Rethink.

• LGF, “TSA Threat­ens Blog­gers for Post­ing New Screen­ing Rules” — from the arti­cle: the TSA sub­poe­nas and con­fis­cates the com­put­ers of two blog­gers who posted their new screen­ing direc­tive — even though the doc­u­ment was not classified.
• Der Spiegel inter­views Christo­pher Cald­well re: Mus­lim inte­gra­tion in Europe. Cald­well: Two-thirds of the imams in France are on wel­fare. There is noth­ing wrong with being an imam. But I don’t think the French are very happy about pay­ing what is effec­tively a state sub­sidy for reli­gion in that way.
• Brian Crox­all, “The Absent Pres­ence: Today’s Fac­ulty” — read the whole thing; along with Mark Slouka’s “Dehu­man­ized: When Math and Sci­ence Rule the School,” this is a fright­en­ingly accu­rate por­trait of how lit­tle Amer­ica cares for the sort of edu­ca­tion its own Founders had. From the post: Again, I’m not at the MLA this year because it’s not eco­nom­i­cally fea­si­ble. I had hoped to be here for job interviews—as well as to speak as a mem­ber of this panel dis­cus­sion. This was my third year on the job mar­ket, and I applied to every job in North Amer­ica that I was even remotely qual­i­fied for: all 41 of them. Unfor­tu­nately, I did not receive any inter­views, despite hav­ing added two arti­cles accepted by peer-reviewed jour­nals, five new classes, and sev­eral new awards and hon­ors to my vita. Accord­ing to my records, apply­ing to those 41 jobs cost me $257.54. I was pre­pared to pay the addi­tional expenses of attend­ing the MLA ($125 for reg­is­tra­tion, $279.20 for a plane ticket, approx­i­mately $180.00 for lodg­ing with a room­mate at a total of $584.20) out of pocket so that I could have a chance of get­ting one of those 41 jobs. [1] I was even luck­ier than most fac­ulty (remem­ber, most of today’s fac­ulty are con­tin­gent) in that my insti­tu­tion was will­ing to pro­vide me with $200 sup­port to attend con­fer­ences through­out the aca­d­e­mic year. But once it became appar­ent that I wasn’t going to be hav­ing any inter­views, I could no longer jus­tify the out­lay of $400.00 out of a salary that puts me only $1,210 above the 2009 Fed­eral Poverty Guide­lines. [2] (And yes, that means I do qual­ify for food stamps while work­ing a full-time job as a professor!)
• Jay Cost, “Why the Fil­i­buster is More Essen­tial Now Than Ever” — the dis­cus­sion of the logic of Fed­er­al­ist #10 is brief, but impor­tant. Yes, peo­ple do learn things in polit­i­cal sci­ence classes — some­times very impor­tant things.
• Megan McAr­dle, “The Ben­e­fits of Buy­ing a House” — I actu­ally didn’t know there was a case for rent­ing over buy­ing, but appar­ently there is one, and it seems to be pretty solid. Still.
• Dar­ren Rowse, “How to Make $30,000 a Year Blog­ging” — I’m think­ing that if I mon­e­tize the blog, peo­ple will actu­ally pro­mote it more. I don’t know if this is a bad logic or not, but it does seem to me that many dis­miss the things given for free, and think that a lack of money sur­round­ing a thing means a lack of seri­ous­ness. I dunno — your thoughts are welcome.

• Links, 1/4/2010
• Links, 1/5/2010
• Links, 12/10/08
• Links, 3/26/09
• Links, 7/21/09

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