Love it. I have never progressed much past the level of “pat the child on the head” with my woodworking, but one of my very first projects was a cigar box guitar and I remain a sucker for others’ luthiery projects.
Also seeing a pretty clear linguistic link between “vielle” and “fiddle.” I wonder if the “rough” sound you describe would be at home with various European and North American folk traditions.
How much is a new “brain”? I have the CNS, and it’s working fine, but I clench up thinking about the electronics getting weird or breaking. While I figure I probably COULD bypass the entire safety system, at that point it’s just a Craigslist-equivalent Rigid motor-hanger with a better fence.
Yeah the article touches on that, as well as the fact that some degrees have you making less (though possibly in a position that is less demanding of your time and/or physicality) than many people without a degree. It also specifically mentions that the benefits are now small enough that the chances of making more have to be weighed against the costs of not finishing or of taking on too much debt for the bump. It then goes into all the ways that the elite schools quietly keep up social barriers (Equestrian scholarships, anyone?). The other big thing is that a sizeable percentage of Republican-leaning people now dismiss college as being nothing more than an indoctrination camp, so that skews the numbers in a weird way. But then, as you say, it remains a basic hurdle to most office jobs or of course to graduate study, hence the rise of nonsense like Liberty University and the continued existence of the University of Phoenix.
We were fortunate enough to be able to invest in a college savings plan for our daughter (yay privilege!), but if we were starting from scratch, I would tell her to try to knock it out of the park in Community College for two years, then apply to a three-tiered set of schools: 2-3 elite places that will open doors (likely off the table when transferring in from CC, but worth it if you can pull it off), the 2-3 best public schools in our state, and 2-3 reputable schools that will be cheapest due to whatever combination of aid, proximity, and in-state tuition brings the bill down. Even with our plan, I’m going to strongly encourage her to use it at a place where it will cover total cost (e.g. 4 years at options 2 and 3 above, no private schools). There is just no more room for romance in choosing your college. Taking out massive debt to go to any place other than those networking factories is just not a prudent economic choice.
While their financial models are a million times more sensible, this is kind of how Europe works already. I’m exaggerating a bit, but if you don’t get into Ox-bridge or the Sorbonne or l’Ecole Polytechnique, then you go to class in an office building somewhere near your flat and you get on with life without carrying crippling levels of debt into the workforce. There’s no pining for the hallowed halls of Oglethorpe University or Siena College.
There is an undeniable tabloidy/car-crash element to the Murdaugh story, but it also says a lot about privilege and entitlement in American society.
True, but there’s a certain set of STEM students who resent that their BS degrees are not simply technical certifications. The idea of college is supposed to be that you come out a well rounded person who had exposure to a lot of fields of human endeavor at a sophisticated level compared to high school.
Now, can we argue that not everyone qualified to pursue a technical subject needs a well-rounded education? Sure, but I don’t want to work with or for those people. Even for someone who rolled their eyes through English Comp 101, you can expect that they’ve been taught how to write a damn paragraph and how to engage with a narrative beyond the surface level.
…for the most part, the teachers in the geneds did not give two fucks about what they were teaching…
…I had already learned enough that wasn’t directly relevant to my interests when it was free.
Chicken, meet egg.
I assume if the transformer had blown the Californians would have had to work off the charges living in the little town, being hilariously angry for the first act month, only to come around, leave after some emotional misunderstanding, but then return just in time to save the town hall from getting bulldozed.
Politics can be a cynical, nasty game, but it’s important that everyone believes that the game’s rules matter. For a football (soccer) analogy, Nixon was hoping to get away with an intentional handball or studs-up tackle, while Trump is Suarez biting people, or maybe a pitch invasion by angry ultras. None of them are within the rules and should not be tolerated, but some are not even identifiable as football and are way harder to manage than the others.