Academic Aspersions

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An elegant display of an inelegant process.   

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“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

Anatole France.  Via n+1

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Just because it's pretty, frankly.

Via A View from the Cave.

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Number of births by age, I think. As a pedant I will note the lack of y-axis labels drives me to distraction.

“There are two clear paths through adulthood,” Cherlin told The Altantic, “one for people who have a bachelor’s degree and one for people who don’t.”

For reference, from the top: No high-school graduation; HS graduation; some college; bachelors degree+

Via SocImages.

[theimpossiblecool]

“Find what you love and let it kill you.” 

Charles Bukowski, Los Angeles, 1982.

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In the end, the only really interesting books are the ones read by the police.

Tomatoes. Natalie Quintaine

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His wife seemed to have grown in stature while she insulted him with elegance and precision.

Germinal. Émile Zola.

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What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

Bob Dylan.

Via GQ.

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WellRead40

A path through the great books.

In case you have a spare decade or two of reading time…

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popular pin-ups, playboys, millionaires and actresses with the bodies of gods and goddesses and the morals of ferrets

  Lord Hailsham.  Relating to the Profumo affair

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Train your heartbeat, make it sufficiently slow, and you can go anywhere. Guards will cease to see you. Walls will let you pass. Former lovers will not recognize you, even face to face, close as hands. Train your heartbeat, slow it down, and nothing is impossible any more. You can turn into salt.

Sean at Said the Gramaphone.

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This.  Always this.

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Shifting from bimodal to merely right-skewed.  A step in the right direction?

Via From Poverty to Power.

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An amazing effort: mapping informal bus routes in Nairobi.

Via Ken Opalo.

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Mmm, doesn't that make you hungry?

Via Marginal Revolution.

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I don't believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice. I don't even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos. I believe powerful people who think they can make Utopia out of chaos should be watched closely. I don't know that it all ends badly. But I think it probably does. I'm also not a cynic. I think that those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can't guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us. Or perhaps not.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic. 

A strong counterpoint to a recent discussion I heard regarding the necessity of a greater power and its ultimate ability to make the world whole, in order to justify the effort to improve our today.

(Source: The Atlantic)

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Telling you what you already know. And probably depressing the proverbial out of you too.

See also OKTrends.

Via Sociological Images.