Posted on Leave a comment

Links: Demography, Arrests Records, Books as Art, the Fate of Marriage, and More!

* “Demography Is Rewriting Our Economic Destiny,” an under-appreciated and significant issue; this can be read profitably in tandem with Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.

* “Decades-long Arrest Wave Vexes Employers: Companies Struggle to Navigate Patchwork of Rules That Either Encourage or Deter Hiring Americans With Criminal Records;” if a third of Americans have arrest records something is seriously wrong with our society. Articles like this also explain the many prisoner re-entry and vocational training RFPs out there.

* “The Innovative Art of the Book-Preserving Underground: How do illustrations for new editions of Farenheit 451 or Breakfast at Tiffany’s stay fresh? Artists for The Folio Society remain true to the text.” I’ve bought Folio Society books.

* “Americans aren’t getting married, and researchers think porn is part of the problem,” which must be read skeptically.

* “The Henry Ford of Books,” about James Patterson, who is not good at sentences but perhaps he knows as much: “he is philosophical about his critics, in particular critics of his craft. Patterson decided long ago that he’d rather be a successful popular novelist than a mediocre literary one.”

* “How to be an expert in a changing world,” which, like many Graham essays, is about more than it appears to be about; this for instance applies to artists: “Good new ideas come from earnest, energetic, independent-minded people.” That is also where new nonprofits often come from.

* “The Birdcage: How Hollywood’s toxic (and worsening) addiction to franchises changed movies forever in 2014.” Here is me on Birdman and note too that the author is nostalgic for a time when movies were central to the culture, which hasn’t been true for at least a decade.

* “Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School: New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire.” See also our post “Trying to Give Away Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) or Early Head Start (EHS).”

* The Unappreciated Success Of Charter Schools.

* Incredible NYC pictures taken from 7,500 feet.

* The Scourge of Edu-speak, which is all over our education proposals—because funders demand it. No one individually likes it yet the system conspires to produce it.

* I Was Arrested for Learning a Foreign Language. Today, I Have Some Closure.