It’s time for the Beloit College Mindset List.
The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
IBM has never made typewriters.
The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.
Yes, they are getting younger.
When, from the depths of somewhere, came the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008 Results.
“Toads of glory, slugs of joy,” sang Groin the dwarf as he trotted jovially down the path before a great dragon ate him because the author knew that this story was a train wreck after he typed the first few words.
If you have some free time, here’s Not Always Right.
Most interesting lesson: there’s no user interface so simple that it cannot be completely misinterpreted.
No. Women are not quitting jobs to “raise families”. They are losing jobs due to the recession.
“There is no evidence [...] that mothers are increasingly ‘opting out’ of employment [] in favor of full-time motherhood. For this story to be true, the employment rate of non-mothers would have had to diverge sharply from that of mothers, which has not been the case.”
Meanwhile, ”the workforce participation rates of men aged 25 through 54 have dropped from 96 percent in 1953 to 86.4 percent today [...] But when men in their prime working years drop out of the workforce we don’t say they’ve gone home to be with their kids. We say they’re unemployed.”
Actually, I find a lot of people say that women took their jobs or some such nonsense.
But not surprising. Note the contrast in how Bush, McCain, and Obama handle an interview with the Jerusalem Post.
Days with My Father is a beautiful photo essay.
Say Hello to sci-Phone: 10 great science applications for the iPhone.
Via GeekPress.
Try Ugly Overload.
Actually, this is pretty cute, too.
When a patron challenged, a childen’s book about gay marriage, a librarian sent her a very thoughtful response explaining why the book would remain on the shelves, available to everyone. Two great passages:
Ultimately, such labels make up a governmental determination of the moral value of the story. It seems to me – as a father who has done a lot of reading to his kids over the years – that that kind of decision is up to the parents, not the library. Because here’s the truth of the matter: not every parent has the same value system.
Your third point, about the founders’ vision of America, is something that has been a matter of keen interest to me most of my adult life. In fact, I even wrote a book about it, where I went back and read the founders’ early writings about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What a fascinating time to be alive! What astonishing minds! Here’s what I learned: our whole system of government was based on the idea that the purpose of the state was to preserve individual liberties, not to dictate them.
Will the letter pay off?
