Isegoria

Reason’s 10 Truths About Trade: Hard facts about offshoring, imports, and jobs:

1. The Number of Jobs Grows With the Population
   
2. Jobs Churn Constantly
   
3. Challenging, High-Paying Jobs Are Becoming More Plentiful, Not Less
   
4. “Deindustrialization” Is a Myth
   
5. Imports Have Not Been a Major Cause of Recent Manufacturing Job Losses
   
6. “Offshoring” Is Not a Threat to High-Tech Employment
   
7. Globalization of Services Creates Enormous Opportunity for American Industry
   
8. Offshoring Creates New Jobs and Boosts Economic Growth
   
9. The Digital Revolution Has Been Eliminating White-Collar Jobs for Many Years
   
10. Fears That the U.S. Economy Is Running Out of Jobs Are Nothing New

The article, of course, provides some actual support for those ten truths.

According to WSJ.com – The Recovery’s Knotty Underside: Being Forced to Move for Your Job, the recovery is leading to more job transfers, and moving takes a toll on people:

Families almost universally underestimate how difficult it can be to relocate. While a majority of families handle moves just fine, a significant minority hit the rocks. Students who move frequently are 35% more likely to fail a grade and 77% more likely to have behavior problems than children who stay in one place, a study several years ago showed. For troubled couples, a transfer can be the last straw; many split up rather than moving together, relocation counselors say.

Fewer women are keeping their maiden name after marriage. From WSJ.com – College-Educated Women Adopt Spouse’s Surname:

In a reversal of a three-decade-long trend toward more married women keeping their own names, increasing numbers of college-educated women are taking their husbands’ surnames, according to a Harvard University study.

The trend had begun during the late 1970s, when the feminist movement emboldened more women to reject tradition and keep their own names when they married. That spread in the 1980s and 1990s, even though a large majority of women still took their husbands’ names.

[...]

Based on the Massachusetts birth data ? which record the mother’s and father’s surnames as well as their educational levels ? the economists extrapolated that 23% of all college-educated women in the state were using their own names in 1990, compared with 20% in 1995 and 17% in 2000.

Harvard alumni records show that among women who earned bachelor’s degrees from Harvard in 1980, 44% of those who reported being married were using their own surnames 10 years after graduation. Among the class of 1990, just 32% of married women were using their own names 10 years later.

[...]

Despite the directional shift, highly educated women remain more likely than less-educated ones to keep their surnames when they marry. In the study, women who graduated from the most prestigious colleges, including those in the Ivy League, were more likely to keep their names. Women with advanced degrees, such as a law degree or doctorate, were more likely to retain their name than those whose last stop in school was college, the researchers found.

[...]

The only advanced degree not associated with a tendency to keep one’s name is an M.B.A.

The only advanced degree not associated with a tendency to keep one’s name is an M.B.A. I’m not surprised.

In Software That Lasts 200 Years, Dan Bricklin, creator of VisiCalc, points out how software isn’t serving society’s needs, because it’s built for the short term:

In accounting, common depreciation terms for software are 3 to 5 years; 10 at most. Contrast this to residential rental property which is depreciated over 27.5 years and water mains and brick walls which are depreciated over 60 years or more.

And it’s built for the short term, even though it’s often built to keep records:

Common records kept by governments include property ownership, citizenship and census information, and laws. Personal records include images (such as portraits) and birth, death, and genealogical information. General information kept by society includes knowledge and expression, and artifacts representative of culture. Again, the time frame for keeping such records is measured in decades or centuries. I can go to city hall and find out the details of ownership relating to my house going back to when it was built in the late 1800′s. “Family bible” records go back generations. The Boston Public Library, like many city libraries, has newspapers from over 200 years ago available on microfilm, and many from the last 150 years in the original paper form.

[...]

When it comes to moving ahead, most new software and hardware can only access the most recent or most popular old data. Old manuscripts created with old word processors, often archived on obsolete disk cartridges in obsolete backup formats, are almost impossible to retrieve, even though they are less than 25 years old. The companies that built the software and hardware are often long gone and the specifications lost. (If you are older than 30, contrast this to your own grade school compositions saved by your parents, or letters from their parents, still readable years later.)

According to Brickin, we need to start thinking about “Societal Infrastructure Software” — the software that keeps our societal records, controls and monitors our physical infrastructure (from traffic lights to generating plants) — the way we think about bridges, dams, and sewers:

Having every part of society need to be upgraded on a yearly or even tri-yearly basis is not feasible. Imagine if every traffic light and city hall record of deeds and permits needed to be upgraded or “patched” like today’s browsers or email programs. Needing every application to have a self-sustaining company with long-term management is not practical. How many of the software companies of 20 years ago are still around and maintaining their original products?

This means that we have to emphasize “robustness, testing, maintainability, ease of replacement, security, and verifiability” rather than “execution speed, memory constraints, data organization, flashy graphics, and algorithms for accomplishing this all.” We need standards bodies to publish best practices. We need softward “inspections” (the way we have building inspections). And we need public inquiries when projects fail.

Something to think about.

Fending Off a Plagiarist should raise the ire of anyone with a doctorate:

Some years ago, just after I defended my dissertation, I received a call from Mr. X. He had read one of my publications, and because we were studying the same African social movement, asked whether I had written anything else on the topic. An innocent enough question. I’ve made similar requests myself.

Since my dissertation was not yet bound in my university’s library, I put a copy of it on a disk and mailed it off to him. I put his name and address in my Rolodex and kept a lookout for his work.

Last summer I discovered that he had defended his dissertation three years after I defended mine. I requested a copy of it through interlibrary loan. As soon as the dissertation was in my hands, I flipped first to the bibliography to see which of my works he had cited. Yes, I’m vain.

“Humph. He didn’t cite my dissertation,” I thought. I flipped to the table of contents. “Wow, he asked the same questions I did.” I read the abstract. “Damn. Those are my words.”

My heart pounded. This was my dissertation!

Livin’ la Vida Lobster discusses Trevor Corson’s The Secret Life of Lobsters. Lobster wasn’t always a delicacy:

When the Pilgrims first landed on Plymouth Rock, lobsters were in such abundance on the New England coast that storms often washed hundreds of the creatures onto the beach. Farmers took advantage of the lobster surplus, using excess crustaceans as feed for livestock and fertilizer for their fields. At the time, the ready availability of lobsters rendered them a low-class meal for the poor and unrefined.

It’s too early to say what’s cause and what’s effect, but Yahoo! News – Hay Fever Risk Higher When Partner Has It reports on an interesting finding:

Couples who live together are also likely to sneeze together, according to new research suggesting that hay fever may be ‘transmissible.’

The study of nearly 4,300 German adults found that those whose partners had hay fever were at greater risk of developing such allergies themselves. And the longer couples lived together, the higher the hay fever risk climbed.

Who buys an old suitcase for $36? And who sells on old suitcase for $36, not knowing it’s full of Beatles recordings? From Yahoo! News – Suitcase Yields Possible Beatles Trove:

A vacationer who purchased a suitcase at an Australian flea market found a trove of Beatles memorabilia inside, including photos, concert programs and unreleased recordings, The Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

While the materials have yet to be authenticated, some experts believe the collection is the lost “Mal Evans archive,” originally belonging to the Beatles’ roadie and sound recordist.

Evans was killed by police in Los Angeles in 1976 after he had brandished a fake gun. The contents of the suitcase were lost during the police investigation, The Times said.

Fraser Claughton, 41, from Tinkerton, England, found the suitcase in a small town outside of Melbourne, The Times said. Realizing the suitcase was not empty, he bought it for about $36.

[...]

The 4 1/2 hour reel-to-reel tape recording includes John Lennon and Paul McCartney (news) experimenting with alternative versions of some previously unrecorded tracks. The collection also includes previously unknown versions of new recordings of “We Can Work It Out” and “Cry Baby Cry.”

The tapes, labeled “Abbey Road… not for release,” will be evaluated by the Beatles’ record label, Apple, and examined by experts to determine their origin and authenticity.

Yahoo! News – Fat-Busting Ultrasound May Be on Its Way reports that LipoSonix’ new SonoSculpt device might replace liposuction:

In testing on 30 people in Mexico, the treatment did not burn or seriously irritate the skin, and it reduced fat on the abdomen without causing serious complications by sending too much loose fat into the bloodstream, the company said.

The tests, which have not yet been published in medical literature, consisted of a few one-hour treatments, then three months of observation, Quistgaard said.

It’s not clear exactly where the fat goes after ultrasound jolts it loose. LipoSonix and its medical advisers believe the body’s immune system responds to the disrupted site, digests some fat cells and deposits others into the bloodstream. Other fat cells may migrate to other body parts, while others are excreted.

This past weekend I took the in-laws to DC, and while on a tour I heard this origin of the term “lobbyist” (also recounted on a Lobbying/Business Consulting firm’s site):

The term ?lobbyist? was coined in Washington, D.C.?s elegant Willard Hotel. Ulysses S. Grant took his brandy and cigars in the ornate hotel, and those who wanted to get his attention soon learned to wait for him to pass through the hotel lobby.

The All American League of Lobbyists‘ site gives an earlier origin:

The term “lobbyist” came into usage early in the 19th century, although stories of its origin vary. One account describes “lobby-agents” as the petitioners in the lobby of the New York State Capitol waiting to address legislators. Another version of the story describes the lobby of the Willard Hotel as the meeting site for both legislators and favor-seekers during the early 1800s. Either way, by 1835 the term had been shortened to “lobbyist” and was in wide usage in the U.S. Capitol, though frequently pejoratively.

Yahoo! News – Grohl Drums Up Support for Nine Inch Nails:

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has logged some time behind the drum kit with Nine Inch Nails, which is recording its first studio album since 1999′s ‘The Fragile.’

Dave Grohl seems too happy-go-lucky for Nine Inch Nails — but, then, he was too happy-go-lucky for Nirvana, too.

Why, in Shanghai, A License Plate Is A Precious Metal explains how Shanghai auctions off car plates:

Last month, nearly 20,000 people bid for 6,233 available car plates. The number of plates available varies according to a formula that counts the number of scrapped cars removed from the roads and monthly car sales in the city.

They certainly have a different attitude toward cars:

“Can you imagine if everybody who wanted a car could buy one?” asks Sun Jian, deputy director of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau.

Indeed, I can imagine that. Of course, he does have a point:

“By tomorrow, we’d be one big parking garage.”

Cars demand infrastructure.

Not everyone likes the auctions:

Such measures have met resistance, and not just from car buyers. Central government authorities, keen to develop China’s auto industry, oppose local efforts to curb individual car ownership. In 2000, they ordered cities across China to cancel 238 different types of auto-related fees. Assistant Commerce Minister Huang Hai recently berated Shanghai over its auction, saying it violates the rules and hurts car sales. “The car is a commodity that a modern society can’t be short of,” Mr. Huang said.

It’s in modern countries that we decry the car.