Archive for the 'Collapse' Category
Woman Kills Baby Because He Cried While She Played Farmville (A Game on Facebook)
October 28th, 2010Via: Florida Times Union: A Jacksonville mother charged with shaking her baby to death has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Alexandra V. Tobias, 22, was arrested after the January death of 3-month-old Dylan Lee Edmondson. She told investigators she became angry because the baby was crying while she was playing a computer game called Farmville […]
Janitors With Ph.D.s
October 27th, 2010Via: AlterNet: For politicians, boosting college graduation rates has always been a fairly uncontroversial goal to support. The Obama administration is doing so, rather relentlessly, through a number of initiatives designed to better prepare students for college and support them once they get there. The assumptions are 1) that students who graduate from college have […]
U.S. Slips to 49th in Life Expectancy
October 26th, 2010Via: Reuters: Americans die sooner than citizens of a dozen other developed nations and the usual suspects — obesity, traffic accidents and a high murder rate — are not to blame, researchers reported on Thursday. Instead, poor healthcare may be to blame, the team at Columbia University in New York reported. They found that 15-year […]
99 Weeks: When Unemployment Benefits Run Out
October 25th, 2010Via: CBS News: The economic jam we’re in has topped even the Great Depression in one respect: never have we had a recession this deep with a recovery this flat. Unemployment has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 months. Congress did something that it has never done before – it […]
Boston College Law Student Asks for Refund on Tuition
October 21st, 2010*chortle* Via: Boston Herald: A third-year Boston College Law School student facing dismal job prospects and a mountain of student loan debt has offered the prestigious Hub institution a unique deal: Keep the degree … and give me back my tuition! In an open letter to BC Law’s Interim Dean George Brown posted on EagleiOnline— […]
Toddlers’ Favorite Toy: The iPhone
October 20th, 2010Via: New York Times: THE bedroom door opened and a light went on, signaling an end to nap time. The toddler, tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed, clambered to a wobbly stand in his crib. He smiled, reached out to his father, and uttered what is fast becoming the cry of his generation: “iPhone!” The iPhone has revolutionized […]
France to Run Out of Fuel in Days as Strikes Escalate
October 18th, 2010Via: Independent: Petrol pumps could run dry in France by Wednesday, experts warned yesterday, as the stand-off over pension reforms reached crisis point. Airlines advised pilots to refuel abroad and UFIP, the country’s oil industry association, said that if strikes continued at all 12 of France’s refineries, then national shortages would follow. Christine Lagarde, France’s […]
Federal Reserve: Aggressive Easing Options Considered
October 17th, 2010Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. Oil is over $81. Food commodities are rallying. And now… Inflation is the solution? Via: Reuters: Two top Federal Reserve officials argued for further aggressive action by the central bank, with one saying the economy needs “much more” help and the […]
The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives
October 13th, 2010I personally know someone who recently got a tenure track position in a French department. Yes! It’s true. (I exhale deeply and lean back in my chair with sense of awe and wonderment at his achievement.) Of course, he might simply be fired after four to eight years—increasingly, this is how alleged tenure track jobs […]
‘Dying Communities See Salvation in New Prisons’
October 10th, 2010Hope and Change: Replacing collapsed industries with prisons. Via: AP: Mike Secinore is pinning his hopes on prison. Fresh with a criminal justice degree from the local community college, the 20-year-old Berlin native plans to apply for a corrections officer job at the federal prison expected to open in the city next summer. There aren’t […]
