Use Your Brain

The current trigger warning/microaggression climate is bad for our mental health.

Here is more on student loans. Mitch Daniels has a possible solution.

Are we working too hard?

Is the Asian-American stereotype of being really smart actually helpful? The fact of this article is that the reason why it seems as if so many Asians are successful students is because their parents were, and a disproportionately high number of Asian-Americans who immigrate here have advanced degrees. This is definitely one of those times when always looking in terms of race (which divide us) rather than other, more obvious factors (which unite us) backfires.

Here is an ode to the egg sandwich for breakfast.

Who uses Uber in New York? The answer is more complicated than one might think.

Responses:

1. That's a nice story, and I appreciate the sentiment from the Dalai Lama (the version I've heard is that, if you are sad and want from others, give to them and you'll be happier).

2. Eh, they're a little off in some big ways.

3. Damn. That's pretty clever, though.

4. She's apparently a Disney creation. I briefly got her confused with Malala. That was way off...

5. It's an interesting idea - it seems to improve the information asymmetry problem. That said... NERDS!

6. Funny, but there's a huge missed opportunity. Clearly they should have put a smiling picture of Ross next to the smiling poo emoji.

R2R:

1. There are claims that someone at the event immediately talked to Carter and told him his comments were inappropriate, but those claims lack much punch given that the video was up for so long. The going theory to explain this and many of the NFL's other screw-ups is that there isn't a unified way of dealing with stuff. Whoever told Carter he was out of line apparently had no idea that the NFL has a website where they post stuff. The main reason I object to institutions like the NFL (or universities or anyone else's workplace) implementing criminal justice-like apparatuses to punish people for bad acts is that they are so bad at it that the results are arbitrary and meaningless, in part because their organizations are geared towards something else (e.g. football or research/education).

2. To be sure, there are a lot of picky eaters out there who just want to eat hamburgers with ketchup and nothing else all day. I'd like to see a Venn diagram of this problem.

3. Can we start an organization called Activists Don't Matter?

5. In my view, underwriting would mean that law schools would not be able to count on gullible students with fat loan checks to take in every year and do nothing for. If a school (e.g. Cooley, my favorite example) turned out crap lawyers and had terrible employment statistics, lenders would balk and lending money to kids who wanted to attend there, so Cooley would have to turn things around or else lose out on its biggest source of revenue. That would give them tremendous incentive to do things that would help students get jobs. I think requiring law schools to have "skin in the game" (i.e. having to pay back some or all of unemployed graduates' loans) creates a moral hazard risk for the graduates. If they decide to get lazy, for example, or they decide to take a flyer on law school because it might be interesting but then after graduating decide that it's Wachtell or no job, or some other narrow requirements, then the law school is still on the hook for the graduates' idiocy. Students need to have full incentive to do well in school and pay back their loans, and blaming the law schools after the fact with a "skin in the game" policy is letting them off the hook.

Also, even if the shrinking pool of lawyers caused law schools to continue to raise tuition, the shrinking pool of lawyers might also cause law firms to raise their salaries, which would be an equally valid solution to crippling loan debt.

R2R2R2R:

3. It doesn't have to be hard. In elementary school, we had a lot of times where we had to work quietly at our desk, but I would finish early and be bored out of my mind. You could have a system where the teacher held class sessions that the whole class might participate in (e.g. learning about a discrete topic in preparation for a field trip that was grade level-independent), but have math instruction on a computer with a virtual teacher. We effectively had that in elementary school starting in third grade anyway because we would rotate classes for certain subjects. But while the other kids were struggling with addition, brighter students could move on with multiplication or whatever. Maybe it would be difficult to talk to your classmates about every subject, but with each passing year and each new class you could shuffle the students or else form small learning groups for different subjects. I don't know how much of this is necessary because home schooled kids often turn out amazing. But I can think of a lot of things you can do to allow kids who want to learn more to learn more. And I certainly don't think that retarding some kids' thirst for education for social reasons is a worthwhile tradeoff. I was a social pariah in elementary school, and I wasn't exactly Mr. Popularity in middle school or high school, and I'm so happy I 1) didn't turn out like my classmates and 2) don't keep up with most of them because I'm not missing much.

Btw, you would have found out those kids were dumb one way or another...

B