Apt. 11D

Spreadin' Love 464

The higher ed links. Andrew Hacker writes more about the college problem in the New York Times. My beloved SUNY school system is getting lots of attention. Finally, one school pays its adjuncts properly. Where's my visa?

This is where Chelsea is getting married tomorrow. Not that I care, since I wasn't invited. Pooh.

Gawker gives Mark Zuckerberg the paparazzi treatment. Guilty pleasure.

Spreadin' Love 463

What is Don Draper's type of woman?

Catalog Living (via Jody. Yes, I do take requests.) 

Class is the new Race. Gail Collins writes, "In the future, the great divide is going to be class, post-racial class. Poor people are stuck, while everybody else moves up, whether they’re black, white or Hispanic. Not sure that’s something to brag about, but there we are."  Lots of buzz about class-based affirmative action, following Douthat's column.  More stats on the black flight from New York City.

UPDATE: More from Beinart on class-based affirmative action.

Spreadin' Love 462

Slate's Man Men recap.

The history of the Beatles as told by their hair. 

Bicycle.

And two good ones from Jeremy S.: And the Worst Dad Award goes to this guy.

Why does female education rate cut fertility rate. 

I suppose it's not a shocker, but Vitamin Water isn't good for you.

Spreadin' Love 461

On building better suburbs.

Faux friendship.

This journolist stuff is insane. I can't believe we're still talking about it. Henry Farrell outed himself this week. He's taking it with a better sense of humor than I would.

Loved Rob Farley's post about the soft bigotry of low expectations problem and being a parent of twins.

If you can stomach another depressing chart on the economy, check out this one on the percentage of Americans experiencing a major economic loss. (More from Sullivan. Is it possible to put a Palin filter on my RSS feed of the Daily Dish?)

Spreadin' Love 460

Megan writes passionately about bottom-feeding debt buyers. 

Helaine Olen writes passionately about autistic people who are arrested.

It might be better to think like a baby.

OMG! A Bristol and Levi reality show? I can't wait!

Spreadin' Love 459

Kristof writes about Sweden's method for cracking down on sex trafficking.

Sweden offers us not only the summer’s top beach paperbacks, but also a useful strategy for dealing with trafficking. The Swedish model, adopted in 1999, is to prosecute the men who purchase sex, while treating the women who sell it as victims who merit social services.

Prosecution of johns has reduced demand for prostitution in Sweden, which in turn reduces market prices. That reduces the incentives for trafficking into Sweden, and the number of prostitutes seems to have declined there. A growing number of countries are concluding that the Swedish model works better than any other, and it would be wise for American states to experiment with it as well. It’s not a panacea, but cracking down on demand seems a useful way to chip away at 21st-century slavery.

French women age gracefully because they go to spas and use a lot of skin cream. They also avoid black capri pants.

"Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a résumé, whether or not the person stays in teaching. And in a bad economy, it’s a two-year job guarantee with a good paycheck; members earn a beginning teacher’s salary in the districts where they’re placed"

The Strange and the Beautiful

Truthfully, I get a lot of inspiration for the blog from my friends on Facebook and strangers on Twitter. Everybody seems to be in a freaky moody today, because I have some random, weird shit in the hopper this morning. Here we go:

Suze posted a link to some weird fetish clothes on Etsy. Etsy - it's not all macrame bunnies, you know.

 

The Twitter-people are laughing at this picture of the dead unicorn in a garbage can in New York City.

Roger Ebert writes a great column about Chicago architecture and showcases the University Chicago campus photographed to look like Hogwarts. 

Spreadin' Love 458

It's not your fault that your kid is an asshole.

Remembering George.

Spreadin' Love 457

Lots of goodies on the Internet this morning. I'll post a pile of links and then decide later what deserves more attention.

More discussion about the Duke study that found that access to the Internet lowers test scores. Apparently, this finding also holds for low-income kids. I've got to read that whole study. 

Great column by Ross Douthat ranting about last week’s news that Americans with million-dollar mortgages are defaulting at almost twice the rate of the typical homeowner."But conservatives need to recognize that the most pernicious sort of redistribution isn’t from the successful to the poor. It’s from savers to speculators, from outsiders to insiders, and from the industrious middle class to the reckless, unproductive rich."

More on the Jezebel/Daily Show showdown.

"The tenure system of academia is uniquely incompatible with the biological clocks of working women, according to a new study, one of the first to examine the persistent "leak" of talented women from the pipeline that produces professors" No joke!

Spreadin' Love 456

Headline o' the day.

What's inside Worcestershire Sauce? (Thanks to Amy P)

There's been some interesting discussions in the political science blogosphere. Should blogging count towards getting tenure? Rob Farley says, "While I have every incentive to be bullish about the idea of blogs as scholarship, I have deep reservations about the possibility of developing any metrics for evaluating blogs as scholarship."

The other debate flying around the blogosphere is whether political science has become too scholastic, too concerned with methodology, and too specialized.  Steven Walt concurs with Lawrence Mead's PS article, which makes that charge. Dan Drezner isn't convinced.

Suze just recommended this post by Hyperbole and a Half.

Wow. Check out Dooce's new house! Blogging CAN make you rich. Time to redouble my efforts.