Forms of Inquiry: 11/2/14 Today's Inquiries

The sun is in my eyes. Curse you time change!

The Links:

Here's an article about what it's like to be a young person interviewing for a job in the "new service economy." Stories like these are the future of work in America.

“So, as you might already know, I started this company while I was getting my MBA at Harvard. Before this, I worked for McKinsey & Company…” he paused to gauge my reaction, “which is one of the top business consulting firms in the world.” I smiled, feeling slightly small in comparison, with my bachelor’s from a cheap state school and less-than-glamorous work experience.

“The idea for Handybook occurred to me when I was studying at Harvard. It was so hard to find a reliable cleaning service to tidy my apartment! You know?” He smiled hard at me.

I gave a smile and nodded back, as if I was familiar with the difficulties of finding a good cleaner when I was a student. I’d actually worked retail part-time throughout school so I could afford to pay $200/month rent splitting an un-air conditioned house in Atlanta with three other people. Hiring a maid would have been laughable.

The Upshot examined its readers' habits when presented with midterm election predictions.

And he sees that 85 percent of the time that your first two spins show a Democratic victory, you’ll keep spinning, perhaps hoping to see a Republican victory.The same logic says that those who see the Democrats as likely to win are more likely to spin again after seeing the Republicans win in their first two spins, and once again, 85 percent of you do so.

Time has a pretty good synopsis of the war on teacher tenure. Having never worked in a system with strong tenure (or any tenure actually) I don't know how to feel about this issue. My understanding so far is that the real push is to privatize and corporatize as many schools as possible and collective bargaining is a significant obstacle to those moves.

Salon, meanwhile, says we must hate children to be treating their schools so poorly. Obviously they don't recognize that schools are meant to promote the ~~white~~ right kind of people while incarcerating and defrauding everyone else.

Speaking of which, we're doing a great job of driving the poor away from the US banking system assuring they'll never get to benefit from things like compounding interest or a checking account for paying bills online.

A Bank of America employee lives out the dream of thousands of gamergaters by killing two Hong Kong ~~call girls~~ hookers.

If the GOP gains majority in the Senate, they'll probably bury the CIA torture report. Surprised? Those men are going god's work and can't be held accountable.

A brief history of the Government's use of biological weapons on US soil.

In 1942, President Roosevelt signed into action the first biological warfare program; backed by the National Academy of Sciences, the initiative sought to develop biological weapons and explore vulnerability of the U.S. to such attacks. A government body -- the War Research Service (WRS) -- was created to oversee these activities, and George W Merck (of the Merck Pharmaceutical Company) was appointed to leadership.

Why do male birth control options suck?

Awesome interactive: What the World Eats.

I didn't know Jack London wrote SciFi!

"I can't see," he muttered. "You look and see if you can make out the date, Edwin."

The boy laughed.

"You're a great Granser," he cried delightedly, "always making believe them little marks mean something."

The old man manifested an accustomed chagrin as he brought the coin back again close to his own eyes.

"2012," he shrilled, and then fell to cackling grotesquely. "That was the year Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United States by the Board of Magnates. It must have been one of the last coins minted, for the Scarlet Death came in 2013. Lord! Lord!--think of it! Sixty years ago, and I am the only person alive to-day that lived in those times. Where did you find it, Edwin?"