Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
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Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
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Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
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Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Monday, September 10. 2012

Monday morning links

The Town-Gown Connection - What makes cities grow?


Hunting palimpsests: In the Sinai, a global team is revolutionizing the preservation of ancient manuscripts


By advocating social policy positions, scientists may be forfeiting their credibility, instead becoming just ordinary folks with opinions


10 Public Colleges with Insanely Luxurious Dorms


Via Insty, It's Not Him, It's You: 6 Reasons Why The Sex Sucks


Feminism’s Rotting Corpse


Hope grows in Harlem - School choice can’t expand fast enough


A book: Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier


George Will: Liberalism, as we know it


Blumer:



Today, as Mort Zuckerman accurately contended in a Friday evening Wall Street Journal op-ed, “we are experiencing, in effect, a modern-day depression,” where “dependent millions” relying on food stamps and swelling the disability rolls “are the invisible counterparts of the soup kitchens and bread lines of the 1930s.”



Woodward: Inside story of Obama’s struggle to keep Congress from controlling outcome of debt ceiling crisis


Harvard law dean cited ‘affirmative action’ in 1993 Elizabeth Warren hiring; academic qualifications questioned in 1990


The bitter failure of the MOVE Act


SEAL's first-hand account of bin Laden killing


‘I am Refugee’: Israel Launches Int’l Campaign on Expulsion of Jews from Arab Lands

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:03 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Uh oh, what makes cities grow? Entrepreneurial university culture and graduates who start small businesses. Nobody tell the Obamas since they advise graduates to go into government and non-profits.

Luxurious dorms - Paul Graham observed that the transition from college was difficult due to the change from guest to servant. Difficult as most graduates seem unaware of their status change. Made all the more difficult when you are moving from the spa. I don't know about others here but for me, moving from college to the real world was a step up in living conditions. And I went to sea shortly after graduating.

Of course now, the transition is from guest, to servant, then to slave when those student loans become pressing.
#1 JKB on 2012-09-10 09:54 (Reply)
10 Public Colleges with Insanely Luxurious Dorms.

My freshman year I attended a top-50 university, then and now widely known as a cover school for those who wanted to attend an Ivy League school. When I attended, it cost ~$4000 a year to attend the school. In today's dollars, that would be $27,000. It currently costs ~$55,000 for a year. In real terms, the cost to attend the school has doubled.

My dorm featured cinder block painted in puke-pink. There was a collective bathroom for the corridor. While I didn't like the puke pink color of the cinder block, I cannot say that my educational experience was degraded by it.

Student loans are burdened by superfluous costs such as luxurious dorms. And bloated university administrations, of course.

In looking at the disaster of sky high university costs brought on by the easy money of student loans, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's lines:
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'

God help us. And I am an agnostic.
#2 Gringo on 2012-09-10 11:32 (Reply)
I wish I had save the link but I read a post by a college lecturer who had returned to grad school. What she lamented was the late night bull sessions on high minded topics were now a thing of the past. Student just didn't congregate to discuss intellectual topics preferring instead to hit the gym or the big screen.

One thing not conducive to thinking in general and critical thinking and learning critical thinking in particular is distractions. The austerity of the college dorm left little alternative but to tackle those difficult studies. Or, gasp, read a book in a critical manner.

I can't help but remember that many of the great works both famous and infamous, were written when the writer was limited in his diversions, via prison, gulag, remote location, etc.
#2.1 JKB on 2012-09-10 12:49 (Reply)
As I recall, the dorm corridor was a great place for bull sessions.
#2.1.1 Gringo on 2012-09-10 14:39 (Reply)
From a Seal's perspective.

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2012/09/who-is-the-better-man.html#comments
#3 Rondo on 2012-09-10 13:24 (Reply)
Oh so many years ago I used to go to the 7th floor of the library to study. Rarely did anyone else go up their and way in the back by the windows was perfect. The windows had those permenent metal slats on the outside to prevent the sun from shining in so from inside the library you could only look down at about a 45 degree angle. But wait, the womens dorm was right across the street and would you believe that at night even with their blinds drawn you could see right in thanks to that 45 degree angle. I think I came close to flunking a few classes that year.
#4 GoneWithTheWind on 2012-09-10 17:49 (Reply)

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