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INSTAVISION ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: I talk with Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of The Faculty Lounges, And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Paid For.

ANNALS OF THE ONE PERCENT: Obama Bundler Corzine Snagged $8.4 Million in Year Before MF Global Collapse.

Likely response: “But … but … Bain!”

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg. And hit the tipjar if you like what you see.

ILYA SOMIN DEMOLISHES Nonlegal Arguments for Upholding the Individual Mandate.

#OBAMAFAIL: GAO: Tax credit in healthcare law underperforms.

IN TELECOM, a growing worry that we’ll become more like Europe. That’s the worry in a lot of areas these days.

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: More Spending Won’t Save Europe.

JAMES TARANTO TAKES ON CENTRIST CENSORSHIP:

Inasmuch as Schoen is arguing that Obama’s actions as president are more pertinent than those before he took office in reaching a judgment about his re-election, we tend to agree. It sounds as though the proposed Ricketts ad would have been a waste of money (especially now that the New York Times has demonstrated its willingness to propagate the message free of charge).

But Schoen’s appetite for government censorship of political speech based on his disapproval of its content, and his insouciance about even articulating a coherent standard to explain his disapproval, shows why it is so important to guard our First Amendment rights vigilantly. Schoen is in no sense a political extremist, yet he is eager to stifle dissent.

Not so many free-speech Democrats around, these days.

LIST: Best books on home repair.

SUCCESS: SpaceX Launches Private Capsule on Historic Trip to Space Station.

CHANGE: The Coming Decline of the Academic Left.

WASHINGTON POST: Romney Revels In Opponent’s Bain Blunders.

UPDATE: More criticism from Democrats:

President Barack Obama took over the country in 2008, but he never took full control of the Democratic Party — a state of affairs that became painfully clear this week as the White House struggled to distinguish friends from enemies.

A series of Democrats, most prominent among them Newark Mayor Cory Booker, raised doubts about Democratic attacks on Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s former venture capital firm. And while Booker was forced into a long, slow, painful walkback of his worries, other figures — like former Rep. Harold Ford — remained unapologetic markers of the party’s independence from its president. . . .

Former Pensylvania Governor Ed Rendell said it would be unfair to compare Obama’s aides to Clinton’s operation.

“You’re comparing them to the gold standard,” Rendell told BuzzFeed. “They’ve done a good job.”

He added, however, that he hasn’t heard of officials getting Clinton-style calls from Obama at 11:30 at night to ask about local issues. That, said a former Clinton aide, is simply a product of how Obama rose to power.

“He’s not as engaged in building Democratic institutions in different states,” the consultant said. “If you think about how he came to beat Hillary and become president, he did not go through typical Democratic institutions — he ceded that to Hillary. Eventually some started to come his way. I don’t know if there’s as much of a reliance on building these operations state by state.”

And Rendell joined the chorus of criticism of Obama’s attacks on finance, whose leaders have written checks to many members of both parties.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Are We Subsidizing Student Debt Too Generously? “Why am I subsidizing student loans for Harvard kids? . . . I have no idea why. It never made sense to me even when I was at Harvard. Harvard has a huge endowment, and just hoards it. It’s not mostly for the students. As the Dean of Harvard Law School publicly said then, students are merely ‘incidental.’”

GREETINGS FROM THE GEEK CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.

#OBAMAFAIL: “It’s a big problem for the party because the Democrats’ fundraising base is shrinking.”

DRUG WAR UPDATE: Penn Jillette, on Obama Locking Up People for Doing the Same Drugs He Did: “It’s not a goddamn joke!”

OBAMACARE: The Catholic Church Goes To Court.

OBAMACARE: Hey men, you don’t need that PSA test, you know!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Median Compensation for Public College Heads Grew 3% in 2010-11. “The median total compensation of the 199 public college presidents surveyed was $421,395, up 2.9 percent from 2009-10, the survey found, while the median base pay, $383,800, increased 1.3 percent. As in the past, E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State University was the highest-paid president, earning $1,992,221 in total compensation — 12.3 times the compensation for the average full professor at Ohio State. His base pay was $814,156, with the rest coming as a bonus and deferred compensation.”

A HUMILIATION for the New York Times op-ed page.

JIM TREACHER: Remember How Excited The Lefties Were About Elizabeth Warren? “Not that long ago, either. . . . Now Massachusetts Dems are in the unenviable position of denying they’re going to ditch their candidate.”

IMMIGRATION: Democrats’ Latino problem: Obama admin deports more immigrants than Bush.

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BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY: “The non-socialist rich are the only species that Democrats want to see hunted to extinction.”

RICK MORAN REPORTS from the Chicago climate conference.

A SHAKESPEARE PASSAGE THAT I HAD TO MEMORIZE IN HIGH SCHOOL SEEMS MORE APPROPRIATE FOR OBAMA THAN ANTONY’S ORATION:

But ’tis a common proof
that lowliness is young ambition’s ladder
whereto the climber upward turns his face

But when he once attains the utmost round,
he then unto the ladder turns his back
looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
by which he did ascend. So Caesar may.

DOMESTIC TERRORISM UPDATE: Sterling Hall bomber Armstrong arrested after $800,000 cash found in vehicle. “Armstrong, 65, was one of three men arrested for their roles in the Aug. 24, 1970, bombing that targeted the Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus as a protest of Vietnam War. A fourth man wanted in the case, Leo Burt, has never been found. Researcher Robert Fassnacht was killed in the blast. Armstrong was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but his term was later reduced, and he was released in January 1980 after serving seven years.”

Funny how little time these lefty domestic terrorists did.

LIST: Essential Family Survival Kit For Under $300.

Compare my post on low-budget disaster prep.

HAROLD FORD, JR.: Booker Was Right the First Time.

Related: ABC News: Obama Campaign Does Damage Control After Dems Question Anti-Bain Strategy.

UPDATE: Awkward: Obama campaign looks to explain spreading heavily edited version of Cory Booker ‘hostage’ video.

NOW, HEADLINES LIKE THIS MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I’M REALLY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: European Physicists Smash Chinese Teleportation Record: The battle over distance records sets up a fascinating race to be the first to teleport to an orbiting satellite.

On the other hand, the Euro-Chinese rivalry leads to this conclusion: “The contrast with the US couldn’t be clearer.” Ouch.

THIS YEAR IN TECH: May 21, 1927: Lucky Lindy Flies His Way Into the Celebrity Ranks.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student Loan Bubble Putting Hundreds of Colleges at Risk. “207 colleges and universities—31% of the 678 institutions in the database— have, under at least some circumstances, more debts than cash and marketable investments. In the model these 207 inadequate-capital institutions have projected net financial asset balances ranging from a negative few hundred thousand dollars to nearly a negative $400,000,000. More than half of the 205 had negative projections from ($10,000,000) to ($100,000,000).”

Related: Chester College Will Close. “The economic downturn that started in 2008 has been particularly tough on very small private colleges that lack much in endowment income or national name recognition. Dana College shut down in 2010. Mississippi’s Wesley College closed that same year. Lambuth University, in Tennessee, closed last year after losing accreditation.”

All I can say is, I told you so. I also have some thoughts on what comes next.

CHANGE: Post-Facebook Social Networking:

According to a recent poll by the Associated Press and CNBC, 46 percent of respondents think Facebook will “fade away as new things come along.” That’s an ominous data point for a company whose IPO dominated the news cycle last week, and claims some 900 million worldwide users.

Facebook seems to be infiltrating every facet of our lives. “Like” buttons appear on every website. “Like us on Facebook!” shouts at us during TV commercials. And more and more apps rely on Facebook to simply log in. It’s starting to feel more than a little oppressive — it’s like we’re living in a blue-and-white-painted jail cell.

And all this IPO madness is just foul icing on the cake.

So where do you turn when the world’s been stricken with Facebook fever? We rounded up seven apps that could satisfy your social networking needs should Facebook go down the tubes — or you just can’t take it anymore.

Facebook has two main problems: (1) People don’t trust them on privacy; and (2) Each successive “improvement” in the platform seems to make it worse.

READER BOOK PLUG: Tom Elia writes to ask me to plug his When Lobsters Take Flight.

The title is taken from a quote by Chicago newspaperman and humorist Finley Peter Dunne, who, channeling through his famous character, Chicago South Side saloon keeper Martin J. Dooley, wrote this:

“A man that’d expict to thrain lobsters to fly in a year is called a loonytic, but a man that thinks men can be tu-rrned into angels be an iliction is called a rayformer an’ remains at large.”

The quote is used to introduce the chapter on Barack Obama.

So buy it!

HEH: BOOKERMANIA!

BRETT KIMBERLIN UPDATE: Stacy McCain’s involuntary roadtrip.

Really? Really? Can this be what it sounds like? Somebody is trying to out-crazy Stacy McCain? That’s not going to end well . . . .

UPDATE: If Kimberlin was trying to stop negative Internet attention, it’s not working.

See, I’ve warned people about this kind of thing. More than once.

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

BOOKS, COOKED: Obama officials pressured contractors to change job loss figures, recordings reveal.

POPULAR MECHANICS: 16 Great Tools from the 2012 National Hardware Show.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals on baby stuff.

FACIAL RECOGNITION CAMERAS peering into San Francisco nightspots. “On Friday, a company called SceneTap flipped the on switch enabling cameras installed in around 20 bars to monitor how full the venues are, the mix of men and women, their ages — and to make all this information available live via an iPhone or Android app. Privacy advocates are unimpressed, though, as the only hint that people are being monitored is via tiny stickers on the windows.”

STEWART BAKER ON SCOTLAND:

The one man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has died, three years after being released by the Scottish Nationalist government for what was advertised as his last few weeks of life.

Evidently determined never to apologize, SNP leader Alex Salmond defended that release today, saying that “regardless of people’s views they can have complete confidence that it was taken on the basis of the due process of Scots Law.”

The application of Scots law instead of British law is the result of what the Scots call devolution. A remarkably apt name that, when you think about it.

Ouch. Not sure about the Scottish law, but I think he should have been drawn and quartered, as suggested in the comments.

On the other hand, there’s this observation in another comment: “It’s not like he committed self-defense, or used a firearm.”

THE FRENCH don’t really get this autism thing.

I SAW A SEA TURTLE ON CAYMAN A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO THAT LOOKED AS BIG AS A VOLKSWAGEN: Car-Sized Giant Turtle Discovered in Colombia Ate Alligators for Breakfast. “Paleontologists have discovered a car-sized turtle in a Colombian coalmine that may have eaten alligators and ruled a large swath of land and fresh water.” It was probably 6 feet long, but I don’t think it would have eaten an alligator.

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION’S DIVERSITY PROBLEM:

As you can see from this link, the Chronicle hosts twenty families of blogs, of which Brainstorm is only one. Brainstorm contains twelve bloggers now that Riley is gone. Now there is no visible right-wing female voice in the entire publication.

Keep in mind that the Chronicle lacks not only ideological diversity. Browse through the blogs and you will see a parade of old, white, liberal faces, all of whom have the dainty air of Elizabeth Warren, our purportedly Cherokee darling from Harvard. I have nothing against old white people, but the Chronicle is far worse than the Republican Party at fostering racial class diversity. At least we have Nikki Haley.

Diversity is the most important thing there is, but it’s not nearly important enough for old white men to surrender their cushy jobs for. It is, however, important enough to deny young white men similar access to those cushy jobs.

I DUNNO, A ROBOT BODY DOESN’T SOUND SO BAD TO ME: The Difference Between Inspiring and Creepy Human-Robot Technology.

But then, I’m married to a cyborg. And you know what they say about cyborgs — once you’ve gone metal, you’ll never settle!

SCIENCE: Buying Organic Food Makes You A Jerk, Study Says. The science is settled. You don’t want to argue with the science. If you do, you’re a “jerk denier.”

RACISTS: Got H8? Left hurls slurs, racist epithets at Cory Booker for being honest about Bain attacks.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “The funny thing is, Booker seems to _actually be_ the politician that Obama claimed to be in the 2008 campaign. Lo and behold, Republicans, while not agreeing with Booker on specifics, are willing to work with him. Also, leftists hate him.”

IN THE MAIL: From Rory Miller, Force Decisions: A Citizen’s Guide – Understanding How Police Determine Appropriate Use of Force and Facing Violence DVD.

CHANGE: As regulators set rules for equity-based crowdfunding, investors prepare for its impact.

Here, by the way, is a paper on the subject by my colleague Joan Heminway.

ED DRISCOLL: Green Supremacism: The Morgenthau Plan Reborn. “While the Morgenthau Plan is now merely a footnote in history, ever since the late ’60s and early 1970s, the desire for punitive reprimitivization on a global scale has become all the rage amongst the wackier elements of the environmental left, including the fellow recently spotlighted by John Aziz at the Zero Hedge econo-blog, whom Aziz dubs, ‘The Face of Genocidal Eco-Fascism.’”

BLUE INEQUALITY: More Earners at Extremes in New York Than in U.S. “The wealthiest 1 percent of New York City residents took in nearly one-third of the personal income in the city in 2009 — almost double the comparable proportion nationwide, a new study shows. In a report scheduled to be released Monday, the city comptroller’s office found that large percentages of New Yorkers earned high incomes and low incomes, leaving a smaller middle class than in the nation as a whole.”

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MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRATS STAND BY ELIZABETH WARREN. “The Democratic Party is really stuck. . . . They essentially cleared the path for her as a candidate, and they can’t get rid of her now.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Can We Still Win Wars? “Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question. We have enough conventional and nuclear power to crush any of our enemies many times over. Why then did we seem to bog down in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? The question is important since recently we do not seem able to translate tactical victories into long-term strategic resolutions. Why is that? What follows are some possible answers.”

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER: Christie Bashes Obama For ‘Posing And Preening.’

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told Kentucky Republicans on Saturday that President Barack Obama was “posing and preening” instead of working to resolve pressing issues facing the country.

“He is the most ill-prepared person to assume the presidency in my lifetime,” Christie told some 600 Kentucky Republicans at a Lexington hotel. “This is a guy who literally is walking around in a dark room trying to find the light switch of leadership.”

Ouch.

Related: WaPo: Obama Team Messes Up On Bain, Again.

First, the original Bain attack ad was weak, easily rebutted because Romney was not at the steel company at the time of the layoffs depicted in the ad. To make matters worse, the day the ad was released Obama was fundraising among his group of investment bankers, resulting in widespread ridicule in the media. And don’t forget Obama’s former car czar also blasted the ad.

Then along comes Booker and his forced recantation. That only highlighted his searing indictment on “MTP.” Because it wasn’t, in the Obama team’s view, sufficiently convincing, it necessitated the edit. This clown show resembles more a Communist propaganda operation (shall Booker next be airbrushed out of all photos with Obama?) than a supposedly formidable presidential campaign.

The Bain attack now is largely in tatters, savaged by Democrats who don’t want to be the Occupy political party, by the media (which has begun to denigrate the Obama team’s prowess) and of course, by Romney, who has turned the tables comparing his real experience in the private sector with Obama’s crony capitalism.

This is one more “shiny object” gambit (e.g. “war on women,” gay marriage) gone wrong. Not only has Obama utterly failed to stain Romney or distract the public from the economy, but he also seems to have convinced even the previously sympathetic media that his campaign is both desperate and inept.

Well, it is. Say, remember in 2008 when Obama touted his campaign as evidence of his leadership skills?

UPDATE: Numbers: Big Money Dries Up For Obama Campaign. That’s okay, they’ll make it up with unverified credit-card transactions.

CHANGE: Romney Fund-Raising Closing In On Obama’s.

BRIAN DARLING: CONGRESS NOT STANDING GROUND ON SECOND AMENDMENT: “Are gun voters being taken for granted? Republicans control the House and self-styled pro-gun Democrats abound in the Senate. So why has neither chamber addressed any of the major gun rights issues awaiting resolution?”

YOU NEED FOREIGN EXCHANGE. IT MOSTLY COMES FROM TOURISM. SO YOU RIOT AND ATTACK FOREIGNERS. RESULT: Germans Just Say No To Greek Tourism, As Holiday Bookings Plunge By 30%. This is similar to the problem in Egypt.

Come to America, Germans. We even have good beer now.

THE HILL: House GOP, Romney take aim at Obama’s stance on coal industry.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Law School Transparency Calls for Resignation of Rutgers Dean and ABA Investigation of Improper Recruiting of Law Students.

TIGERHAWK: The Lobbying Ban And Concentration Of Power. “When government at one level or another accounts for 30% of GDP, it is a huge source of business and regulation that any executive ignores at his or her peril. The extent of lobbying, therefore, is in direct relationship to government’s intrusion in to the economy, and since this government has intruded more than any predecessor going back at least to the first half of the Carter Administration, lobbying has no doubt grown notwithstanding Barack Obama’s stated ambition.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: G-8 Leaders Agree: More Rosy Platitudes, Empty Statements Needed. Well, they’ve got the supply. . . .

Plus, decoding the spin:

For the New York Times, the desire to make President Obama look good and the journalistic need to whomp up some drama led to a story line about “pressure” being put on Germany’s Angela Merkel to shift to a more accommodative, ‘pro-growth’ path. No doubt she is under pressure, but did peer pressure or anything else at the G-8 change her mind? The Times story tries hard to make it look as if something was going on, but close reading of the story shows no movement in Merkel’s position from her first meeting with Hollande and the final communique simply repeats the usual bilge. Judging from the quotes in the piece, the best headline would have been “Merkel Rejects Obama Plea for Change in German Policy”, but the misleading and vacuous “World Leaders Urge Growth, Not Austerity” struck the Times as a happier way to go. (The biggest piece of drama in the story, President Putin’s decision to stay home, sending only his number two prime minister Medvedev, was largely passed over.)

So typical.

THE HILL: Wyden: White House-backed cybersecurity bill sacrifices privacy.

SLOWDOWN, YOU BET: China slashes raw-material purchases.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Sixty Minutes asks: Is College Worth The Cost?

If only there were a place to go for more information.

SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS FOR THE First Annual Walter Duranty Prize For Journalistic Mendacity. It shouldn’t be hard to find candidates . . . .

SALENA ZITO: Biden’s Words Fall On Deaf Ears in Ohio.

Many Youngstown attendees at Biden’s event do not support him or the president.

Bob McClain and his wife, Myra, came to M7 Technologies to support their friends’ family business. Neither supports the Obama-Biden ticket.

“We are friends of the owners — that is why we came, to show support for the Garvey family,” said Bob. At 71, he’s retired but volunteers full-time as a counselor for Mahoning Valley small-business owners.

“Our vote is going for who is best to lead on the economy. That is Romney, for us,” said Myra as her husband nodded.

Richard Furillo stood with his son Matthew at his son’s workplace; a lifelong Democrat, he voted for Obama in 2008 but won’t again. “I don’t know why I did it but I cannot stand any more ‘change,’” he said, referring to the president’s old campaign slogan.

Father and son both said they attended the event to support the company.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a sitting vice president,” added Matthew, also a Democrat. He, too, said he will vote for Romney.

Standing beside them, Jeff Cunningham echoed their sentiments: “The biggest challenge in this country is creating jobs that last, jobs that sustain families.” The 36-year-old Mahoning Valley native said he will vote for Romney.

Montgomery “Monty” Deruyter sat several rows from where Biden stood to address the crowd. The 43-year-old father of two started working at M7 as a machinist two months ago; uncertainty drives him to favor Romney.

“I hold both parties at arm’s length but trust Romney’s business skills to lead on the economy,” he said.

I suspect this is showing up in internal polls, and accounts for why the Obama campaign seems so worried.

TAR. FEATHERS. Under Asset Forfeiture Law, Wisconsin Cops Confiscate Families’ Bail Money.

When the Brown County, Wis., Drug Task Force arrested her son Joel last February, Beverly Greer started piecing together his bail.

She used part of her disability payment and her tax return. Joel Greer’s wife also chipped in, as did his brother and two sisters. On Feb. 29, a judge set Greer’s bail at $7,500, and his mother called the Brown County jail to see where and how she could get him out. “The police specifically told us to bring cash,” Greer says. “Not a cashier’s check or a credit card. They said cash.”

So Greer and her family visited a series of ATMs, and on March 1, she brought the money to the jail, thinking she’d be taking Joel Greer home. But she left without her money, or her son.

Instead jail officials called in the same Drug Task Force that arrested Greer. A drug-sniffing dog inspected the Greers’ cash, and about a half-hour later, Beverly Greer said, a police officer told her the dog had alerted to the presence of narcotics on the bills — and that the police department would be confiscating the bail money.

“I told them the money had just come from the bank,” Beverly Greer says. “We had just taken it out. If the money had drugs on it, then they should go seize all the money at the bank, too. I just don’t understand how they could do that.”

Tar. Feathers.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): “Work ‘Til You Drop:” Number of Americans Working Past 65 at All-Time High.

SHOCKER: NYT’s Tom Friedman Bombs on ‘Jeopardy!’ Don’t think this will stop him from making Sarah Palin jokes.

UPDATE: Reader Corey Hall emails: “So I guess ‘Your Chinese Masters’ wasn’t a category?” Heh.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: 11 Public Universities With The Worst Graduation Rates.

UPDATE: Reader Clay Nielsen writes:

The collection of 11 worst public university graduation rates is a little misleading – at least as far as the Kent State University branch campuses are concerned. A majority of the students leaving these campuses early are simply using them as a low-cost way to get college prerequisites out of the way close to home. They spend a year of two there, to get a lot of the early classes out of the way, then transfer to their more expensive school of choice for specialty classes and eventual graduation.

It is a very common tactic here – I did it in the late 1970s and my son is pursuing the same strategy now. My daughter, who will graduate next year, plans a four-year private college course (ouch!).

Ouch, indeed.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: On The Scene At The Octomom Porn Video.

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE to be targeted. “For people like Aaron and myself, and so many others who’ve had their livelihoods disrupted simply for exercising their First Amendment rights, there is no other more important story than the progressive left’s campaign of political (and criminal) intimidation.”

And here’s more from Aaron Worthing, which I should have linked earlier.

As a famous man once said, punch back twice as hard. Plus, what Andrew Breitbart said.

MORE TROUBLES in Euroland.

PAUL MIRENGOFF: The long shadow of Barack Obama’s identity crisis.

THE PRESS DOES ITS BEST TO HELP OBAMA:

“Is GOP trying to sabotage economy to hurt Obama?”

That’s the headline on yesterday’s Associated Press story by Charles Babington. The headline appeared on the main Yahoo page, which is far more heavily trafficked than any newspaper, and was picked up, based on a Google News search, by several hundred newspapers. The article doesn’t conclude that Republicans are deliberately hurting the economy, of course. That wasn’t the idea: the idea was to attribute plausibility to what is in fact a laughable suggestion.

We see so much of this sort of thing.

HEH: “All liquored up & trashing the place. Like Led Zeppelin, except you don’t want to go to his shows.”

IN CUBICLE FARMS, a plea for “sonic privacy.” “In general, people do not like the acoustics in open offices. . . . The noisemakers aren’t so bothered by the lack of privacy, but most people are not happy, and designers are finally starting to pay attention to the problem.”

Plus this: “The original rationale for the open-plan office, aside from saving space and money, was to foster communication among workers, the better to coax them to collaborate and innovate. But it turned out that too much communication sometimes had the opposite effect: a loss of privacy, plus the urgent desire to throttle one’s neighbor.”

Bottom line: “You talk to more people in an open office, but I think you have fewer meaningful conversations.”

UPDATE: Reader John Muth writes:

I’m surprised no one has picked up the REAL reason for the spread of cubicles, even in the face ample scientific evidence that knowledge workers are more productive in hard-wall offices: cubicles don’t require government approval or inspection to build or reconfigure. You just bring in a crew and do the work. With hard-wall offices you have permit application and approval, inspections at various stages of completion (inspection timing is at the convenience of the inspector, meanwhile work stops until he/she deigns to show up), final occupancy permits, etc.

I’m not saying we should get rid of building inspections, but under current processes cubes are the only way to go, even though they suck as a working environment.

Another side effect of regulation.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Tierney, the author of the piece, emails:

Thanks for linking to the cubicle piece. That’s an astute comment by your reader about cubicles being a reaction to regulation. In the course of talking to designers, I heard complaints about the difficulties in meeting building codes when they tried to include different kinds of rooms in an office.

And I was told that even high partitions in cubicles are taboo if a designer wants try to get their building certified “green” — the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating. To get the rating, you need to meet various standards for reducing energy use and increasing the amount of natural light throughout the office. The practical result, I was told, is that you can’t build tall cubicles that would block light from the windows.(I think 42 inches may be the max height for partitions.) Of course, it’s nice to have more natural light in an office. But I bet a lot of cubicle dwellers would trade the light for higher partitions and more privacy.

Yes.

A SMARTER WAY to water your lawn.

CUTTING THE CABLE: Roku boxes and other streaming media players.

CLARICE FELDMAN: Naked Came The Kenyan Cherokee.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Recovery? Just 16 States Have Gained Jobs Under Obama. “Just 16 states have seen job growth since President Obama took office, according to state employment data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The remaining states have lost a combined 1.4 million jobs since January 2009.” Rick Perry’s Texas has done best. Jerry Brown’s California has done worst.

ANOTHER READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Chris Remy writes: “Would you mention my novel, Fifth Column? It’s got Nazis, spies and Nazi spies!”

Done!

CONGRESSMEN SEEK TO END PROPAGANDA BAN.

An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.

The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.

The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

Bipartisan stupidity.

ADVICE FOR NEXT YEAR’S college freshmen. Well, mostly for freshwomen, really.

WHAT PEOPLE WHO MAKE COMMERCIALS don’t bother getting right.

HOW TO GET GROWTH: Dan Mitchell: American Politicians Should Learn Some Policy Lessons From Hong Kong and Singapore.

PUBLIC EDUCATION UPDATE: N.C. Teacher Tells Student He Could Be Arrested for Talking Badly About Obama.

Well, Missouri prosecutors were singing a similar tune in 2008. But one wonders why we should support institutions that overwhelmingly see themselves as shock troops for one particular party.

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SOMEBODY SHOULD’VE SHOT THEM: Suspects wielding hammers and batons attack diners at Tinley Park restaurant.

It was the middle of the lunch rush Saturday, and Mike Winston was working in the kitchen of his Tinley Park restaurant, the Ashford House, when a waitress screamed a fight had broken out in the dining room.

Police call the melee at the restaurant a targeted assault by a mob that Winston said wielded metal batons and hammers. Ten diners were hurt in the attack, and three of those were hospitalized.

Tinley Park police had five suspected assailants in custody, and Winston said 18 young men, all wearing hooded jackets and obscuring their faces with scarves and other coverings, stormed into the restaurant.

Seriously, people like this should expect to be shot. And in a civilized polity — which Chicagoland isn’t — they would have been.

UPDATE: Reader David McCune writes: “For truth-in-advertising purposes, the attackers really should have been using hammers and sickles.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steven Den Beste forwards this story claiming that those beaten were white supremacists: “A law enforcement source Sunday said the group beaten at a Tinley Park restaurant Saturday was made up of white supremacists, and those who assaulted them were protesters attacking their beliefs.”

Not clear how they know that, but, well . . . They told me if I voted Republican people would be beaten by hooded thugs for their beliefs — and they were right!

I mean, I hate Illinois Nazis too, but I wouldn’t beat ‘em just for their beliefs.

Plus this: “Mike Winston, who owns the restaurant, is facing $10,000 to $15,000 in damage to his business, as well as a loss of revenue as customers keep their distance.”

MORE: Reader DRJ writes: “The local edition of the Chicago Sun Times has a lot more detail than the link from Stephen Den Beste. Maybe they were white supremacists but they registered their lunch party as an Irish heritage group.”

And Moe Lane writes: “From my reading of the article, those asses at ARAG started up on bystanders after they finished whaling on their targets. I personally don’t give much of a sh*t if Illinois Nazis get pounded; but actual innocents were also apparently targeted, and that’s a big issue right there.”

Yes, note this:

The attack wasn’t a random act of violence, police said. But the attack apparently spilled over to others in the restaurant.

“Once they attacked the table, they went and started hitting random people,” Winston said. “Four or five people got knocked over the head pretty good, enough to require stitches,” he said.

He chased after one of the attackers “and had him on the ground, then five guys got out of a car and started kicking the (crap) out of me,” Winston said.

Winston said he was kicked in the back of the head and suffered several bruises, but he was the only restaurant employee who was hurt.

“They did a whole lot of damage,” he said. “They flipped over tables, they broke half the dishes.”

Like I say, somebody should’ve shot ‘em.

CHANGE: Italian university switches to English for success. “The 149-year-old university, located in Italy’s business capital Milan, is set to become the first Italian place of higher learning to teach all its graduate courses in English when it kicks off its academic year in 2014. The aim is to kit out its students with the right stuff to gain access to the global jobs market. It’s also meant to attract top-class international students at a time when competition among universities worldwide is hotting up. . . . The university – one of the world’s top 50 engineering schools according to QS World University rankings – will offer all its Master of Science and PhD courses in English and will invest 3.2 million euros to attract international faculty.”

IS THIS REALLY A GOOD IDEA? In-the-know folks talk about reducing nuclear warheads — big reductions.

PROF. MARK PERRY: The Unsustainable Higher Education Bubble; It’s Showing Signs Of Stress, Has The Deflation Started? Hey, my book doesn’t come out until next month.

DIRECT DIGITAL: Novel casting process could transform how complex metal parts are made. “A Georgia Tech research team has developed a novel technology that could change how industry designs and casts complex, costly metal parts. This new casting method makes possible faster prototype development times, as well as more efficient and cost-effective manufacturing procedures after a part moves to mass production. . . . Suman Das, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has developed an all-digital approach that allows a part to be made directly from its computer-aided design (CAD).”

TOM FOLSOM: Finding Superman in Cyberspace. I am mentioned, along with Capt. Mal Reynolds, in footnote 5.

IN THE MAIL: From S.G. Redling, Flowertown

Knoxville, Tennessee. On Market Square.