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It will not be an easy or a simple task
From “Automation and Unemployment: A Management Viewpoint,” by Malcolm L. Denise, vice president for labor relations, Ford Motor Company, 1962: As a result of these developments, together with a vast...
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The furniture sentiment
Today’s Memorial Library find: the magazine Advertising and Selling. The September 1912 edition features “How Furniture Could Be Better Advertised,” by Arnold Joerns, of E.J. Thiele and Co. Joerns...
View ArticleNot even the most poorly paid shipping clerk
One more from Why Men Fail: Not even the most poorly paid shipping clerk would dream of trying to make his own shirts, and confidential investigation would probably reveal that mighty few darn their...
View Article“The Great Ph.D. Scam” (or: Academy Plight Song)
Thanks to the Wayback Machine, here’s my piece from the Boston Phoenix on the MLA, the first feature piece I ever wrote for publication, twenty-one years ago last month. Who knows if the Wayback...
View ArticleNebraska isn’t poor and Nebraskans aren’t naive
David Brooks writes in the New York Times that we should figure out how to bottle the civic health southwest Nebraska enjoys: Everybody says rural America is collapsing. But I keep going to places...
View ArticleIn which I almost waste four dollars at Amazon
Instructive anecdote. I needed a somewhat expensive book and the UW library didn’t have it. So I decided to buy it. Had the Amazon order queued up and ready to go, $45 with free shipping, then had a...
View ArticleIf you build it they will come and exploit it
There’s no way to build a program for people in need that can’t be taken advantage of by unscrupulous people who aren’t in need. I have a friend, an attorney, who used to work cases involving people...
View ArticleI don’t work at a finishing school
David Brooks, in the New York Times: On the left, less viciously, we have elite universities that have become engines for the production of inequality. All that woke posturing is the professoriate’s...
View ArticleDredging as good government
A few summers ago we had really bad floods in Madison. There were a lot of reasons. The proximate reason was it rained a lot. But also: we keep the levels of the lakes artificially high with dams, in...
View ArticleTailgating
I was driving home from picking up sushi the other night, and another car was tailgating me. I was really annoyed. I was on a curvy road, it was icy out, and I was going the speed limit, 25 – and this...
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