Mothers Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Free-Lance Journalists

You'll spend the rest of your natural life trying to squeeze a $200 fee out of Rupert Murdoch.

[Two comparisons come to mind: one, my friend Michael who used to run a Snap-on Tools franchise.  He said he spent half his time trying to squeeze money out of his customers and the other half trying to wrestle commissions away from his boss.  And two, my ex student who bagged carpentry for law school. He said in carpentry, the prime was always telling him--well, I can't pay you now, but I tell you what, I'll give you a bigger piece of my next job.

Oh, But Define "Useless"

The Wichita Bureau showcases a Daily Beast piece on the "20 most useless college degrees"--and oddly, "German" and "Classics" are not on the list (perhaps too trivial to notice?). Some are easy to guess--journalism and advertising, low pay, lousy prospects, declining availability of openings. What puzzles me is the number of artsy fields in which--though they are on the list--openings are said to be on the increase. Hello, is the world really going to need more theater majors? And what is it with "Mechanical Engineering Technology"--small number of grads, fairly good salary prospects?   Why is the number of openings in decline while all those artsy fields are going up?

[But wait, I just noticed what looks suspiciously like a glitch in the data. For "number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:" the lists reports the same number in half dozen or so different fields--89,140." Looks to me like maybe somebody took the gross number for a whole bunch of different subfields and reported it in each one of the subfields separately.]  

Unemployment Datapoint of the Day

Big guy in work clothes chatting in the breakfast room:

Yeh, when business started to slow down, I laid off my least valuable people, the ones I could most do without. Later on, I had to let the better ones go. But the weakest ones got out early and so they found new jobs. The better ones are still hurting. I would have done them a favor by laying them off earlier.

Don't know what business, but there are a lot of utility trucks in the parking lot.

Repent, for the End is Nigh!

Looking for a quick bite before the theatre in London the other night, we blundered into what looked like a promising wine bar.  We ordered a promising rosé and a bit of raw fish, but before the food arrived, it sank into us: we were older by a factor of two, maybe two and a half than anybody else in the room.  And it seems we had made our way in just in time: in front of our eyes the room filled up, and a queue started to grow in the street.  The decibel level went high enough that Mrs. B discreetly dismembered a Kleenex and improvised earplugs for herself.

None of this is a complaint.  The fish was fine and the wine, as they say, drinkable.  But it did propel me into a moment of Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt as I found myself wondering/marveling as to just who these people were.  Provisional first take: this was probably about the brightest, cleverest, most prosperous, best looking crowd you were likely to find anywhere in town just now (ignoring us, which they were pretty well able to do).  And they were having a wonderful time, and life was good.   Only then did it sink in on me--this is Friday night, this is the celebratory beginning of a good weekend.  And then it struck me: there's a party (maybe a dozen parties) just like this going on now (well--adjust for time zones) in New York, in San Francisco, in Sidney, in St. Petersburg (yes?)--and downscale versions of the same in Charlotte, in Grenoble, maybe Sverdlovsk.  The wine and the money flow and times are good.

Half an hour later we made a deft and unobserved exit and so end of story.  But I kept thinking  of this crowd all weekend--as, for example, I read about all those over-50s who are waking up to the fact that they may never find a job again. Or when I read about that guy who is so outraged because he and his wife only make $455,000 a year.  Or--but then my mind goes back to the wine bar and ask myself: what if some guy in a nightgown with a scraggly beard stumbled in here holding a sign that asid "Repent for the End is Nigh!"   Would they throw him out?  Would they eat him alive?  Nah, spirits were much to good for that.  My best guess is that someone would put an arm around him and sit him down and buy him a drink.

Afterthought: maybe the guy with the sign is me.

Income/Education/Employment: Another "Somethiing I Don't Understand"

I suppose this one is tricky, but it still doesn't sound right. This morning's San Francisco Chronicle (scrounged in the coffee shop) reports that more than 70,000 children are growing up in gay and lesbian households in California. No surprise so far, but I am intrigued by the particulars for the SFO Bay Area:

Parent's Education--59.1% College
Median Household Income--$83,060

But then:

Parent's employment--22.6 % unemployed

Whoa--60 percent college, $83 thou income, and 22.6 percent unemployed? There is something about this world I don't understand.

[Yes, I know, these are medians, not means, and medians can be tricky. Example: suppose there are 100 people. Two have incomes of $83 thou. Forty-nine have incomes of a zillion each and 49 have incomes of zero. The median is $83 thou. Now, suppose all 49 of the zeros get jobs paying $82 thou a year. The median is still $83 thou (I have seen this as the "Bill Gates walks into the room" principle and I guess I follow). But it still doesn't sound right.]

Afterthought: You say it is available on line? Yes, probably so, am just too lazy to look.