Catching up on old drafts (a link dump)

I recently promised you all that I had a huge backlog of post-worthy material that I hadn't yet gotten around to writing about. Well today, I took a look at my unfinished draft posts... and it turns out I've got 17 of them, just from the last six weeks. Yeah, I may have the best of intentions, but there's no way I'm going to make it through a 17-post backlog without doing a link dump. So... here goes nothing.

Why Don't Women Patent?
Alex Tabarrok; Marginal Revolution

In this blog post, Tabarrok passes along a recent NBER paper that argued that if women studied science and engineering at the same rate as men, our total number of patents would increase by 24% and GDP would increase by 2.7%. Tabarrok points out that this argument is incredibly specious on multiple levels, and he mocks the finding by suggesting that if we churned out more female construction workers, the construction industry would boom and we would be building tons more houses.

While gender inequality is a serious issue that requires deeper discussion, doe-eyed (and naive) estimates like these only cheapen the argument. I'm reminded of Rob Reid's brilliant TED talk on the "$8 billion iPod", which points out the absurdity of "Copyright Math". This NBER study seemingly suffers from many of the same statistical shortcomings, and Tabarrok and I think it's another clear example of bad math.



Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews, Here’s How You Fix It 
Justin Vincent; justinvincent.com

Justin Vincent passes along his personal story about how Yelp's user reviews caused him to make a terrible decision when choosing a moving company, largely because the site's algorithms had blocked a number of negative user reviews that were, in fact, genuine.

I think this is an interesting follow-up to my previous post about "astroturfing" and the difficulties of determining which web product reviews are legitimate, and which aren't. I think we're all still figuring this puzzle out (both as companies and as consumers), and until we do figure it out, our best bet is simply to rely on good old word-of-mouth marketing. Yes, I mean word-of-mouth from real actual people that we know and talk to, not faceless "people" on the internet...

For Regulars and Restaurants, Many Happy Returns
Richard Morgan; Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal's Richard Morgan shares a feel-good story about a loyal New York City man (Bruce Davis) who sits down at the same bar stool at the same Greenwich Village restaurant every night of his life, racking up an average of... wait a minute, $4,000 a MONTH in charges? Are you serious?

If ever there was an article that displayed the obvious gap in our country between the haves and have-nots, this article was it. Recall that median HOUSEHOLD income in the United States is just a hair over $30,000 (in pre-tax dollars, of course), while Mr. Davis spends nearly $50,000 in after-tax money at one restaurant alone. Yes, Mr. Davis' America is not most people's America, but then again, the Wall Street Journal is not most people's newspaper. It's been making that fact abundantly clear in recent months...

Joey Votto's New Contract Is Like a Mortgage-Backed Security
Jack Dickey; Deadspin

This post from Deadspin almost certainly deserves better than to be buried here at the bottom of a link dump, but so be it. In discussing Joey Votto's monster contract extension from the Cincinnati Reds in early April, Dickey made the comparison to a mortgage-backed security. I didn't see the parallels at first, but he did a terrific job of laying them out, and I think that the whole piece is worth a read, especially if you're a cable TV subscriber (yes, this impacts you whether or not you're a sports fan).

This just may be the best piece of sports-related journalism I've read so far this year--it in fact crosses over into financial territory, and it makes a whole lot of sense (it's also sort of terrifying). Given that the recent eye-popping $2 billion purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers by a Magic Johnson-led group used similar modeling assumptions (and we know those are never wrong, right?), it's clear that the math around cable rights fees is a very pertinent topic. Read this piece and you'll understand how you're footing the bill for Joey Votto's contract, even if you don't know who Joey Votto is.

Another link dump

Yeah, it's time for one of these again... lots of news-worthy articles, none of which completely justify a full post but all of which I think are important. It was either a link dump or a whole bunch of Twitter posts that would probably get ignored, so here we are. As usual, I'll give a quick summary and then my brief thoughts.

The first two articles are semi-related, as both of them concern people's shocking willingess to sacrifice their basic rights.

Govt. agencies, colleges demand applicants' Facebook passwords
Bob Sullivan, MSNBC.com

Pretty simple, but troubling.

If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can't see your private posts, guess again. 

Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes. 

In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall... 

Student-athletes in colleges around the country also are finding out they can no longer maintain privacy in Facebook communications because schools are requiring them to "friend" a coach or compliance officer, giving that person access to their “friends-only” posts. Schools are also turning to social media monitoring companies with names like UDilligence and Varsity Monitor for software packages that automate the task. The programs offer a "reputation scoreboard" to coaches and send "threat level" warnings about individual athletes to compliance officers.

I hate that I have to explain why this is dangerous--the usual excuse/response is "I don't care, I've got nothing to hide". That's not the point. Whether or not you've got anything to hide, you've got a right to privacy that absolutely must be protected. The whole concept of an "unalienable right" is that even you cannot opt to forfeit that right--one cannot sell oneself into slavery, hard as we may try with unpaid internships and the like.

I'm particularly troubled by the "threat level" warnings about student-athletes--we need to stop treating everyone as though they're a potential terrorist. It's ridiculous and it's wholly in opposition to the founding principles of this nation. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, he who would sacrifice liberty in pursuit of security deserves neither. Why are we all so eager to sacrifice liberty these days?

How Big a Deal is H.R. 347, That "Criminalizing Protest" Bill?
Gabe Rottman, ACLU.org

There's been a lot of hub-bub surrounding this most recent bill, which would seemingly criminalize protests of the ilk of the recent "Occupy" variety. The ACLU blog tempers the conspiracy theorists slightly, but still raises some disconcerting points.

It's important to note — contrary to some reports — that H.R. 347 doesn't create any new crimes, or directly apply to the Occupy protests. The bill slightly rewrites a short trespass law, originally passed in 1971 and amended a couple of times since, that covers areas subject to heightened Secret Service security measures. 

These restricted areas include locations where individuals under Secret Service protection are temporarily located, and certain large special events like a presidential inauguration. They can also include large public events like the Super Bowl and the presidential nominating conventions (troublingly, the Department of Homeland Security has significant discretion in designating what qualifies as one of these special events)... 

H.R. 347 did make one noteworthy change, which may make it easier for the Secret Service to overuse or misuse the statute to arrest lawful protesters. 

Without getting too much into the weeds, most crimes require the government to prove a certain state of mind. Under the original language of the law, you had to act "willfully and knowingly" when committing the crime. In short, you had to know your conduct was illegal. Under H.R. 347, you will simply need to act "knowingly," which here would mean that you know you're in a restricted area, but not necessarily that you're committing a crime... 

Also, while H.R. 347, on its own, is only of incremental importance, it could be misused as part of a larger move by the Secret Service and others to suppress lawful protest by relegating it to particular locations at a public event. These "free speech zones" are frequently used to target certain viewpoints or to keep protesters away from the cameras. Although H.R. 347 doesn't directly address free speech zones, it is part of the set of laws that make this conduct possible, and should be seen in this context.

Basically, we're now allowing DHS to determine what does and does not constitute a legal demonstration of our right to free speech. That's cool, if we assume that everyone within DHS is absolutely acting in the best interests of the citizenry (as opposed to certain hand-picked moneyed interests)... but what if they're not?

Reading the Privacy Policies You Encounter in a Year Would Take 76 Work Days
Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic

This is brilliant, even if the research is a couple years old. Many of you are probably aware that by visiting a website, you are implicitly agreeing to that site's privacy policy, whether or not you have read it (which you haven't).

One simple answer to our privacy problems would be if everyone became maximally informed about how much data was being kept and sold about them. Logically, to do so, you'd have to read all the privacy policies on the websites you visit. A few years ago, two researchers, both then at Carnegie Mellon, decided to calculate how much time it would take to actually read every privacy policy you should... 

So, each and every Internet user, were they to read every privacy policy on every website they visit would spend 25 days out of the year just reading privacy policies! If it was your job to read privacy policies for 8 hours per day, it would take you 76 work days to complete the task. Nationalized, that's 53.8 BILLION HOURS of time required to read privacy policies.

Hahahaha, oh wow. Good thing this kind of stuff doesn't threaten to follow us around, right? Ah, crap... Again, people, with the privacy? Seriously?

Alright, that's it for today. Unless, of course, you feel like reading another one of my rants about how TARP didn't actually make money--but let's be honest, you don't. Anyway, get some sleep tonight, people--I lost one hour of sleep this weekend and I swear it feels like I lost 20. So be it.

Another link dump

Yes, even though I generally hate link dumps, I'm once again staring at a pile of interesting-but-not-interesting-enough-for-a-full-post items, so you know what that means... as usual, I'll post the links, with a quick blurb summarizing my thoughts. Click through for the full articles if you're interested.

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
Matt Taibbi; Rolling Stone

I'm always posting Taibbi articles here, and the hits keep coming. This time, our favorite malcontent is taking on the Securities & Exchange Commission (a group I've mentioned briefly here, but probably not enough), levying some pretty serious charges at the SEC's leadership.

I've tended to be fairly understanding of the SEC's shortcoming in the past, since I recognize that given their (lack of) funding, they are essentially set up to fail in their fight against an industry that is politically well-connected and has extraordinarily deep pockets. But if Taibbi's accusations here are accurate, I may have to reconsider my position. To wit:

For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.

Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records – "including case files relating to preliminary investigations" – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term "Orwellian," devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation.

In at least one case, a senior SEC official allegedly prevented the pursuit of a case against a bank--thus ordering the files to be destroyed--only to turn around and accept a job with that very same bank. You know what, maybe this article deserves its own post, after all......

Wells Fargo's $3 Debit Card Charge: A Sign of More Bank Fees to Come?
Ron Dicker; Daily Finance

In response to legislation (put in motion by the Dodd-Frank Act) that has placed a cap on fees that banks charge to retail outlets for debit card purchases, it seems that the banks are trying to recoup this lost income by passing the charges directly onto its customers. Wells Fargo is leading the way by proposing a $3 monthly charge for customers to use their debit cards, and other banks like Chase are primed and ready to fall in line behind them. There's a laundry list of other proposals by the banks to recoup this lost income, none of them good for individual bank customers.

When the swipe-card fee cap was passed, it was hailed and presented as a boon to small businesses, many of whom felt overly burdened by onerous fees. But by passing the fees along to individual consumers, the banks have ensured that there won't be any overall macroeconomic impact from this fee cap--we've just changed who's making the payment, making a transfer from individuals' pockets into business (and bank) coffers.

Of course, with the consumer directly bearing the impact of the fees, retailers won't have to raise their prices any more to compensate for increased bank fees--therefore, inflation statistics as collected by the government will remain lower than they otherwise would (the rising Consumer Price Index doesn't take into account bank fees, only "retail price paid"), possibly fueling a misguided belief that inflation is under control... it's not. The consumer is once again worse off, regardless of what "official" inflation statistics might say--but I'm sure you already knew that.

Bank of America's back-door TARP
Abigail Field; CNNMoney

Yes, we've got a bit of a financial theme going on here in this link dump, but so be it. While you were all busy worrying about debt ceilings and official government spending statistics, your government was busy unofficially spending more taxpayer dollars to prop up a financial institution.

As you're no doubt aware, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (as well as AIG, to a different degree) have been in government-sponsored conservatorship since the financial crisis in 2008. Therefore, anything done by those organizations is essentially being done by the U.S. taxpayer, and must be watched very closely--if they lose money, we lose money. So keep your eye out for stuff like this:

Taxpayers may not realize it, but they just bailed out Bank of America again, this time to the tune of more than a half billion dollars.

The Charlotte, NC-based bank was one of the biggest recipients of bailout funds during the financial crisis. But Bank of America continues to face deep problems related to its troubled mortgage portfolio and investors have battered the stock, which has plunged over 40% so far this year. That's escalated concerns that the bank may need to raise more capital. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has even started a BofA death watch.

But apparently the federal government is determined to resurrect BofA: the Wall Street Journal reports the feds have just used Fannie Mae, which is controlled by the U.S. government, to infuse BofA with $500 million and ease one of the bank's biggest headaches...

According to the WSJ, Fannie Mae spent $500 million to buy the servicing rights to a big chunk of the "seven million loans still causing the most problems." Although the $500 million is a paper loss to BofA, in that the rights were "originally worth more," it looks like BofA is still getting a good deal because the portfolio's "value is expected to deteriorate further."

In fact, the deal is worth much more than $500 million to BofA, because getting rid of those servicing rights lifts a huge cost burden off BofA's shoulders. And if securitized loans are involved, which they most likely are, the sale also limits the BofA's potential liability to investors for its current servicing violations. Finally, the $500 million is surely more than the servicing rights are worth in an arms-length transaction. How do we know? Beyond the comment that the loans are expected to "deteriorate further," the goal of the intervention can only be to fix Bank of America's capital structure, which is easier for the government to do if it overpays for the rights.

In short, purchasing these servicing rights was another Troubled Asset Relief Program.

So there you have it. It's not "official" government spending--at least not until those losses are realized by Fannie Mae--but it's government spending nonetheless. And when you're throwing around $500 million like this without anyone noticing, it certainly makes that supposed $2 trillion in "savings" look a little less significant, doesn't it?

Southampton engineers fly the world's first 'printed' aircraft
News Release; University of Southampton (UK)

You may remember my Clip of the Week featuring a 3D printer that "printed" a usable wrench seemingly out of thin air. That same type of technology seems to be popping up everywhere now, including at the University of Southampton, where engineers have created (and flown) a small airplane using 3D printing technology.

From their News Release announcing the achievement:

The SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft) plane is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) whose entire structure has been printed, including wings, integral control surfaces and access hatches. It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer. 

No fasteners were used and all equipment was attached using ‘snap fit’ techniques so that the entire aircraft can be put together without tools in minutes... 

The electric-powered aircraft, with a 2-metres wingspan, has a top speed of nearly 100 miles per hour, but when in cruise mode is almost silent. The aircraft is also equipped with a miniature autopilot developed by Dr Matt Bennett, one of the members of the team. 

Laser sintering allows the designer to create shapes and structures that would normally involve costly traditional manufacturing techniques. This technology allows a highly-tailored aircraft to be developed from concept to first flight in days. Using conventional materials and manufacturing techniques, such as composites, this would normally take months. Furthermore, because no tooling is required for manufacture, radical changes to the shape and scale of the aircraft can be made with no extra cost.

Very cool. It'll be interesting to see how scalable this technology is, and how economical it may (or may not) be to put into wide usage. Either way, the concept fascinates me, and it's an example of the innovation I'm always saying we need more of.

Definitely more uplifting than bitching about banks all the time...

Too much good stuff

You all know by now how much I hate the concept of a link dump, but every once in a while I must admit it's a useful tool. With the couple of days off that I had to take last week, there's a ton of stuff that I would have posted about that fell through the cracks. Since I'll never really catch up if I don't write about this stuff now, it's time for another pseudo-link dump.

As with the last time I did this, I'll post the links to the relevant articles, give a quick blurb with my thoughts on the link (or links), and you can choose whether or not you're interested enough to read the whole piece. I enjoyed all of them thoroughly.

It's harder to get a job at Walmart than it is to be admitted to an Ivy League school
Jerry Shenk; American Thinker

Jerry Shenk notes that while acceptance rates are extremely low at Ivy League schools--6.9% at Harvard, 8.2% at Princeton, 11.5% at Dartmouth--these rates are nothing compared to hiring rates at many midwestern Walmarts. One Cleveland-area store reported a hiring rate of only 5% (6,000 applicants for only 300 jobs), whereas the sheer number of applications was staggering at a pair of Chicago-area stores--15,000 and 20,000 total applications, for reportedly similar numbers of jobs to the Cleveland store.

Shenk notes that 2% fewer college graduates received jobs in 2010 than 2009, which no doubt means that the Class of 2011 will be fighting with a few long-term unemployed graduates when they leave their campuses after graduation this month. That's not good for them, and it's certainly not good for our nation's colleges (Ivy League schools included). Who would bother going through the arduous application process, spending four years at college, and taking on over $100,000 in debt if there's no jobs available on the back end? Why not just throw your hat in the ring at the local Walmart and get a head start on the game?

The People vs. Goldman Sachs
Matt Taibbi; Rolling Stone
Goldman Viewed Unfavorably by 54% as Poll Shows No Damage
Christine Harper; Bloomberg
As Wall Street Firms Grow, Their Reputations are Dying
Steven M. Davidoff; New York Times

These stories are all closely related, and frankly they deserve their own post (especially the Taibbi piece, but that's true about almost every Taibbi piece). But I could honestly write for days about this issue, and I've been consistently too lazy or too busy to give this one the time it deserves. So rather than let it go entirely unaddressed, I'll address it here. Ultimately, the point is that there is an extreme divergence at present between the profitability of the banks (particularly Goldman Sachs) and their general reputation. Almost everyone hates the banks, but they just keep on printing money.

Several reasons are given for this divergence, especially in Davidoff's NY Times article. But I think the explanations all basically miss the point. The point is, this is what happens in bailed-out industries. Companies who don't need to worry about failing also don't really need to worry about customer service. What's happened with airlines in the last 20+ years is now happening with banks. With unconditional federal support, there is no longer any incentive to do things properly or in a way that keeps your customers happy. That's why we all hate airlines, and it's why we're all beginning to hate banks, and it won't change until our federal government decides that it's going to stop bailing out failed companies and failed industries.

As for Goldman, they'll just keep on stealing until somebody decides that they've stolen too much. I'm not holding my breath.

Library of Congress Revives Thousands of Vintage Recordings
Caroline Cooper; WQXR.org

The National Jukebox, a project launched last week by the Library of Congress, has compiled more than 10,000 rare and previously unavailable recordings of music, speeches, and comedy acts (all of it recorded between 1901 and 1925) into a free streaming database. Also known as: Ken Burns' wet dream.

I think it's a pretty cool use of the internet (along the lines of yesterday's super-nerdy interactive solar system post). Some of the stuff is actually really fun to mess around with, even if there is enough old-timey ragtime music on there to make me feel like I'm walking around inside an early Mickey Mouse cartoon. Good work, Library of Congress.

Opinion: The Auto Industry Bailout - Still Debated But Worth Every Penny
David Kiley; AOL Autos
GM's Profits are Still a Huge Net Loss For Taxpayers
Megan McArdle; The Atlantic

Another pair of related articles, this time with drastically opposing viewpoints. From my discussion above about Goldman, you already know where I come down on bailouts of all kinds, but that's hardly the point.

The point here is that the true costs and true benefits of any of these bailouts will only be known with the benefit of several decades of hindsight. Any attempt to write a post-mortem on these bailouts now is early at best, ignorant at worst. Note that the financial crisis of 2007-2008 had many of its roots in the fiscal and monetary response to 9/11, but we only fully appreciated those links nearly a decade later (and some of us still don't fully appreciate that dynamic). Therefore, to pretend that we can properly assess the long-term impacts of our bailout strategies at this point is foolhardy.

Of course, my greatest criticisms of the bailouts is that they sacrifice the long-term at the benefit of short-term stability, so maybe I'm just letting my own viewpoints here bias my reading of the articles in question. But I really do believe that we will only fully appreciate the impacts of these bailouts long after any of us has stopped thinking about them. That's what scares me.

Caving with a link dump

I usually hate when blogs do "link dumps" (lists of links to other pages) because it's not real blogging--it's just being a content aggregator like Google Reader, and that's not the point of writing a blog. Anyone can do that. But for some reason, today I seem to be sitting on way more interesting stories than usual, and I can't write full posts on all of them.

So rather than let many of them fall by the wayside, I figured on a compromise--4 or 5 mini-posts all in one. I'll post the links, along with a short commentary teeing up what I see as the main issues or takeaways. You won't have to actually click the link and read the article in order to get the basic point, unless you choose to. I don't intend to do this often, but when there's enough good stories out there, I think it's warranted. Enjoy.

Ron Paul Claims Chairmanship of Monetary Policy Subcommittee, Prepared to Subpoena Fed
Mike Shedlock; Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish writes that Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) will almost certainly take over the role of Chairman on the Monetary Policy Subcommittee. You already know that I've been a very outspoken critic of Fed policy, and Congressman Paul has been one of the only politicians to similarly take aim at Ben Bernanke and his seemingly unchecked power.

The Fed has grown into a behemoth, and it has unquestionably become a stealth fourth branch of our federal government, despite being an "independent" organization. Its powers with respect to our currency effectively represent an acquired ability to tax and spend citizens' money (a devalued dollar is nothing if not a tax on citizens in different clothes), with little oversight. Since the Fed derives all of its power from a Congressional mandate, the Monetary Policy Subcommittee is of vital importance from an oversight perspective. It is my sincere hope that Ron Paul will be able to lend some sanity to the debate, so that we can at least begin to recognize the Fed for what it has become--that is, an all-too-powerful organization that does not answer to voters or taxpayers.

Hackers Give Web Companies a Test of Free Speech
Ashlee Vance & Miguel Helft; New York Times

This is a very interesting development and probably deserves its own post, but I'm in link dump mode right now--so be it. As a response to Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal's decision to cut off avenues of funding to Wikileaks (a response to significant political pressure), an anonymous army of hackers has essentially declared cyberwar on the offending parties. Articles are everywhere about this, and the story seems to be gaining amazing traction--the Wikileaks issue appears to have sparked a powder keg, and the implications for government policy (and the way that citizens and government interact with each other) could be far-reaching.

This bears watching, as it's a very interesting method for (a certain group of) people to fight back against corporations and institutions that they feel have wronged them. Corporations and individuals alike have become dependent on technology and the internet, despite limited knowledge of the infrastructure that makes these vehicles work. The people who do know the infrastructure are in possession of more power than we might like to admit, and they could have incredible political clout if they are willing to harness it.

This incident (and the fallout from it) could be either transformative or dangerous or both for the American people, but I don't think its importance can be understated. For a populace that has increasingly felt that its voice is not being heard, this is certainly one way to get your voice heard. Very interesting.

Food Stamps by State, Not a Pretty Picture
Tim Iacono; The Mess That Greenspan Made

Tim links to this report from the Wall Street Journal, which shows food stamp usage by state. It's ugly. The national percentage of people on food stamps (sorry, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: SNAP, isn't that catchy?) continues to soar to record highs, now standing at 14% nationwide. The Journal shows that two states (and Washington D.C.) now have usage rates exceeding 20%, which is terrifying.

You can't spend your way out of a problem like this, not with labor force participation rates continuing to plummet. Eventually, there won't be enough people working to subsidize those who are not. Dollar debasement strategies only add to this problem, as I've noted before that inflation (and especially inflation in food costs that this strategy has created) hits poor people the hardest. Current policies are making the food stamp dynamic worse, not better. This is what our Fed policy has wrought.

An international report card: Shanghai's school students out-perform all others
The Economist's Daily Chart

The chart is worth looking at, so I included a quick thumbnail of it. Many of the nations who are outperforming us in terms of primary education are unsurprising (China, Singapore, South Korea), but some of them are definitely a bit of a shock (Canada, Poland). Of course, I definitely don't support relying on catch-all metrics of "academic achievement", so I take these charts with a larger than usual grain of salt. But one way or another, our education system needs help. Even by standard metrics, we're falling behind, and I've argued here before that what we really need are new metrics and a new approach entirely.

Teens Becoming Pregnant to Get on "Teen Mom"?
Rob Shuter; Popeater.com (h/t Shuckstaposition blog)

Ugh. Just...ugh. This is one of those things that just makes me want to shake my head, shrug my shoulders, and say "America is dying". There's just no positive way to spin this.

It used to be that reality TV just exposed (and glorified) bad behavior and bad people. That was bad enough. Now, because of the cult of celebrity that our society has created, reality TV is actually adding to the problem, as indicated by the revelation that teenagers are actively trying to get pregnant so that they can be on reality TV shows. Maybe this was inevitable. I don't know. But it's not good.