Education / Government / Politicking — No comments
15
Mar 10
The Beloit College Mindset List has become an annual tradition, listing the things that each new collegiate class has known (or will never know). You can see the list for the class of 2013 here. The class of 2020 (for those educated in Texas) is going to have some unique firsts, and may require their own separate list based on the revisions approved in accordance to far-right revisions of history by the Texas Board of Education, perhaps sourced from Conservapedia.
Culture — No comments
15
Mar 10
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Read more...
Automobiles / Business / Culture — No comments
14
Mar 10
Jalopnik has been asserting that the rampant runaway Toyota crisis – which they tag as ‘Beige Bites Back’ – is due to the dull, isolating, appliance-like experience that the manufacturer’s products deliver. Theodore Frank in the Washington Examiner points out something else from a quick non-scientific inquiry into the demography of the drivers:
The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota “sudden acceleration” fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages of the drivers involved were striking. Read more...
Business / Organizational Dynamics / Politicking — No comments
14
Mar 10
Great article in Time by Chris Hayes titled The Twilight of the Elites:
Such figures show that the crisis of authority extends beyond narrow ideological categories: Big Business and unions, Congress and Wall Street, organized religion and science are all viewed with skepticism. So why is it that so much of the country’s leadership in so many different walks of life performed so terribly over this decade? While no single-cause theory can explain such a wide array of institutional failures, there are some themes — in particular, the concentration of power and the erosion of transparency and accountability — that extend throughout. Read more...
Delco / Local / New Jersey / News / Philadelphia / Politicking — No comments
12
Mar 10
I’ve been wondering how red states, which are typically conservative, have amassed so much political power while presumably being under-counted in the Census due to lower participation rates. They seem to control the national agenda (wondering what middle-America thinks), are essentially welfare states, and are frequently home to the biggest legislative obstructionists.
The strategy of the Republicans has been to target the Senate races in smaller states since media is far less expensive, there are smaller populations to win over, ideological alignment with their constituents, and the simple fact that 1 Senator from Vermont is equal to 1 Senator from Texas, regardless of the size of population represented. Read more...
Culture / Economics / Government / Politicking / Pop Culture — No comments
11
Mar 10

234-years ago, Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations. While some see confirmation of Smith’s beliefs in the return of robber barons, others believe Smith did not mean what you think he meant. We see that the Adam Smith we have come to know is actually only 60-years young, and came from Chicago:
…Lost Legacy has never been slow in criticizing the ‘Chicago Adam Smith’, a person with ideas that are far from the ideas of the Adam Smith born in Kirkcaldy in 1723. Read more...