Archive for November, 2012

PROTEST SONG of the year.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Kindle Fire HD, as low as $199.99.

Also, 100 Kindle books for $3.99 or less.

Just a reminder: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your Christmas/Hanukkah shopping — or any other shopping — through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support the blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. It’s much appreciated! (Bumped).

ANOTHER YEAR-END CHARITABLE DONATION CANDIDATE: Aside from the folks I mentioned last night, you may want to donate to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to help defend the libel suit against CEI and Rand Simberg by Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann.

BRENDAN LOY, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Why weren’t hurricane warnings issued for Sandy? “What would normally be of interest only to weather geeks — the fact that Superstorm Sandy probably made landfall last month as a ‘post-tropical cyclone’ rather than as a hurricane — is feeding a controversy over why government agencies issued no hurricane warnings. The hullabaloo involves the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the highest levels of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”

NO, AND WE SHOULDN’T MAKE BUDGET DEALS THAT WAY, EITHER: The U.N. Shouldn’t Make Decisions About an Open Internet Behind Closed Doors. I’m pretty sure that the dictators’ club isn’t that enthusiastic about an “open Internet” though.

Those are just concerns about the process. When you look at some of the proposals themselves, it’s downright frightening.

If these proposals are adopted, we could end up with an internet that suits the interests of governments and large telecoms over those of billions of global internet users.

Well, that’s clearly what they want. It’s not like they have your interests in mind.

HOW AMAZON SUCCEEDS BY EMBRACING CHAOS. As I used to say about my desk before I got neater, it’s not really chaos if you know where everything is.

MERCURY AND SOLACE: Probe Finds Hints of Ice At Mercury’s Poles. “You might have thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell of finding ice on Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. Now measurements by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft suggest there is about 100 cubic kilometres of frozen water at the planet’s poles – roughly enough to fill the Dead Sea.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Economist: American universities represent declining value for money to their students.

A degree has always been considered the key to a good job. But rising fees and increasing student debt, combined with shrinking financial and educational returns, are undermining at least the perception that university is a good investment.

Concern springs from a number of things: steep rises in fees, increases in the levels of debt of both students and universities, and the declining quality of graduates. Start with the fees. The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983 (see chart 1), making it less affordable and increasing the amount of debt a student must take on. Between 2001 and 2010 the cost of a university education soared from 23% of median annual earnings to 38%; in consequence, debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years. Two-thirds of graduates now take out loans. Those who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 graduated with an average of $26,000 in debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit group.

More debt means more risk, and graduation is far from certain; the chances of an American student completing a four-year degree within six years stand at only around 57%. This is poor by international standards: Australia and Britain, for instance, both do much better.

At the same time, universities have been spending beyond their means. Many have taken on too much debt and have seen a decline in the health of their balance-sheets. Moreover, the securitisation of student loans led to a rush of unwise private lending.

Do tell.