Posts Tagged: world

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29
Nov 10

No sort-term fix to unemployment

Jerry Jasinowski, Former President of the National Association of Manufacturing:

“All of this talk about short-term stimulus, even with the good ideas that are sometimes laid out, misses the point that there is not a short-term fix to this high unemployment problem. We are in a new slower growth economy with higher unemployment and we are going to have to invest a lot more in skill training.”

He goes on to say the skills we have are not the skills we need. All the more reason I believe that your ability to learn and adapt is your most valuable skill. Read more in the PBS Nightly Business Report, Private Sector Jobs Rise & So Does Unemployment.

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10
Oct 10

Declining Creativity

An interesting article on creativity, from Newsweek:

“With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.”

It seems like there are a lot of areas where creativity is celebrated with much less enthusiasm than following a prescribed plan.

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2
Oct 10

Emerging Adulthood

File this in the I-suspected-it-was-changing-but-couldn’t-put-a-finger-on-it category: Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?

“It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.”

Interesting read. I especially liked the bit where the Robin Marantz Henig calls out our confusion “in our scattershot approach to markers of adulthood”:

  • can vote at 18
  • don’t age out of foster care until 21
  • can join the military at 18
  • can’t drink until 21
  • can drive at 16
  • can’t rent a car until 25
  • if students, the IRS considers them a dependent until 24
  • Parents have no access to college records if the child is over 18
  • health insurance under parents’ plans till 26 (or 30)
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10
Sep 10

The Great Recession

Robert Reich on The Real Lesson of Labor Day:

“The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that’s barely moving. That’s the Labor Day lesson we learned decades ago; until we remember it again, we’ll be stuck in the Great Recession.”

Agreed. I wonder though — could it really be this simple?

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13
Aug 10

What is in your water?

Last year we installed a water filter due to some perfluorochemicals that were leaching into the groundwater by a nearby manufacturer. It’s a nice reverse-osmosis, 4-stage filtering system that fits under our sink and is suppose to remove all sorts of volatile organic compounds.

I thought I’d share what the 1st filter pulled out of the water in the last 6 months.

The filter on the left is after 6 months of use. The filter on the right is what it looked like new.

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