Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama fought back on Thursday against the biggest domestic obstacle to the Pacific trade pact he wants to conclude before he leaves office: the trade skeptics in his own Democratic party. Trade unions, environmental groups and high-profile Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have come out swinging against the Trans-Pacific…
In 1998, Carnegie Mellon researchers warned that the internet could make us into hermits. They released a study monitoring the social behavior of 169 people making their first forays online. The web-surfers started talking less with family and friends, and grew more isolated and depressed. “We were surprised to find that what is a social…
The last few years have been an unmitigated disaster for American law schools, which is excellent news for anyone with even the vaguest interest in getting a legal education. Sure, the job market for new lawyers hasn’t exactly been peachy. Yes, the U.S. has too many law schools, given how uninterested Americans are in law school. And…
(istock) During a recent talk in Washington, Google’s “people operations” chief Laszlo Bock said something notable about fixing the equal pay conundrum. While he admitted that men tend to negotiate more than women, what he didn’t do was suggest — as is so often the case — that solving the gender wage gap is simply a matter of women negotiating more. Rather,…
Just last year, Ben Bernanke was still serving as the head of the Federal Reserve—the most powerful central banking position in the world. Now, he’s going to work for a hedge fund. Is it possible—just possible—that we have a systemic problem? The “revolving door” between powerful governmental (or quasi-governmental, in the case of central bankers)…
Single: article; “It’s like an ever-descending spiral for you…” (Michal Dzierza / Flickr) In 1975 Susan Sontag, the American intellectual famous for On Photography and Against Interpretation, was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and survived after a radical mastectomy, extensive radiation treatments, and thirty months of debilitating chemotherapy. In the aftermath she needed someone…
Entry Text It’s 2015, and on average, women still make 78 cents to a man’s dollar. A new report goes beyond that oft-quoted statistic, and examines this discrepancy along racial, geographical and educational lines.The American Association of University Women’s (AAUW) “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap” report breaks down the wage gap in…
BOULDER, Colo. — ONCE upon a time in America, baby boomers paid for college with the money they made from their summer jobs. Then, over the course of the next few decades, public funding for higher education was slashed. These radical cuts forced universities to raise tuition year after year, which in turn forced the…
It started out well enough. Tens of thousands of people gathered in Montreal’s Victoria Square, the heart of what’s left of its financial heft, waving banners, shouting slogans, hugging, smiling, high-fiving, smoking weed, all with the intent of sticking it to Quebec’s Liberal premier, Philippe Couillard, and his austerity budget. Thursday’s march was the apex…
Nonfarm U.S. payrolls added only 126,000 jobs in March, more than 100,000 less than economists predicted. The U.S. economy created only half of the jobs that experts projected it would create in March, the weakest showing in payroll additions 15 months. The economy added 126,000 new nonfarm jobs last month, the smallest gain since December…