The expert’s guide to Instapaper
by Eddie Smith, Macworld.com, macworld.comThey arrive by Twitter, by RSS, and by email. They’re passed around on social networks. They’re embedded in online articles and blog posts. I’m talking about all of those links to things you’d like to read but can’t. Making time to read…
They arrive by Twitter, by RSS, and by email. They’re passed around on social networks. They’re embedded in online articles and blog posts. I’m talking about all of those links to things you’d like to read but can’t. Making time to read everything you find on the Web the moment you find it is hard, so you probably don’t read it at all—unless you use a read-it-later service like Instapaper.
“Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger got searched by a Transportation Security Administration employee while going through a security checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport in New York Friday, The Washington Post reports. Kissinger, who was in a wheelchair, was told by a TSA agent that he needed to be searched. “He stood with his suit jacket off, and he was wearing suspenders,” freelance reporter Matthew Cole told the Post. “They gave him the full pat-down. None of the agents seemed to know who he was.” Cole added that Kissinger was given “the full Monty” search.” — TSA Agents Conduct ‘Full Monty’ Pat-Down On Henry Kissinger « CBS DC
“Colleges can be top-heavy with administrators and woefully inefficient, and many only recently have undertaken the kind of paring public companies did years ago.” — Colleges Begin to Confront Higher Costs and Students’ Debt - NYTimes.com
“Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.
Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website Who Owns Facebook. At the high end of the IPO valuation, that would be worth about $3.84 billion. His holdings aren’t listed in Facebook’s regulatory filings.
Enlarge image Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, in New York City. Photographer: Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Common Sense Media
Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, a move that can trim their tax liabilities in that country.”
— Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO - Bloomberg
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Despite their “Human Rights” rhetoric, the students are ultimately angry at economic reality. Unlike Canada’s federal government, Quebec is drowning in debt — the total of which currently stands at $184 billion, or 55.5 percent of its GDP — and, in an effort to address its obligations, the province has suggested raising college fees by 75 percent over seven years. This has upset the mob, which has refused to “compromise” and consequently gone on “strike” — whatever that means; they are students, after all — despite a series of meetings between students and the government that, in the words of the Toronto Sun, are now “right back where they started.”
When one investigates the details of higher-education policy in French Canada, one is left wondering why anyone would so much as complain to a neighbor, let alone start a riot. In a sentence that single-handedly demonstrates the need for Jonah Goldberg’s new book, The Tyranny of Clichés, one student told the Chicago Tribune that “people study a whole diverse host of things, and do social work and community work after they study, and they shouldn’t be beholden to thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt that sometimes they can’t repay.”
No doubt such language cuts the mustard among “social justice” types, but those of us still possessed of our critical faculties might wish to look more closely. Currently, university fees in Quebec are C$2,168 per year — less than half of the Canadian average of $5,336. By the time the proposed increase had been implemented, they would be C$3,700 per annum, which, over four years, comes to about C$15,000.
” — Quebec’s Students Revolt - Charles C. W. Cooke - National Review Online“David [Brooks]: The job market for people with Ph.D.’s has been miserable for as long as I’ve been sentient, unless you come from a star university. I’m not sure I see this situation getting worse. It could even get better. After all, global demand for U.S. teaching is apparently limitless. If we can find ways to supply that demand, the prospects for American Ph.D.’s should improve. Even in art history.” — College Dot Com - NYTimes.com
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Gail Collins: David, let’s get back to the high cost of higher education. Unless, of course, you really want to talk about President Obama’s evolving feelings about same-sex marriage.
David Brooks: I don’t think his feelings are evolving. I think his political positioning has. Have you noticed that four years ago Obama thoroughly rejected Dick Morris-style campaign tactics and this year he has embraced them. Morris is a poor political commentator, but his campaign methods seem to have won the day.
Gail: Now I’m sorry I brought it up. There’s no way that discussion doesn’t end with me banging my head against the nearest wall.
” — College Dot Com - NYTimes.com“Once hailed as the first true rival to the iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire no longer seems to be much of a threat to Apple’s tablet.” — What’s Behind the Drop in Kindle Fire Shipments? - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD
“There are elements of the Obama re-election campaign that turn my stomach. Emails like this one from “Michelle Obama” with the cringe-inducing content-line: “Me Again.” Yes, you again. Like I need more spam. Then the pitch:
“There’s one thing I forgot to mention: If you chip in to support the campaign before the big deadline tomorrow, you’ll also be automatically entered to have dinner with my husband.”
— The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast
“In examining this controversy, it must be asserted from the outset that nothing Riley wrote was offensive or lacking in civility, as McMillen charged. Riley’s offense was not one of tone or fact but rather in her willingness to say Black Studies is an academic discipline rooted in and consumed by the politics of victimization with little scholarly value.” — Silencing Dissent About Black Studies « Commentary Magazine
“Paralysed woman Claire Lomas finally finished the London Marathon today, 16 days after the race began, completing the course with the aid of a bionic suit.” — Paralysed Claire Lomas completes London Marathon - Telegraph
“I don’t open U.S. accounts, period,” said Su Shan Tan, head of private banking at Singapore-based DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest lender, who described regulatory attitudes toward U.S. clients as “Draconian.” — U.S. Millionaires Told Go Away as Tax Evasion Rule Looms - Bloomberg
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Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called “Black Studies: ‘Swaggering Into the Future,’” in which the reporter described how “young black-studies scholars … are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline.” The “5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates” described in the piece’s sidebar “are rewriting the history of race.” While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.
Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle’s “Brainstorm” blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and “a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,” at worst.
For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she “noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature.” Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have “played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.”
” —Naomi Schaefer Riley: The Academic Mob Rules - WSJ.com
(Make sure to read the comments. They are stunning.)
“‘Dreams from My Father,’” said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University history and journalism professor…
“That gave many people a first impression of Obama, won over a lot people. It was the vessel of a lot of the Kool-Aid that got drunk in 2008, creating a fantasy Obama that many people wanted to believe in. …”
— The dangerous new Obama book - Glenn Thrush and Dylan Byers - POLITICO.com
“President Obama has held just one full length, multi-topic, solo press conference in the last six months, effectively abolishing the most accessible venue for American citizens to observe the thinking and learn the views of their leader. It’s May, and the president has stood for only a single such news conference this year, a March 6 event in the briefing room. He’s had only three since last June, counting a November press conference in Hawaii that was supposed to be devoted to the just-held Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit but which veered off into other issues. Nor does Obama generally allow questioning during brief appearances at the White House, such as when he makes statements with foreign leaders. Previous presidents, including George W. Bush, routinely took a couple of questions on the topic of the day at such gatherings.” — Obama Abolishes the Press Conference | The Blog on Obama: White House Dossier