Avoiding clichés is not rocket science

The top ten most irritating phrases:
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science

Commentary here

Bailout in a graphic

Make sure your underwear fits!

Make sure your underwear fits and is unobtrusive, consider whether your eyebrows are a distraction to others and, at all costs, avoid looking cheap.
This is the grooming advice given to new staff at Leeds Metropolitan University as part of a guide to etiquette.
The rules were set out during “manners training”, which included how to walk wearing a hat, how to select the correct cutlery during dinner and how to make polite small talk.
In the chapter on developing a “personal brand”, the graduate trainees were told to avoid wearing “clashing colours, crumpled or stained clothes” and to make an effort not to appear “frumpy, tarty, [or] lazy”, Times Higher Education reports.

Don't they have anything else to do? More here I agree with this:

one academic, who asked not to be named and was not so keen to mind his manners, said that the guide was “a broth of self-important snobbery that most of us thought had been laughed out of existence in the 1960s”.

Professor in Chief

Siva Vaidhyanathan noted that "professorial" was being used in the media as if it were a horrible way of life. Well, whatever incorrect connotations the media and some of the public might have employed, Richard Monastersky notes that there is now a Professor-in-Chief:

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office next January alongside his running mate, Joe Biden, it will be the first time in history that the president, vice president, and both of their spouses have worked in higher education.
Taken together, the Obamas and the Bidens have amassed decades of experience at colleges and universities. Mr. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 until 2004, when he took office in the U.S. Senate. His wife, Michelle, has worked in the administration at the same university and is on leave from her job as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals.
The Bidens also have spent considerable time in academe. For the past 17 years, Mr. Biden has taught as an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law. His wife, Jill, is an English instructor at Delaware Technical and Community College's
Stanton-Wilmington campus.

Eating locally to save the planet? Think again.

A follow-up to an earlier post about food-miles. Ron Bailey cites a study by economic geographer Pierre Desrochers and economic consultant Hiroko Shimizu, who challenge the notion that food miles are a good sustainability indicator. And, importantly:

the debate over food miles is a distraction from the real issues that confront global food production. For instance, rich country subsidies amounting to more than $300
billion per year are severely distorting global agricultural production and trade. If the subsidies were removed, far more agricultural goods would be produced in and imported from developing countries, helping lift millions of people out of poverty. They warn that the food miles campaign is "providing a new set of rhetorical tools to bolster protectionist interests that are fundamentally detrimental to most of humankind." Ultimately, Desrochers and Shimizu's analysis shows that "the concept of food miles is...a profoundly flawed sustainability indicator."

America’s destiny is in space

Over the last month, we in America have been completely fascinated with the twists and turns of elections. In addition to that drama, the rapid collapse of the financial sector and the wild gyrations of the stock market indices made sure that every day, and sometimes even every minute, brought news that we could not have imagined.

If we had diverted our attention a little bit away from this country, we would have found out that while all these were happening, China and India had ascended to new heights. Literally.

On Sept. 26, a Chinese astronaut (yuhangyuan) ventured outside the space craft and waved a Chinese flag while spending 15 minutes walking around in space. Quite an achievement and an emphatic statement on how far the country has come since Deng Xiaoping put China on a new economic trajectory in 1978.

With this spacewalk, China became the third country in history, after the United Sttes and the former Soviet Union, to have one of its citizens engage in, as NASA describes it, extra-vehicular activity. China’s goal is sending a man to the moon, which might happen as early as 2020.

As China was celebrating, India was getting ready to launch its first unmanned mission to the moon. On Oct. 22, “Chandrayaan”, which means “lunar craft” in Sanskrit, was launched. It is expected to reach the lunar orbit in 15 days. Furthermore, India’s space agency has already begun planning for Chandrayaan-II. Interestingly enough, Chandrayaan is carrying payloads for other space agencies as well, including NASA.

Of course, China and India are pursuing these to also improve their global standing and to remind the world that they are important players, as if their combined population of more than 2.2 billion people does not provide enough of a rationale by itself. In many different contexts, from the affairs of the United Nations to international discussions on global climate change, these two countries have made it clear that they will not put up with a Rodney Dangerfield-like “I-don’t-get-no-respect” treatment.

The good thing is that we are not in an ideological cold war with China or India, as we were with the Soviet Union. But, we could, and should, use these Asian space adventures as catalysts to shape our larger goals for the 21st century.

I hope that the new president and Congress will see this as the Sputnik-like wake-up call for America’s 21st century. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik-1 in October 1957, and then sent a dog into space in Sputnik-2 in November 1957. Sputnik awakened and re-energized the United States and 12 years later, Neil Armstrong was on the moon.

It might seem rather incongruous, perhaps even professorial, to highlight these extra-terrestrial developments when there seem to be more urgent issues such as the economic recession, home foreclosures, rising unemployment, and, of course, such a list is endless. But, even as we focus on the pressing issues of the day, I would argue that it is equally important to have a clear idea of the bigger picture — including our vision for deep space explorations.

We are almost at the end of the first decade in this new century, but it feels like all through these years we have only been reacting to global events as opposed to charting our own destiny. Our social and political discussions have been framed strictly as responses to, for instance, economic competition from China, immigration from Mexico, or the atrocious activities of al-Qaeda.

The economic competition will get fiercer as more and more countries develop, and we ought to welcome such economic progress that pulls people out of abject poverty. And perhaps al-Qaeda might continue to affect life and property around the world for a few more years.

At some point we need to stop and ask ourselves, “quo vadis” — the old Latin phrase meaning “whither goest thou?” Thanks to China and India, we now have a wonderful opportunity to ask ourselves this question.

And our answer is ... ?

For The Register-Guard
Published: Nov 4, 2008

One "nasty" recession!

Says the LA Times:

Signs of the economic free fall have cropped up in many of Nevada's 25 or so legal brothels. The Mustang Ranch, for example, has a steady stream of customers, but the number of women vying for work has soared. Even a 74-year-old applied. This summer, the Shady Lady gave $50 gas cards to those who spent $300.

The Moonlite Bunny Ranch offered extras to customers paying with their economic stimulus checks.Here, 180 miles west of Salt Lake City, near the junction of Interstate 80 and Highway 93, Donna's Ranch has seen its business plummet nearly 20%. More than three-quarters of its customers are long-haul truckers, and high fuel and food prices have drained them of "play money," owner Geoff Arnold says. That cuts into pay for his 10-member staff and the "working girls."

Feeling a lot poorer in a rich country :-(

More than once, I have blogged about Robert Samuelson's analyses and opinions. His lengthy piece in Newsweek gives us an idea of the challenges ahead. And, again, I am confident that my intro students know the situation really well--that they are screwed :-(

The bad news is that recovery, though boosting employment, may prove unsatisfying. Our new economic era may lapse into a state of "affluent deprivation." That's an unfamiliar term. It doesn't mean poverty. The United States will remain a wealthy society. Rather, "affluent deprivation" signifies a state of mind. People feel poorer, because their sluggish income gains get siphoned off into higher taxes, energy costs and health spending. Though these all involve benefits, they don't pay everyday bills or cover people's routine pleasures. There's an approaching collision between private and public wants—government spending for everything from retirement benefits to defense to the repair of roads and bridges. ....

A dilemma for the new president is how to reconcile the needs of the present with those of the future. The immediate need is to revive confidence—to rev up demand and spending, thereby absorbing the jobless and increasing the production of underutilized businesses. But the long-term problem is different. It is to mediate between all the competing demands on the nation's income and to expand the economy's capacity to produce the output that satisfies those demands. The closer the economy comes to stagnation, the more Americans will succumb to distributional struggles—not just between the rich and the poor, but also between the young and the old and between immigrants and natives.

Down that path lies "affluent deprivation." To use an old but apt cliché: people will fight over pieces of a fairly fixed economic pie rather than sharing ever-larger pieces of an expanding pie. The winners may be pleased, but the losers will feel short-changed—and so the conflicts may intensify, with yesterday's winners possibly becoming tomorrow's losers. Politics, which is often about rewarding some and punishing others, may become more so.

Vox Populi

The Economist:

But the best thing that can be said for the system is that it is so democratic. In most countries party leaders are chosen by political insiders. In America rank-and-file party members (and some independents) get to choose—and this year they upset all political calculations by rejecting the inevitable Mrs Clinton on the left and choosing the maverick Mr McCain on the right.

Millions of people have been enthused by the campaigns on both sides. On October 26th 100,000 people in Denver, Colorado, endured cold weather and time-consuming security checks to see Mr Obama. Mr McCain and (particularly) Mrs Palin have also attracted boisterous crowds. More people than ever before have given money to one candidate or another—and unprecedented numbers will take part in get-out-the-vote efforts on election day. All the signs are that this will be the third presidential election in a row where turnout has gone up rather than down.

There are plenty of reasons to withhold the final cheer. The candidates spend too much time repeating their stump speeches and not enough wrestling with tough questions (the Obama campaign’s aloof way with the press is particularly inauspicious). But the biggest problem is perhaps that the process is too enthralling. Americans have spent the past two years in a state of obsession with their presidential campaign. Even important global events such as Russia’s invasion of Georgia have been seen through that prism.

But for all that Americans can at least take some comfort, during these glum times, over the state of their democracy, at least on the presidential level.

The death of public financing of elections

One of the many historic notes of the 2008 campaign--the sure death of public financing of elections. Now that the end of the elections is (hopefully) less than 48 hours away, mainstream media and the blog world have started thinking about this, quite seriously.

In Spiked, Helen Searls writes that:

Amongst liberals, the old mantra against politics and money has evaporated. Obama’s war chest is allowing him to do things few Democrats dared to dream were
remotely possible. His ‘freedom of speech’, or at least his ability to speak frequently and at length, is now boundless. Such is the reach of his money that not only can he buy up primetime TV for the night, he can also run adverts in every state every night, he has campaign staff on the payroll in every state, offices in nearly all the counties of battleground states, and he has even embedded adverts in popular video games like Guitar Hero.
With such a dazzling operation, the liberal money critics seem to have vanished. Could it be it was not so much money and politics that they objected to, but rather Republican money and politics? Maybe an Obama win will silence all those who want to restrict money in politics once and for all. That certainly would be a political sea change.

You might think that Spiked is always a contrarian outpost, and they seem to relish beating up on the American liberals and the British Labor. But, what about the NY Times? In its story, the Times notes that:

advocates for tighter restrictions on campaign finance said they were alarmed by
the more than $1.5 billion that had been raised by the presidential candidates
in the primary and general elections this year — the first time presidential
aspirants have topped $1 billion. (The Obama campaign alone has raised more than
$600 million.) ....
Bob Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska who serves as an honorary chairman of a group that fights for public financing of federal races, wrote an opinion article in The New York Post last week in which he confessed to newfound ambivalence on the issue in light of Mr. Obama’s success among small donors and the energy he had seen in the election this year.
Mr. Kerrey said in an interview that part of his change of heart might indeed be because the existing system was benefiting Democrats, and he said he believed that many others in his party were wrestling with the issue anew because of the changed calculus.

The end is near, so says QVC