Humanities wailing about the rise of STEM

Seen on the Web, repeatedly, college humanities profs wailing about the emphasis and money going into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) departments, starving their humanities departments.  Statistics show the rising numbers of students with STEM majors, and the declining number of humanities majors.  This has been around since C.P. Snow wrote about "Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution".  The trend is understandable, college students want to major in something that leads to a job upon graduation.  At least intelligent students do.
   The humanities departments need to connect their disciplines to jobs.  Right now, humanities departments view their mission as training more humanities professors.  That's a loser, their aren't that many college prof jobs out there, and most of them are underpaid "adjunct" professors, part time, no health benefit jobs.   Humanities need to show prospective majors where the jobs are.
  Take English for example.  Show how an English major can lead to jobs.  Creative writing, best selling author is always attractive.  As well as playwright, screenwriting, writing instruction books, advertising copy, journalism.  Surely a knowledge of Shakespeare is useful to writing plays, movie scripts, or TV shows.  Understanding the English novel, from Pride and Prejudice to Hemingway is helpful to writers of mainsteam fiction, genre fiction, romance novels, fantasy and science fiction, westerns and mysteries.  This will require the typical English prof to conceal his aristocratic distaste for things like advertising and genre fiction, but that's better than unemployment.
   Foreign language departments need to expalin the need to speak the language, and know the culture, for overseas work in diplomacy, intelligence, sales, import/export work, journalism, and business.   Employers already know that they need American employees with language skills to represent them overseas.
   History is an ever expanding and super broad field.  Covering everything that ever happened since the invention of writing, makes history the broadest field of all.  History books have gone on to the best seller list from the days of Bruce Catton, and Barbara Tuchman, up thru David McCullough.  Plenty of good fiction have been written with a historical slant, from C.S. Forester to Tom Clancy.   As a background for a career in politics, diplomacy, or intelligence, history is far superior to political science, sociology or economics.  History is real, with real examples.  The others are theoretical, and mostly opinion.

The Economist likes inflation

Amusing cover story.  Cover has a cartoon of a limp hot air balloon  sagging toward the sea, where sharks are gathering.  Anyhow the gist of the story is we don't have enough inflation, and central banks, (The Fed!) ought to pump up inflation again.  They spend some words trashing deflation (falling prices and wages) but they never get around to expaling why inflation is good for anybody.  Any how, they are in favor of more of it. 
   They never explain just which measure of inflation they mean.  US labor dept  keeps track of "core" inflation, usually everything except food and fuel. Food and fuel are "volatile" and that makes them evil.  Core inflation is services and manufactured goods, and is "purer" in the view of economists. 
   Unfortunately, they use "core" inflation for all those cost-of-living escalators in union contracts and social security.  Doesn't help me much.  I have to buy oil for the furnace, gas for the car and food for the bod.  My house is clogged with generations of manufactured goods, both hand me downs from the older generation and left-behinds from the children.  I don't buy new stuff much anymore.  But the Social Security cost-of-living escalator works on "core" inflation. 

First Plow of the season

We had a bit of snow last night.  Less than an inch.  But the town plow rumbled by at 6 AM.  That's the first this season.  First plow counts for more than just first snow

Warren Commission

Been a lot of talk on TV about the Kennedy assassination, new evidence, second gunmen, all good Oliver Stone material.
  I clearly remember the day Kennedy was killed.  Word reached us on the Franklin & Marshall campus.  It was just before my afternoon class in Civil War, taught by good old Frederick Klein.  We gathered in the classroom, Fred was clearly shaken.  He said a few words about now he understood how the country felt after Lincoln's assassination.  Then he dismissed the class.  Nobody said much, we settled in front of the dorm TV set to watch the news.  We got to see Ruby waste Oswald live.  And the state funeral.  Those were sad days. 
   Back then, the entire thing seemed fishy.    There was fear in the air.  1963 was the coldest part of the cold war.  Oswald's Soviet Russian connections were in the press, his Russian wife, his stay in the Soviet Union.  Every one still remembered Joe McCarthy.  If the citizens ever got the idea that the Soviets were behind Oswald, all hell would break loose, including a demand for revenge, leading to WWIII.
    They appointed the bluest of blue ribbon committee of investigation available to investigate and report what really happened.  Earl Warren, chairman, was chief justice of the Supreme Court.  You don't get more respectable than that.  The rest of the members were all household names.  They had full and enthusiastic cooperation of  FBI, CIA, the armed services, the Congress, the Dallas authorities, everybody.  All the witnesses (except Oswald) were still alive for questioning.  Events were still fresh in everyone's memory.
   We were disappointed in the contents of the Warren report.  Nobody liked the idea that JFK had perished at the hands of a lone nutcase.  But we accepted it, largely 'cause we figured the commission members were too honest and too patriotic to lie to us. 
    I still feel that way.  The fifty years of conspiracy theories of history from that time to this don't impress me.  I think the Warren Commission, had all the time, all the expertise, all the pressure to produce, that were possible.  I doubt that latter day revisionists will get it more right than the Warren Commission did right after the fact.   
   But they keep trying.  It sells movies.
   

Sorry doesn't cut it

Obama actually managed to say he was sorry about canceling people's health care policies.  Too bad he didn't promise to fix anything while he was at it.  All talk, no action, that's our boy. 

It's all in the pan

Popovers that is.  Very tasty for breakfast.  Trouble is, they don't always pop for me.  I started out using ordinary stamped muffin tins.  Then I upgraded to pyrex cups.  Either way I have having a 50% failure-to-pop.  They would rise, come out tasty, but half the time, no pop. 
  So I splurged on a brand new Bundt popover pan.  $41 marked down to $35.  Cast aluminum, carefully shaped popover holes.  And it worked.  Made my regular recipe this morning,  filled the new pan half full, and bingo, they all popped.  Must be something magic in this fancy pan. 
   In fact, maybe there is.  Used to be, using muffin pans and such, the top of my popovers would brown and bake solid, rock solid,  too solid for the popping action to push up.  The fancy pan keeps the tops softer longer, and that may be the secret.  Popovers are unleavened bread, no yeast, no baking powder, they rise and pop on steam from the milk alone. 
  I only have to bake about another  30 batches to spread out the cost of fancy pan.  Good thing I like popovers for breakfast.

WIMP detector WIMPS out

The search for WIMPS was returned a negative.  Big new WIMP detector buried deep underground failed to detect any WIMPS.  Either the detector has a problem, or there are no WIMPS.  Stay tuned for future developments.  Perhaps MACHO's are the real answer?


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