Sunday, September 7, 2014

Sunday Reading Room:

I wouldn't say it's been a great news day, but a few things caught my eye.

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Why Don’t More Men Go Into Teaching? (NY Times)
"Ed­u­ca­tors, ad­vo­cates and law­mak­ers fight bit­ter­ly about tenure, aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards and the preva­lence of test­ing, but one thing most sides tend to agree on is the im­por­tance of rais­ing the sta­tus of teach­ing so the pro­fes­sion will at­tract the best can­di­dates...  The me­di­an pay for an el­e­men­tary school teacher is now about $40,000."

This is like asking why more kids don't study engineering in college.  Why?  Because the smart kids see where the money is, and they go there.  Even trained engineers often head into finance, and those with more of a liberal arts bent head for law school.

Speaking personally, I would love to teach junior high or high school history, but as the article says, it won't pay my mortgage.


For Jihad Recruits, a Pipeline From Minnesota to Militancy (NY Times)
"The rad­i­cal­iza­tion of the men prompt­ed fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions and brought enor­mous scruti­ny to the So­ma­li pop­u­la­tion in Min­neapo­lis, the largest in Amer­i­ca. (Es­ti­mates put Min­neso­ta’s So­ma­li pop­u­la­tion around 30,000.) As Shabab forces with­drew from Mo­gadishu un­der pres­sure from African forces sup­port­ed by the Unit­ed States, peo­ple here held an­ti-Shabab ral­lies, and pros­e­cu­tors even­tu­al­ly won con­vic­tions against eight lo­cal men on charges stem­ming from the flow of mon­ey and re­cruits to the mil­i­tants."

These guys were looking for something, and they found it.  The something they found was not the American Dream.


Some Chinese Tourists Visit New York but Sleep in New Jersey (NY Times)
"By 7:30 a.m., the 56 tourists from Chi­na were stand­ing in line in the park­ing lot of the ho­tel in which they had spent the night.

They were ea­ger to do the things first-time tourists do — sail past the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, stand atop the Em­pire State Build­ing and stroll through the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Mu­se­um of Art.

But first they had to get to the city.

That meant climb­ing aboard a shiny tour bus and set­tling in for a 45-minute ride past road­side bill­boards and a state prison and through the Hol­land Tun­nel."

Breaking news!  Hotels in New York are expensive, and they tend to be small!

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I need to go running.  We went out to Two Roads after the Army game yesterday, and that was awesome, but it wasn't exactly healthy living.  In fact, everything I ate yesterday was either fried, or it was some type of beer.  

Heh.  This is what triathletes eat, right?

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