The Chicago Tribune reports on efforts to teach more minority children to swim. The reason is that minority children have fewer swimming abilities (70% of black children and 60% of Hispanic children have limited or no abilities compared to 40% for white children) and the drowning rate for 5 to 14 year olds is three times higher for blacks compared to whites.
Author Archives: legallysociable
California Picture #7
A view of our hotel pool. I wish…
This is a view from a terrace above the outside pool at Hearst Castle. Quite a mansion and grounds. A fascinating (and opulent? garish? overwrought?) piece of work from what sounds like a very interesting man.
(My wife and I traveled to California for nine days in early July – this is part of a series of pictures from our trip.)
College students and studying
Boston.com reports on a study by two professors that found college students study less today: 14 hours a week on average today compared to 24 hours a week on average in 1961. Why this is happening is less clear:
But when it comes to “why,” the answers are less clear. The easy culprits — the allure of the Internet (Facebook!), the advent of new technologies (dude, what’s a card catalog?), and the changing demographics of college campuses — don’t appear to be driving the change, Babcock and Marks found. What might be causing it, they suggest, is the growing power of students and professors’ unwillingness to challenge them.
Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: The central bargain of a college education — that students have fairly light classloads because they’re independent enough to be learning outside the classroom — can no longer be taken for granted. And some institutions of higher learning have yet to grapple with, or even accept, the possibility that something dramatic has happened.
Very interesting findings and something that colleges and universities will have to adjust to.
The Atlantic chimes in with 8 reasons that may explain why studying is down.
h/t Arts & Letters Daily
Stress and social hierarchy
The latest issue of Wired has a fascinating article about stress. In addition to its effect on our physical bodies, the articles examines how stress is produced from being part of a social hierarchy. According to some studies cited in the article, being at the bottom of a social ladder produces harmful stress. This is not just because of the work but because those at the bottom have less control over their work. Those who we might consider to have “high-stress jobs,” such as doctors or lawyers, don’t feel the same negative effects of this stress since they have more control over their daily activities. Those working low-trust jobs, particularly in bureaucratic organizations, have higher death rates than those at the top, even controlling for other factors.
Apparently, the article is not available online but you can read some of the opening here on a Wired blog.
An argument against tenure
Megan McArdle of The Atlantic makes an argument for getting rid of tenure and concludes, “I find it hard to believe that tenure is crucial to preserving the spirit of free inquiry at our nation’s colleges.”
I’d like to see someone produce a thoughtful rebutal to hear the other side.
h/t Instapundit
Extra airline fees are here to stay
All those fees recently enacted by airlines are adding up and they are likely here to stay. The Chicago Tribune reports that ancillary revenues reached $13.5 billion in 2009. United Airlines led the way by collecting $1.9 billion.
On our recent trip to California, we paid $25 a piece for two bags on each leg of our American Airlines flight. The fares were reasonable – but adding on the extra $100 for luggage squelched any joy produced by finding a decent deal.
Using Twitter to solve your consumer problems
Time suggests a means for getting your customer complaints addressed: take your grievance to Twitter. Steven James Snyder writes about an experience he had with Hotmail where a Tweet led to a quick resolution.
California Picture #6
Seals basking on the rocks in a cove at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve. The park is three miles south of Carmel, California. We arrived at the gate several minutes after the 8 AM opening. At the booth where we had to pay to enter, one ranger said, “You must be tourists if you are here so early.” Both rangers in the booth were originally from Illinois and said they “never looked back” after moving to California.
(My wife and I traveled to California for nine days in early July – this is part of a series of pictures from our trip.)
Facebook: up or down?
Stories about Facebook have been plentiful in recent weeks as the company apparently prepares to announce that it has 500 million members and the trailer for The Social Network has hit the web.
Wired suggests “Five things that could topple Facebook’s empire.” One interesting tidbit out of this article: the American Customer Satisfaction Index (from the business school at the University of Michigan) found that Facebook has ratings similar to cable companies and airlines. Also, Facebook is similarly rated to MySpace. Overall, “That puts the world’s most visited website in the bottom 5 percent of private sector companies in the survey.”
Looking ahead 40 years
Smithsonian magazine celebrates its 40th anniversary by writing about “40 things you need to know about the next 40 years.”
Out of the 40 predictions, some of the ones that intrigued me:
4. New cars will be given away, free.
11. The heartland will rise again.
12. The top US social problem? Upward mobility.
13. By 2050, one out of three US kids will be Latino.
25. Artists will run the world.
27. Everyone will make his own music.
36. Good-bye stereo; hello, hyper-real acoustics
40. Reading will become an athletic activity
