Nims: Most people would say this tree is a problem. But skateboarders see this tree as something awesome. #TEDxPHL14 http://ift.tt/1g9juH2
— Franklin's Paine (@FranklinsPaine) March 28, 2014
Author Archives: shaun
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“The thesis of the book is that the university essentially facilitates (seemingly knowingly, and in some aspects strategically) a party pathway through college, which works reasonably well for students who come from very privileged backgrounds. The facilitatory methods include: reasonably scrupulous enforcement of alcohol bans in the dorms (thus enhancing the capacity of the fraternities to monopolize control of illegal drinking and, incidentally, forcing women to drink in environments where they are more vulnerable to sexual assault); providing easy majors which affluent students can take which won’t interfere with their partying, and which will lead to jobs for them, because they have connections in the media or the leisure industries that will enable them to get jobs without good credentials; and assigning students to dorms based on choice (my students confirm that dorms have reputations as party, or nerdy, or whatever, dorms that ensure that they retain their character over time, despite 100% turnover in residents every year).”
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Although the whole “avoid saturated fat” thing came about largely because regulators were too timid to recommend that we “eat less meat,” meat in itself isn’t “bad”; it’s about quantity and quality. So at this juncture it would be natural for a person who does not read volumes of material about agriculture, diet and health to ask, “If saturated fat isn’t bad for me, why should I eat less meat?”
The best current answer to that: It’s possible to eat as much meat as we do only if it’s grown in ways that are damaging. They’re damaging to our health and the environment (not to mention the tortured animals) for a variety of reasons, including rampant antibiotic use; the devotion of more than a third of our global cropland to feeding animals; and the resulting degradation of the environment from that crop and its unimaginable overuse of chemicals, soil and water.
Even if large quantities of industrially produced animal products were safe to eat, the environmental costs are demonstrable and huge. And so the argument “eat less meat but eat better meat” makes sense from every perspective. If you raise fewer animals, you can treat them more humanely and reduce their environmental impact. And we can enjoy the better butter, too.
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It is a staggering sum for a fiddle: Its $45 million base price is more than enough to have saved both New York City Opera, which has folded, and the San Diego Opera, which is also closing because of money woes, or to buy several hundred top-of-the-line concert-quality grand pianos. And it underscores the way collectors have driven up the price of rare instruments in recent decades, with inflation far outpacing, say, musicians’ wages.
Violas are sometimes thought of as the unloved stepsisters of violins — rarely in the spotlight, played by fewer famous virtuosos, with less music composed specially for them. But it is precisely their status as second-class citizens that has made this viola so valuable: While there are roughly 600 violins made by Antonio Stradivari, only around 10 of his violas are known to have survived intact. That makes this instrument, the “Macdonald” viola, rare indeed.
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30 years. http://ift.tt/1dk1DlQ
— Molly Ringwald (@MollyRingwald) March 24, 2014
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In some ways, economics is like medicine two centuries ago. If you were ill at the beginning of the 19th century, a physician was your best bet, but his knowledge was so rudimentary that his remedies could easily make things worse rather than better. And so it is with economics today. That is why we economists should be sure to apply the principle “first, do no harm.”
This principle suggests that when people have voluntarily agreed upon an economic arrangement to their mutual benefit, that arrangement should be respected. (The main exception is when there are adverse effects on third parties — what economists call “negative externalities.”) As a result, when a policy is complex, hard to evaluate and disruptive of private transactions, there is good reason to be skeptical of it.
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“The virtues of simplicity are many, and also too easily dismissed. In hip-hop especially, where complexity is too often equated with progress, the straightforward can get a bad rap. And yet it’s music like this, distilled down to first principles, that moves the genre, and gives it many of its signature moments.”
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Thankyou UNCW ACE y'all were amazing!!! #BARSANDJOKES But mostly jokes #Standingovation
— Jay Pharoah (@JayPharoah) March 23, 2014
shaun james bockert 