* “I have one of the best jobs in academia. Here’s why I’m walking away.”
* Tyler Cowen in conversation with Luigi Zingales, by far the best link in this set.
* The Victory of Oliver Sacks.
* “We’re heading Straight for AOL 2.0.” Except for me: I’m still using blogs when no one else is.
* “The Future of New York City Transportation: Goodbye Cars, Hello Rails: Young people are driving the city towards a carless future.”
* “Did Scarlett Thomas Miss Her Chance? What happens when the stars don’t align for a gifted novelist.” I find these “dark matter” stories as fascinating if not more so than the major success stories.
* Maybe this global slowdown is different; the de-materialization angle, particularly in conjunction with the proliferation of buying off the Internet, is particularly plausible.
* “Bret Easton Ellis, The Art of Fiction No. 216.”
* “There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts.” Except, you know, supply and demand.
* “America’s Fragile Constitution: The Founders misread history and established a dysfunctional system of government. A case for a little less reverence.” Or, things I’d never considered and now can’t un-consider.
I gave this passage in the Atlantic story a funny look:
After years of inertia, courts and regulators are starting to take on companies that categorize employees as contractors in order to avoid wage and benefit costs. With inequality and the declining middle class becoming major issues in the 2016 presidential race, politicians (at least on the Democratic side) are now also vowing to do something about the plight of contingent workers.
When I was an adjunct, I had the opposite problem: the state of Maryland classified me as a W-2 employee, when I would have loved to have been a 1099 contractor. Then I could have written off my mileage and tons of other expenses. I’d assumed that most adjuncts were, like me, W-2 employees…
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