when I drop the soap in the shower and nothing happens. But Rubber Ducky sees my shame. # RT @Lileks: Modern-day Sartre: hell is other people's ringtones. # @bjsrestaurants My favorite Deep Dish Pizza is the Great White! in reply to bjsrestaurants # WSJ.com – Group Tied to Obama Urges Tax Increase http://bit.ly/V1s6X #stopthepresses # Read more →