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Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream - NYTimes.com
Some wonder how the American ideal of equality of opportunity has eroded so much. The way we finance higher education provides part of the answer. Student debt has become an integral part of the story of American inequality. Robust higher education, with healthy public support, was once the linchpin in a system that promised opportunity for dedicated students of any means. We now have a pay-to-play, winner-take-all game where the wealthiest are assured a spot, and the rest are compelled to take a gamble on huge debts, with no guarantee of a payoff.
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The Volokh Conspiracy » Supreme Court Agrees to Consider Case, Without Having Heard Yet from Respondents
What happened to the respondents? Well, for starters, they apparently never got a lawyer. This is probably because of the procedural posture of the case, which relates to the question presented by the case: Under the federal “in forma pauperis” statute (the one that allows people who can’t afford filing fees to have those fees waived), as amended in 1995, federal courts act as gatekeepers for in forma pauperis claims, and dismiss them without the other side even being served if they fail to state a legally sufficient claim. This is what happened to plaintiff-petitioner’s claim against the defendant police officers (and the local YMCA, where he lived). But then the district courtalso read the statute as barring the plaintiff from amending his complaint and refiling, and the Sixth Circuit (unlike most other circuits to consider the claim) agreed.
Odd that you can get to Supreme Court review without having lawyers insert themselves.
- So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way. As Fred Wertheimer, the President of Democracy 21, a government-ethics watchdog group, put it, “it is clear that a number of groups have improperly claimed tax-exempt status as section 501(c)(4) ‘social welfare’ organizations in order to hide the donors who financed their campaign activities in the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.
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Grammar errors? The brain detects them even when you are unaware
Your brain often works on autopilot when it comes to grammar. That theory has been around for years, but University of Oregon neuroscientists have captured elusive hard evidence that people indeed detect and process grammatical errors with no awareness of doing so.
Participants in the study — native-English speaking people, ages 18-30 –- had their brain activity recorded using electroencephalography, from which researchers focused on a signal known as the Event-Related Potential (ERP). This non-invasive technique allows for the capture of changes in brain electrical activity during an event. In this case, events were short sentences presented visually one word at a time.
Subjects were given 280 experimental sentences, including some that were syntactically (grammatically) correct and others containing grammatical errors, such as “We drank Lisa’s brandy by the fire in the lobby,” or “We drank Lisa’s by brandy the fire in the lobby.” A 50 millisecond audio tone was also played at some point in each sentence. A tone appeared before or after a grammatical faux pas was presented. The auditory distraction also appeared in grammatically correct sentences.
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Click back to the source for the full thing. In the meantime, I’ll be reading into whether the study authors looked at education level and socioeconomic factors in this.
(via utnereader)
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Brooklyn, the Remix: A Hip-Hop Tour - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
The mean streets of the borough that rappers like the Notorious B.I.G. crowed about are now hipster havens, where cupcakes and organic kale rule.
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What happens if you flip gendered book covers?
You are informed about a book’s perceived quality through a number of ways. Probably the biggest is the cover.
And the simple fact of the matter is, if you are a female author, you are much more likely to get the package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. Because it’s “girly,” which is somehow inherently different and easier on the palate. A man and a woman can write books about the same subject matter, at the same level of quality, and that woman is simple more likely to get the soft-sell cover with the warm glow and the feeling of smooth jazz blowing off of it.
This idea that there are “girl books” and “boy books” and “chick lit” and “whatever is the guy equivalent of chick lit”* gives credit to absolutely no one, especially not the boys who will happily read stories by women, about women. As a lover of books and someone who supports readers and writers of both sexes, I would love a world in which books are freed from some of these constraints. Click here to read more about the perceived differences between ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ books.
This is a pretty interesting experiment from author Maureen Johnson.
I read this earlier today. Really, really worth looking at and thinking about. There’s a whole gallery of them.
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The systemic plight of labor | Felix Salmon
In reality, however, a 401(k) plan is an icon of futility and the way in which the owners of capital extract rents from the owners of labor. Yves Smith is good on this, as is Matt Yglesias, although the real expert is Helaine Olen: the 401(k) is a way for both your government and your employer to disown you, and to leave your life savings to be raided by the financial-services industry and its plethora of hidden and invidious fees. The well-kept secret about old-fashioned pension funds is that, for the most part, they’re actually very good at generating decent returns for their beneficiaries. They tend to have extremely long time horizons, and are run by professionals who know what they’re doing and who have a fair amount of negotiating leverage when they deal with Wall Street. Savers are always strengthened by being united: disaggregating them and forcing them to take matters into their own hands is tantamount to feeding them directly to the Wall Street sharks.
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But making high-pitched noises won’t solve your problem if your problem is a complete inability to cope with change.
Hyperbole and a Half: Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving
Allie’s on her way back!
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Soapbox Envy: CSS is not an amoral monster.
Quit thinking of pages as static, box-like things.
Hell, if you can, stop thinking in terms of pages, and instead think in terms of content. Unlike a memo or a broadcast, web media allow you to present things in whatever context you damned well please. If you want to split one page into twenty as circumstances might dictate, you can make something that does that.
Via
Starting the morning off right with Ben Henick’s punchy “CSS is not an amoral monster.” undercaffeinated.tumblr.com/post/498785314…
— Eric A. Meyer (@meyerweb) May 8, 2013 -
Prenda Law Is The Tip of the Iceberg | Electronic Frontier Foundation
We can rightly celebrate that Prenda Law has been rebuked and its practices exposed. Prenda (under various names) has filed hundreds of suits against thousands of Internet users, and their fall should discourage others from pursuing this business model. But the problem remains. Copyright is a broken system, biased in favor of copyright owners at the public’s expense, prone to harsh punishment and ruinous damages, steeped in the misleading and unhelpful rhetoric of “theft” and “piracy.” A system so out of balance is a natural haven for lawsuit abuse. Remember that Prenda Law (under various names) operated with impunity for about three years. These sanctions only happened because of sustained effort and careful research by many defense counsel and concerned citizens. Other troll lawyers are continuing to subpoena for the names of Internet subscribers, then shaking them down for “settlements,” without the extreme conduct that landed Prenda in hot water but no less damaging to their victims. And broken copyright causes more subtle harm at the hands of law-abiding, even well-intentioned people.
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How Social Networks Drive Black Unemployment - NYTimes.com
Help is not given to just anyone, nor is it available from everyone. Inequality reproduces itself because help is typically reserved for people who are “like me”: the people who live in my neighborhood, those who attend my church or school or those with whom I have worked in the past. It is only natural that when there are jobs to be had, people who know about them will tell the people who are close to them, those with whom they identify, and those who at some point can reciprocate the favor.
Because we still live largely segregated lives, such networking fosters categorical inequality: whites help other whites, especially when unemployment is high. Although people from every background may try to help their own, whites are more likely to hold the sorts of jobs that are protected from market competition, that pay a living wage and that have the potential to teach skills and allow for job training and advancement. So, just as opportunities are unequally distributed, they are also unequally redistributed.
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Beginning in 1996, Radio Diaries gave tape recorders to teenagers around the country to create audio diaries about their lives. NPR’s All Things Considered aired intimate portraits of five of these teens: Amanda, Juan, Frankie, Josh and Melissa. They’re now in their 30s. Over this past year, the same group has been recording new stories about where life has led them for our series, Teenage Diaries Revisited.
Here’s our first installment: Amanda Brand is gay. Her family is conservative Catholic, and when she was a teenager, her parents were convinced she was only going through a phase. Recently, Amanda sat down with her mother and father in Queens, N.Y., in the same house she grew up in, to revisit her tumultuous teen years.
Teenage Diaries Revisited: A Gay Teen’s Family, ‘Evolved’
Photo: Radio Diaries (left), David Gilkey/NPR
(via npr)
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A haiku from the article: Kierkegaard’s ‘Antigone’
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Porn Studies is the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to critically explore those cultural products and services designated as pornographic and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts. Porn Studies will publish innovative work examining specifically sexual and explicit media forms, their connections to wider media landscapes and their links to the broader spheres of (sex) work across historical periods and national contexts.
Porn Studies is an interdisciplinary journal informed by critical sexuality studies and work exploring the intersection of sexuality, gender, race, class, age and ability. It focuses on developing knowledge of pornographies past and present, in all their variations and around the world. Because pornography studies are still in their infancy we are also interested in discussions that focus on theoretical approaches, methodology and research ethics. Alongside articles, the journal includes a forum devoted to shorter observations, developments, debates or issues in porn studies, designed to encourage exchange and debate.Announcement from England’s Routledge Publishing, an academic publisher of books, journals and online reference materials. In the announcement (PDF), the editors make a call for papers and say the first issue of Porn Studies will come out in Spring 2014. (via futurejournalismproject) -
Credit Reports More Accurately Reflect Debts Discharged in Bankruptcy - NYTimes.com
Credit reporting bureaus have gotten better at updating their records in part because of developments related to a class-action lawsuit.
