[Graduate school question]

Well, what used to happen is that you were promoted into a position due to your experience, personality, etc. that was related to previous positions but different enough that there was a skills gap. So the company paid for a Master's degree to bridge that gap. What your previous degree was in was less important, because you were building off your experience, not your old degree, and universities were less picky about educational qualifications because the funding was all fee-based. In academia, many Master's degrees were viewed as cash cows -- sort of PhD-lite for the private sector that didn't rely on grant funding.

 

I think what is changing is that companies are less likely to pay for that kind of extensive training anymore -- that requires a sort of multi-year ongoing commitment that isn't as popular today. So the old role of a Master's degree isn't quite the same. Often it is now individuals paying for Master's degrees out of their own pockets (sometimes quite painful at universities that still charge business-class prices), under the hope it will make them competitive for positions that are not guaranteed. I think everyone in both the public and private sector is still trying to figure out how this will work.

[GMO foods..bother you?]

For me, the annoyance is that it's not easy to find more info -- "genetically modified" tells me that something has been done, but not what.

 

Sometimes the concern isn't health-related, but ethical. One rather controversial form of modification is adding copy protection to seeds (I think the formal term is "Genetic Use Restriction Technology"). Wherever use is allowed, it places an incredible burden on poor farmers, who can be forced into buying new seeds each growing season if access to regular seeds is restricted.

 

There was an interesting article on it last year in the Wilson Quarterly, mentioning its role in the changing economy of India after de-regulation:

 

In the early 1990s, while he was nearing the end of his law program, life on Manam’s family farm changed dramatically. As India’s economy teetered on the brink of collapse in the late 1980s, the government acquiesced to a host of structural reforms imposed by the World Bank in exchange for investment loans. Among those reforms was an agricultural policy that deregulated the Indian seed market and brought it under the jurisdiction of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Seeds that Indian farmers had used their whole lives became the intellectual property of American corporations like Monsanto and Cargill, who collected royalties on their acquisitions and forced seed prices to skyrocket.

Manam’s family had to stop growing their own seeds, which they had normally replanted every year, and were forced to buy more expensive seeds, ones that had been genetically modified so that they could not be replanted in future seasons. The family also had to switch from homemade fertilizer to a more expensive foreign brand. Nationwide, imported food products made cheap by heavy subsidies from western countries flooded the market, driving the price down on the crops that Manam’s family sold.

“My input costs shot up from 4,000 to 15,000 rupees [$62 to $235],†remembers Manam’s brother Veeranjaneyu, who still works as a farmer. “The yield increased a little, but not nearly enough to cover the increase in input costs. And my crops sold for less money than before. I was forced to take out six lakhs [$9,412] in loans from private moneylenders. The loan has been a horrible burden on my life.â€

["The gun control nuts have been quiet about this because it doesn't fit the narrative"]

The narrative jabs are due to an ongoing problem that both sides are struggling with -- that post-modernism seems to have broken one of the key tenets of Enlightenment thinking, that The Truth Speaks For Itself, if only we can uncover its voice. While The Truth may indeed speak for itself, we as human beings are deaf without our hearing aids. While The Truth may shout, "It's raining!" for all to hear, it's our worldview that allows us to listen; it determines how we feel about a fact, how we act on it. Is it a happy occasion, or a sad one? Should we run for cover or go jump in puddles?

 

In human affairs, power often comes from controlling the human reaction to the truth, more than from the truth itself. This has lead to a greater and greater focus on the narrative surrounding the facts, even as it helps create a future world more similar to Orwell's 1984 (which I honestly don't think anybody really wants) than one that Enlightenment thinkers hoped for.

[Wedding guest clothing question (male)]

Depends on the couple getting married. General rule of thumb is to never be dressed more formally than the bride and groom. :)

[The rise of patriarchy]

It may be that you are getting customers who are service-seekers; they go to restaurants not because of the food, but because being doted on by waitstaff makes them feel special. Those kind of customers are complicated, because while a customer who receives food that is not to their liking does not think that the cook is doing it as a personal insult, service-seekers who feel slighted often do take it personally.

 

Also, obviously, not all customers are service-seekers. To some, for instance, good service might be being able to talk with their table-mates without interruptions, yet never needing to go looking for someone to get something; doting waitstaff would be an annoyance, at best.

 

This can make figuring out the right approach tricky.

 

 

["Big Brother" in the workplace. Is this commonplace these days?]

Sometimes it is a sign of a bad workplace culture. Employees who are mistreated but who are too poor to quit like to find subtle ways to sabotage their workplaces, even though from a rational perspective that's not helping anybody. I think it's part of an attitude that develops in certain unhealthy environments, where the world becomes something with only two modes, "taking advantage" or "being taken advantage of", and the real world of hard work leading to rewards gets obscured.

 

Once a culture like that is established, rehabilitating it can be complicated -- so some employers just go for double-or-nothing and tighten up the security. Employees then feel more disrespected and come up with new and innovative ways to express their unhappiness in a way that won't get them caught.  :)

[Homemade kombucha?]

Much like homebrewing beer, the key thing is to make sure everything is sanitized. This is especially important with kombucha, because unlike beer, we don't know exactly which cultures are essential and which ones are optional -- so if something funky sneaks in from outside and contaminates your scoby, you'd need to begin again at the beginning. Mold is a big culprit here; kombucha is produced by a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeasts  (SCOBY) -- you don't want any other non-SCOBY guests.

 

Even though it is tea, be sure to ferment it in glass -- the tart flavors produced can leech metals out of ceramic glaze, and there have been a few cases of people making themselves sick by trying to brew kombucha in a ceramic teapot.

 

The most traditional way is using black tea. Most commercial kombucha in the U.S. is "West Coast style", meaning it uses green tea (or occasionally oolong).

 

 

[Strength Training for Newbies]

Most important is finding something that can become an easy part of your weekly routine. Doing a light routine reliably every week for a year leads to better results and less injuries than jumping into an extreme routine and then burning out after a few months.

 

Maybe a little dated, but I like ExRx; they provide a good outline of what exercises where, and provide visual cues. Also, they aren't obviously in bed with a supplement company (a big problem with a lot of the free stuff online).

 

 

[S/o (sort of) Pet Ownership is Becoming Elitist.]

For my parents' generation, the resonant scene was that from Old Yeller, where taking a beloved pet out back to kill them yourself when they became a danger to themselves or others was seen as a rite of passage into adulthood. Norms now are moving towards sending modern Old Yellers to a veterinary medical specialist who may make an annual salary equivalent to their human counterparts.

 

It's always been a hard choice; the difference now I think is in advertising and isolation. If you live far away from your relatives, don't know your neighbors, and work keeps friendships superficial, the warmth of a beloved pet can be very precious. Unfortunately, marketers know this. There is a lot of money involved in pet end-of-life; as such, there is an incentive to change public opinion.

[Do women really say the opposite of what they mean?]

As something fundamentally related to being a woman, no. I think really it is more that people often obey the social customs of the environment they grew up in, and many social customs are based on gender roles.

[Would You Be Interested/Offended if this Club Were Offered?]

Exposure without understanding can sometimes increase prejudice rather than decrease it. What exposure does is clear away myths.

 

If someone from another country had heard that white Southerners in America pledged allegiance to the Confederate flag rather than the American flag, for instance, meeting white American Southerners would show that that isn't true -- but it wouldn't explain the Confederate flag, either. Whenever a group has a distinctive item or practice but there is no context to explain it, people love to come up with "just-so stories" to fill the vacuum.

 

Just-so stories are much harder to get rid of once they have been established, because it is harder to show that an interpretation is false than it is to show that an observation is false.

[The positive side of starting at community college...]

It can be a chance to meet people who come from different lifestyles and cultures. Someone can meet people at a community college that  they probably wouldn't meet at their high school or a 4-year college.

 

For instance, many community colleges have strong ESL programs; taking an ESL course can introduce a person to recent immigrants who maybe one wouldn't have talked to otherwise.

[why is "leadership" such a big deal to colleges?]

I can think of a historical reason that may apply in some cases -- it has to do with the culture of the old Ivy League.

 

After the schools opened up to scholarship students, there was a backlash of reverse snobbery. There were all sorts of negative slang terms for students who appeared to be trying too hard: "grinds", "tools", "black shoes" (from the fact that scholarship students often didn't understand or couldn't afford to follow a prep school dress code, so wore black shoes to everything), etc. The ideal was to appear as though success was in your blood, not your sweat; that the reason you were successful was due to the same reason your parents were successful and grandparents were successful (thus rationalizing the inter-generational status of the well-born). You can still see remnants of this in the Ivy League today, in both leadership requirements and in a cultural practice I've heard called "the duck paddle", where students will study their rears off while doing their best to make it appear as though they never study at all -- the ideal being the duck, who placidly glides across the glassy mirror of the water while paddling furiously in secret just underneath.

 

Not sure about the non-Ivies.

[Social media and the things you wish didn't know about people]

Whoever made the decision that the word "culture" in English should refer to both the shared beliefs and attitudes of a group of people and the thing that grows when bacteria find a food source was a very wise person.

 

Certain ideas are very infectious, and as post-modernism has taught us, the most infectious ideas aren't always the most truthful. Controlled exposure to certain infectious ideas can be helpful, especially if it is a few degrees of separation from a truly persuasive source (such as the non-convincing memes that Facebook friends post), as it gives people something to work with in the process of intellectually vaccinating themselves.

[11 officers wounded, 5 Dead in Dallas]

It looks like it's been cleared up, although given the way it was cleared up one hopes there was only one gunman left. Apparently they tried to open a line of negotiations with the suspected sniper, and then used that as a pretense to sneak in a bomb and detonate it -- http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/2016/07/texas_official_identifies_dallas_sniper_attack_suspect_as_micah_johnson_25

[Mid-life Crisis Alert: Ever just feel like you're wasting your life?]

Money is part of this picture. I see DH is soooooo done with being the earner. (He's a contractor.) The constant need to shake the money tree, the arguments with payers, the debates about jobs that are over his head or just undesirable in some way. He left this morning at 4:30am because he has a job in D.C. If he felt at liberty, he would have turned that job down. So then I am convulsed with guilt because I feel like a taker. But I'm also not in a position to spring into the job market, even if I put DS in school. It's not as though I have some amazing, in-demand job skills and degree just waiting to be put to use.

I think the distinction to make here is between "lÄ«berÄlis" and "obnoxius". The lÄ«berÄlis of "liberal education" means that it is an education for the free; the opposite of a liberal education is (funnily enough) an "obnoxious education", an education for those indentured to others.

 

While we aspire to be free, life does not always allow it; rejecting the wants of wealthy companies, wealthy individuals, the landlords, corporate or individual, who own where we sleep -- that is a very risky business. From a strictly practical perspective, an obnoxious education dedicated to learning how best to serve the rich will lead to the happiest outcomes.

 

With an obnoxious education, there's no point in studying Plato's Apology -- it's not going to make it any easier to apologize for being late to your night shift job. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress isn't going to help you progress in your efforts to get a food-handler's permit. Better to keep an eye on the needs of the market, and ignore the larger questions in life.

 

That's not what we want, though, or what we want for our families. Your efforts are giving your kids a taste of freedom that they might not have again for a while. You are allowing them to see a larger life than one that ends at the bottom of a spreadsheet, even if that is where reality may lead them.

 

That's an important gift, and shouldn't be disregarded.

[Biography Recommendations?]

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is a classic. Project Gutenberg has free proofread Kindle and EPUB versions available, while the Internet Archive has free PDF copies.

 

While not a biography, exactly, the Adams-Jefferson letters shine a lot of light on both parties; they corresponded until the end of both their lives, and talked about a variety of subjects; maybe a useful supplement to a Thomas Jefferson or John Adams biography.

[New job, no longer homeschooling, having trouble adjusting. HELP please]

I noticed you said riding in the car instead of driving; if you aren't the driver, that hour back and forth can be valuable time. If you have a smartphone, you may find that there is a larger variety of tasks (or just enjoyable hobbies) that can be completed while sitting in the passenger seat.

 

Depending on how long your lunch break is, you may be able to build in some light exercise; a walk after eating is supposed to help with digestion anyway. :)

 

With cooking and cleaning, if any of the devices you normally use have automated timers, they might be really helpful now; that way the coffee will be ready when you wake up, the rice will be ready when you get home, the clothes washer will ding when you walk through the door, and the cat will already have been fed.

 

 

[question re: attitudes towards the office of president (not political)]

That makes sense.  And today it wouldn't be as necessary because there would be so many ways to get a recording without having to bother to record it yourself. 

 

I think it depends. By recording it yourself, you get to decide what is important; sometimes the important part may end up being different than what everyone expected.

 

Maybe as an example, many old TV commercials have never received a formal release -- the way they ended up on YouTube was from people recording programs themselves on VHS and including the commercials.

 

Or with radio, many old radio shows have never received formal releases -- they were not seen as worth preserving, or the originals were lost. It was only due to home recordists that we still have them.

 

The reason the Internet Archive was founded was similar -- people would remember an old website they had visited, go to re-visit it, and find it gone; often gone forever unless they had had the foresight to save a personal copy.

[question re: attitudes towards the office of president (not political)]

People who are politically invested in a candidate for president often remain invested in them after they are elected.

​When recording was new, president's speeches were less bland -- speechwriters were more concerned about the speech as a whole than about the risk of sound-bytes being taken out-of-context, which leads to a less bland, more coherent speech style.

 

For instance, FDR talking about economic conditions in 1934:

 

http://web2.millercenter.org/speeches/audio/spe_1934_0930_roosevelt.mp3​

[People who post everything on FB]

When did they start using the internet? A lot of attitudes that were taught to new users in the pre-Facebook era sort of went away post-Facebook. Vernor Vinge's story, "True Names", which described a future world where people who were identified online by their True Names became indentured to those who ID'ed them (due to the ability to use identity fraud to control their Real World lives), resonated pretty strongly -- you never posted anything personal online.

​

​After Facebook, there was a push towards more openness -- people played up the problems that come with anonymity (rudeness and hatefulness, stranger danger, a perceived lack of accountability) and downplayed those that came from a loss of privacy. This is slowly starting to reverse itself as people become more aware of how "free" social media pays for itself, but many people who first got online after 2004 or so may never have been exposed to the alternate privacy-focused view.

 

​Alternately, it may be that they are feeling a little underappreciated; if nobody eating the breakfast seems especially appreciative, the cheers coming from online can seem especially gratifying. :)

[Please help me identify this pill]

In case you are wondering why they would store ibuprofen with weed, the answer is that some folks believe that taking ibuprofen can reduce the symptoms of being stoned: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-marijuana-ibuprofen-alzheimers-buzzkill-20131121-story.html

[s/o on swearing in public (kind of): Vaping in public?]

I think maybe a distinction should be made between flavored and unflavored e-cigarettes. As pointed out above, the unflavored variety is basically scentless, since other than nicotine it only contains an odorless carrier, usually either vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol, or a mixture of the two. Generally the more propylene glycol, the thicker the "smoke" (propylene glycol is what they use to make the fog in fog machines).

 

The culprit is usually in the flavorings -- you end up with the same problems one might get from being around cheap cologne or other strong artificial aromas.

 

Unfortunately, the market is booming primarily because of those flavored varieties, not so much because of its ability to help smokers quit.

[Advertising jingles indelibly imprinted into your brain]

Although I wasn't there for it the first time around, I was really impressed with Coca-Cola's "Swing the Jingle" radio advertising campaign. They came up with a jingle song ("Things Go Better With Coca-Cola") and then took popular acts and had them do their own unique covers of it. Someone on YouTube collected a bunch of them together.

 

Jan & Dean's surf version is pretty catchy:

 

 

 

 

 

[What makes a school a public Ivy?]

It is a public school that is patronized in large numbers by "the Ivy League type", those who went to the traditional New England prep schools (St. Paul's, Andover, Exeter, Groton, etc.) favored by the American upper class instead of high school.

 

The traditional path for Eastern upper class students was to enroll as a legacy to whichever of the Big Three (Harvard, Yale, or Princeton) their family usually attended, or to the local Ivy favorite, which was usually whichever Ivy League school was local to their state, or maybe one of the Little Three (Amherst, Wesleyan, or Williams). If they found themselves unable to get into any of those schools due to academic or behavioral problems, then they would get a more personalized education at one of the other NESCAC small colleges.

 

Originally, there was only one Public Ivy, the University of Virginia. Getting a law degree at UVA was seen as an acceptable graduate route for those interested in a public service career. (Those with more interest in international relations or the humanities would get a postsecondary degree overseas at Oxford or Cambridge). Over time, this halo effect caused a rise in status for UVA undergrads as well.

 

I'm not sure when things started to change... maybe during the 70s? In addition to the NESCAC, less academically inclined prep schoolers were ending up at the "ski colleges" like the University of Colorado or the University of Vermont.

 

Then came the Public Ivy book, which redefined public ivy as meaning a rigorous public education at an affordable price.

 

I think now any public university that thinks it can get away with it wants to be known as a Public Ivy, as it does not have a strict definition, yet increases the perceived desirability of the school.