Loose Links:
Power Outages
22 May 2013
¶ “America is bad for your health,” @ kottke.org. “The pattern goes against any notion that moving to America improves every aspect of life.”
¶ Geroge Friedman spells out the biggest and best argument against “austerity”: “Spain’s Angry and Unemployed Young Men.” (RealClearWorld)
Driving in Spain, things look quiet, neat and empty. But in that emptiness there is something ominous, perhaps not so much post-apocalyptic as pre-apocalyptic. Spain is still under control, and the European elite still believe an answer will be found. But I don’t see the path that leads to the redemption of a generation’s hopes. There is time, but in my mind there isn’t enough. And given the attitude of the Eurocrats I have met, there is no sense among the elite that time is running out.
(See also: the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.)
¶ So: you’re a newly-minted PhD. How do you present yourself as such? Colin Eatock suggests that you’d better not — in the way he signs his ruefully amusing consideration of the problem. (3 Quarks Daily)
¶ At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova considers a handsome new book about maximizing creativity, Manage Your Day-to-Day. The ideas that she highlights are all very good ones, but they assume something that appears to have been omitted from the discussion: the vital importance of personal autonomy. It is impossible to attempt a routine — and a routine of “small steps” is definitely what Popova’s gurus are advocating — a routine for creative work without the freedom to follow hunches for as long as they seem to be promising. This is not something that most employers can second-guess without spoiling the project.
¶ Maggie Koerth-Baker’s musings on conspiracy theories suggest a method of rebuttal that just might fail for being too sophisticated. You reply to the theorist that such ideas tend to be held by people who feel powerless and taken advantage of — and that such people would be the last to know about any actual conspiracies. (NYT, via 3 Quarks Daily)