The Disadvantages of an Elite Education: an article by William Deresiewicz about how universities should exist to make minds, not careers | The American Scholar - http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-dis...
"It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house."
- Anna Haro
from Bookmarklet
"It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite...
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- Anna Haro
"I’m not talking about curricula or the culture wars, the closing or opening of the American mind, political correctness, canon formation, or what have you. I’m talking about the whole system in which these skirmishes play out. Not just the Ivy League and its peer institutions, but also the mechanisms that get you there in the first place: the private and affluent public “feeder”...
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- Anna Haro
I've run into people like that. It's only painful because they tend to make assumptions about me, so they come off condescending. Ho hum...it's fodder for my blog. LOL
- Anika
loved this: "So are you saying that we’re all just, like, really excellent sheep?”
- WarLord
I graduated from the top private school in St. Louis and spent two years at Brown before coming back to study design at Washington University here in town - which c. 1980 was still IMHO a marked step down from the Ivies. I cherish the education I got and am still a huge believer in the liberal education as a foundation for life, if an expensive one. In fact I treated design school...
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- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
from iPhone
"My name is Jay Shafer and since 1997 I have been living in a house smaller than some people’s closets. I call the first of my little hand built houses Tumbleweed. My decision to inhabit just 89 square feet arose from some concerns I had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because I do not want to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space. My houses have met all of my domestic needs without demanding much in return. The simple, slower lifestyle my homes have afforded is a luxury for which I am continually grateful."
- Anna Haro
from Bookmarklet
"Oh yeah, baby. It’s as good as it looks. Two layers of graham cracker cake separated by a layer of Marshmallow Fluff and topped with a milk chocolate glaze. In other words, a cake that really does taste like s’mores. One thing I love about birthdays as an adult is that we can celebrate them multiple times with various groups of friends, family, etc."
- Anna Haro
from Bookmarklet
Ah! we were talking about this place yesterday at work! Nice! this is a sign! I need to go on Thursday night. I will even brave Universal City Walk!!!
- Anna Lynn M.
i like the original in miami. cafe versailles on calle ocho i believe.
- sean808080
I miss Versailles. We haven't been there since we moved from Hollywood. Their mojo al ajo is the best!
- Anika
"The foot, in a size 8.5 white Nike running shoe, was discovered on Tuesday by two men walking on a beach in a suburb of Vancouver, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement. The British Columbia coroners' office is conducting a forensic autopsy and other tests to try to match it to missing persons, police said."
- Anna Haro
from Bookmarklet
"Seven feet were previously found along the rugged coast of British Columbia province and the neighbouring US state of Washington, including one later determined to have belonged to a missing man who was depressed. The other feet discovered include a female pair, a male pair and a male right foot. DNA testing has not yet determined the identities of the others, said police."
- Anna Haro
so i broke into the palace, with a sponge and a rusty spanner. she said "eh, i know you and you cannot sing" I said, "that's nothing you should hear me play the piano"
- T. Brent, technopeasant
Yay, Katy! I like your style. :-)) I heart Mr. Steven Patrick Morrissey. Derrick, thanks for the link. I remember reading an article about that doc.
- Anna Haro
"In testimony that Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski called “bone-chilling,” Colorado mom Peggy Robertson recently shared with a Senate committee the unbelievable story of how a major health insurance carrier refused to insure her and what they suggested she do to make herself eligible for coverage."
- Anna Haro
from Bookmarklet
"In 2007, Robertson was denied coverage by Golden Rule Insurance, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. In a letter explaining the denial, the company claimed that Robertson’s previous C-section made her a financial risk for the company. If she had another C-section within the first three years of coverage, the company would not profit from her policy. "
- Anna Haro
"It was a risk they weren’t willing to take and because the Colorado Insurance Division would not allow them to exclude C-section benefits for the first three years, they denied her coverage altogether. Robertson’s story may sound all to familiar, but unfortunately it doesn’t end there. In that same letter, Golden Rule went on to suggest what Robertson might do to make herself eligible for coverage: Get sterlized."
- Anna Haro
Your health is a business. What sounds crazy to rational people is probably a completely normal business decision. Any alternative is valid if it's profitable! _ANY_!
- ·[▪_▪]·
... which is what astonishes me when opponents of government-run health care claim it will result in rationing: Doesn't this amount to rationing? If there is going to be any rationing of health care (and I do think that there will always be SOME level of it, no matter how well intentioned), I'd rather have it done publicly than by a for-profit insurance company!
- rowlikeagirl, hecho en eu
you'll get still others claiming that government-run healthcare will also be for-profit...mostly the same ones who are blindly opposed to it.
- Joe Silence is not dead
It's the logical result of a health care system run on the basis of profit rather than health.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
It certainly fuels my suspicion that for-profit health insurance is a grave mistake (which won't be undone by any reform currently being proposed -- none of it goes far enough).
- Stephen Mack