* Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) of Tennessee’s preschool program show that preschool doesn’t appear to improve the later school performance of those enrolled, or much of anything else.
* CDC: Many U.S. Girls Not Getting HPV Vaccine Despite Its Effectiveness.
* “A bachelor’s degree could cost $10,000 — total. Here’s how.” The short version is, “Unbundling.” I think we’re going to see some version of this tried in various places, and in the next decade we’re going to see a lot of universities change.
* Average Is Over—if We Want It to Be.
* Oklahoma senator calls out Congress for blowing money on ‘fruity’ grants.
* Which Job Skills Will Be Most Important In The Coming Years?
* “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?” As an additional explanation, see Philip Greenspun, “Women in Science.”
* Travel is much more boring and aggravating than people give it credit for.
* What we eat affects everything.
* If You Aren’t Technical, Get Technical. One could also replace “technical” with “literate,” although “technical” certainly has more immediate financial returns.
* The unbelievably brilliant ad campaign by Eat24, a food delivery service: “How to Advertise on a Porn Website.” Note that this is safe for work, provided you don’t work in a religious organization or elementary school.
* The most important piece and yet likely to be the least read: “We’ve Reached ‘The End of Antibiotics, Period.’”
* A sad day for the OS X users among us: “Pages 5: An unmitigated disaster.”
* L.A. to unleash city-wide gigabit broadband. Awesome. Also on the good news front: “Fed up with slow and pricey Internet, cities start demanding gigabit fiber.”
* Woman from MTV demands free stuff.
* Reducing the federal prison population, which should be a major goal.
* A reinvented skillet. Isaac is skeptical because he says you can buy a perfectly good Lodge cast iron pan made in Tennessee for about $20, but I want to believe.
* Complementing the second link: “The Cancer Vaccine: Only one in three American girls is vaccinated against HPV. That will mean thousands of gratuitous cancer deaths. Why?”
* “What are some of the biggest problems with a guaranteed annual income?” Isaac is very fond of the guaranteed annual income model, which was last a prominent idea in the early 70s, when he was in college, but has become a more interesting proposition as of late.
* “Simple answers to the questions that get asked about every new technology,” in comic form.
* “Why Aren’t Cities Taller?” The answer has important and under-appreciated implications for poverty and real wealth, and the link is connected to the link above: “Average Is Over—if We Want It to Be.”