If my offspring ever had a conversation like this on Facebook, I hope to God someone would stick their thumbs in my eyeballs and kick me in the groin . . .
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Joe Paterno transferred full ownership of his house to his wife, Sue, for $1 in July, less than four months before a sexual abuse scandal engulfed his Penn State football program and the university.
Education not only increases the average income a person will earn, but it also changes the entire distribution of possible life outcomes. It does not guarantee that a person will end up in the top 1 percent, but it increases the likelihood. I have not seen any data on this, but I am willing to bet that the top 1 percent are more educated than the average American; while their education did not ensure their economic success, it played a role.
Let me give you a couple examples. I am comfortably in the top 1 percent. I believe that Paul [Krugman], with his Princeton professorship, regular Times column, speaking fees, and moderately successful textbook, is there as well. I suspect (although cannot prove) that if he and I had stopped our educations after finishing high school, we would not have been anywhere near where we are in the income distribution. If that is correct, might it be better to think of education as the key rather than focusing on the growing influence of oligarchs?
In the middle of an Occupy Chicago teach-in this week, traders at the Chicago Board of Trade dumped several sheets of paper on top of the heads of protesters below. Demonstrators were angered to find out they were showered with employment applications for McDonald’s.
By the way I’m an atheist. I don’t claim to have a proof that God cannot exist. It’s just that I consider the state of the evidence on the God question to be similar to that on the werewolf question.
Anyone who thinks they are special is on the road to hell. Because feeling special is just a way to avoid doing the things that most people do to fix the problems that you have.
By slashing the income tax rate, effectively, in half, he makes it that much more worthwhile to get up in the morning, take risks, work hard, take chances, and invest in progress. By eliminating the capital gains tax, he rewards investment and ownership and makes it possible for people to move up the economic ladder, not through phony teaser Fannie Mae mortgages, but by smart purchases and skillful investment. . . .
Herman Cain would establish America as a beacon for investors, entrepreneurs, inventors, creative business people, and all manner of upwardly mobile, ambitious men and women. He would give the U.S. the lowest personal and corporate tax rates in the world, and the only place where investment earnings are tax free. In the process, he and his plan would kindle decades of robust economic growth. He would make the next few decades a continuation of the American Century.
Some years ago, Harlan Mills proposed that any software system should be grown by incremental development. That is, the system first be made to run, even though it does nothing useful except call the proper set of dummy subprograms. Then, bit by bit, it is fleshed out, with the subprograms in turn being developed into actions or calls to empty stubs in the level below. . . .
Nothing in the past decade has so radically changed my own practice, and its effectiveness. . . .
One always has, at every stage, in the process, a working system. I find that teams can grow much more complex entities in four months than they can build.
Good short article by Tobias Mayer on the principles of empiricism, emergence and self-organization, and the mechanisms of prioritization and timeboxing.
A 2011 study by telecommunications giant Ericsson found that 35% of iPhone and Android users check their email or Facebook account before getting out of bed in the morning.
We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Constant connectivity offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We can’t get enough of each other if we can have each other at a distance and in amounts we can control.
