bokonist

93 ms·

811.
by bokonist 18y ago
I found one of books: "Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform". You can read a full review here: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/000948.html
812.
by bokonist 18y ago
What proportion of top-level architects don't have architecture degrees? Today all of them do because it is legally required. My girlfriend is currently attending architecture school and it is beyond useless. She's learned an awful lot
813.
by bokonist 18y ago
Unfortunately a lot of this came from books and articles I read years ago. "Indoctrination" is a bit of a loaded word, perhaps I should have said "assimilation" or "acculturation". But it was definitely a major factor. I remember readin
814.
by bokonist 18y ago
The suburbs are isolated because of the decline of the school system. Parents are unwilling to put their kids in schools will they will get harassed and bullied by lower class kids. "Public schooling" results in private communities. It u
815.
by bokonist 18y ago
Technology and politics can move in opposite directions. Technology is far, far better. The political situation is much worse. Overall, life is far better. Unfortunately, we don't have an example of what adolescence would look like if w
816.
by bokonist 18y ago
It wasn't invented out of the blue, but it was an evolved creation of politics. In classic democratic fashion, a lot of factions were pushing their own agenda that ended up making the country as a whole worse off. The education establishm
817.
by bokonist 18y ago
The effect of this might just be to encourage colleges to drop their non-profit tax status. Or it might force the best faculty to all work for for-profit colleges, which makes a for-profit degree nearly required, which makes college less a
818.
by bokonist 18y ago
With the $4,000 tax credit this is really a massive subsidy for college tuition in return for a bit of make work. The trouble is that the iron law of college subsidies is that the subsidy gets capitalized into the tuition. The net result o
819.
by bokonist 18y ago
The US is the only major democracy that seems content to cheer the success of the lucky and laugh at the failure of the rest. That has nothing to do with it. The main problem with the U.S. is that it has had 150 years of racial warfare -
820.
by bokonist 18y ago
Read a few modern accounts of urban poverty, like "The Corner" and "Gang Leader for a day". Then compare it to accounts from the early 1900's such as "The Slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia", "Land of the Dollar", and
821.
by bokonist 18y ago
People do not vote out of self-interest. People vote because of how it makes them feel about themselves. Its not unlike going to church. While this may sound like an OK thing, in reality it is disastrous. We elect leaders who make us fee
822.
by bokonist 18y ago
I can't speak for MaysonL, but I learned reading and math almost entirely at home. ( I wasn't home schooled though, I learned to read from my mom reading me bed time stories). I learned long division at school, but the mental math that I u
823.
by bokonist 18y ago
I'm curious. Of the skills you have that earn you money, what percent were learned in public schools ( versus from parents, on your own, through social networks, on the job, etc)? And of the things you learned in school, how much of it wa
824.
by bokonist 18y ago
In the case of Sentinel, it was in their investment objects and allowed investments ( see this article for more info - http://seekingalpha.com/article/44695-duration-mismatch-at-s... ). If you paid close attention to what they were actua
825.
by bokonist 18y ago
There's nothing inherently wrong with debt-backed securities. They can be a very healthy part of an economy. Variations of debt backed securities have been around for centuries. The real problem is the maturity mismatching, which in this
826.
by bokonist 18y ago
I don't expect much intellectual truth and reconciliation from academia. What will actually happen is the Fed will continue to informally create money ( via guaranteeing debt MZM rather than actually printing greenbacks) to get through the
827.
by bokonist 18y ago
Here is a dataset that includes the value of the S&P and dividends, going back to the 1800's. http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm The dividend yield used to be much higher, the long term average is 4-5%. The current yield of 2
828.
by bokonist 18y ago
I am sympathetic to the Austrian critique, but there's a big problem with refusing to print any money and just letting the debt pyramid collapse. M0, the actual amount of green dollar bills in the world, is at $750 billion. MZM ( Money Ze
829.
by bokonist 18y ago
Artificial debt inflation is like heroin. The Keynesians correctly pointed out that going off of heroin causes you a heck of a lot of pain. Therefore, their solution is to never stop shooting heroin. Their cure for withdrawal is more hero
830.
by bokonist 18y ago
Unions in some sectors are more powerful than ever. Nurse unions in particular are very strong, much more so than they were fifty years ago. The education sector, construction, and government employees at all levels, have very strong unio
831.
by bokonist 18y ago
Btw, if you're interested, here is a good comment thread on the intellectual origins of modern architecture: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/03/dear_national_t.h... An excerpt: FvB is on the right track, I think. It is not the st
832.
by bokonist 18y ago
Indeed, sustainability is the new trend. However, recently I came across a random blog comment that noted that 19th century buildings were far more energy efficient: But look at lower Manhattan and all the traditional pre-war New York sky
833.
by bokonist 18y ago
I have not. I used to read the American Prospect to which Reich regularly contributed, but I haven't read that book.
834.
by bokonist 18y ago
In most cities or college campuses the older buildings are all more beautiful than buildings built after 1940, at least to my eye. The worst are the brutalist and modernist buildings of the 50's and 60's.
835.
by bokonist 18y ago
I've read plenty of both Krugman and others like him that make the same point. I find it entirely very unconvincing. For instance, take the city of New Haven, where I went to college. In the 1950's the city had a thriving industrial base
836.
by bokonist 18y ago
Architecture has been in awful state for the past 80 years. Just compare buildings built in the 20th century to those in the 19th century. My girlfriend is getting her masters in architecture now and it's an awful waste of money. She's l
837.
by bokonist 18y ago
The Republican Party has spent the last 28 years systematically destroying unions. The decline of the unions had much more to do with 1) competition from the American south, Mexico, and Asia, and 2) the rise of an American tribute empire,
838.
by bokonist 18y ago
I'm increasingly coming to believe that the worst wars - French Revolution Wars, US Civil War, World War I and World War II - were caused by the rise of universal suffrage. The decline of war is a result of the United States establishing a
839.
by bokonist 18y ago
Architects don't make much money. And within the field, there is strong inverse correlation between prestige of the job and the pay. Some of the most prestigious New York firms actually pay their employees less than minimum wage. And I'm
840.
by bokonist 18y ago
I think it's a great idea ( I've had the same one :-)) The problem, of course, is the legality of it, though perhaps there could be ways around it ( an offshore market? structure it as a mutual fund? ). You'd need a great lawyer ...

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