(The Tribal Law and Order Act.)

Checkout the book Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. Read an interview of Andrew Hacker. Here is an excerpt:

One of your more controversial points is the idea that every student should major in liberal arts. You’re not fans of majors like engineering or business that try to set a student up for a career right after college.

There are two ways to look at it. First of all, freshmen come in at age 18. Let’s suppose they’ve decided to major in sports management. What’s an 18-year-old going to do in a freshman course in sports management? I’ve attended some undergraduate business courses. The students are young; they don’t have business experience. Really very little is imparted.

The second way to look at it is that liberal arts, properly conceived, means wrestling with issues and ideas, putting the mind to work in a way these young people will only be able to do for these four years. And we’d like this for everyone. They can always learn vocational things later, on the job. They can even get an engineering degree later—by the way, in two years rather than four.

Doesn’t this play into the stereotype of the college graduate coming out with no practical skills and moving back in with his mom and dad? In fact, you even suggest that graduates should work at Old Navy for a year and ruminate on their lives.

In our economy, they’re not really ready for you until you’re 28 or so. They want you to have a number of years behind you. So when somebody comes out of college at 22 with a bachelor’s degree, what can that person really offer Goldman Sachs or General Electric or the Department of the Interior? Besides, young people today are going to live to be 90. There’s no rush. That’s why I say they should take a year to work at Costco, at Barnes & Noble, whatever, a year away from studying, and think about what they really want to do.

(Read the A.O. Scott NYT review.)

Sady Doyle has a post at the Atlantic titled “We Are All Snooki.” Here is an excerpt:

In a sense, we are all Snooki. The Jersey Shore star—and tanning product spokesperson, and hair-product entrepreneur, and aspiring author—was the subject of a spectacularly blunt profile in last weekend’s New York Times, which has already caused its fair share of Internet controversy. But cruel as the piece was, it’s hard to dispute its main point: On the surface of it, there’s no reason for Snooki to be famous. She’s not particularly smart or well-spoken. Her behavior is appalling, and her fashion sense is worse. She doesn’t have any discernible talents, other than her ability to make a compelling spectacle of herself. In our current cultural moment, however, that ability is more valuable than almost anything else. And it’s something that all of us—not just those of us who happen to be starring on reality TV shows—are having to learn.

Read the Comics Alliance post “It Hurts To Laugh: R.I.P. Cartoonist John Callahan 1951-2010.” Here is an excerpt:

Callahan operated way outside practically everybody’s comfort zone. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe; at some point, Callahan probably offended you. His was not the calculated use of “edgy” of a Dennis Leary or Carlos Mencia, tossing around well-worn reactionary or racist observations with a wink and a smile to win over the baser instincts of a crowd. Callahan’s work was like a raw feed from a dark and twisted id. His crude, squiggly drawings enhanced the immediacy of his work, with the unfiltered, uncensored humor of an enfant terrible who made you laugh and cringe in equal amount.

(John Callahan.)

Scientific American has an article “Social Ties Boost Survival by 50 Percent.” Here is an excerpt:

Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis.

The benefit of friends, family and even colleagues turns out to be just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. And by the study’s numbers, interpersonal social networks are more crucial to physical health than exercising or beating obesity.

“I don’t think a lot of people recognize that our relationships can have a physical impact as well as emotional,” says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, an associate psychology professor at Brigham Young University and co-author of the new study, published online July 27 in PLoS Medicine.

(Find the image above here.)

Checkout Maira Kalman, an exhibit of her artwork “Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations of a Crazy World)” at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, and her NYT op-ed “And the Pursuit of Happiness.” Here is a description of work:

Kalman speaks of her work as a form of journalism. She uses writing and drawing to render an ongoing account of the world as she sees it. Hers is a daily discipline of creativity based on photography, travel, research, walking, talking, and open observation. A serious love of distraction pervades. Abundant depictions of fashion, food, art, and architecture represent life’s great pleasures. At the same time, rubber bands, pieces of moss, bobby pins, and snacks stake claims for smaller forms of satisfaction.

All of this might seem trivial were it not for the counterweight of history, memory, and loss that is also ever-present. Chaos is another constant, be it crazy and madcap or simply devastating. Indeed, it is her work’s gift to illuminate those things that affirm our own capacity for joy, sadness, humor, charm. In short, Kalman’s art inspires our humanity in light of life’s overwhelming events and details.

(Twelve.)

Checkout Robert Whitaker‘s book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America whose other book Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill played a part in helping me understand what is happening in the treatment of mental illness in this country. Here is an excerpt from a review of the former at The People’s Voice:

Symptoms vs. Withdrawal

A couple of questions remain. First: for many people, the drugs are helpful. What gives?

Whitaker explained by email, “The drugs generally do knock down a target symptom better than placebo over the short term.” For instance, if a person has been staying up all night, psychiatric medications can provide a good night’s sleep. That alone can relieve a variety of symptoms.

Another question: Once a person is on psychiatric medications, they are often cautioned not to stop taking them – and if they do quit, sure enough, symptoms return. Doesn’t this prove they needed the drugs? Actually, says Whitaker, it may simply prove that the drugs have withdrawal symptoms. Since psychiatric medications affect the brain, it makes sense that withdrawal would affect the brain too, with symptoms that may resemble the original illness.

Whitaker’s research also led to troubling evidence suggesting the entire biological model of psychiatry was concocted to shore up psychiatry’s reputation as a medical specialty. He cites enough evidence, in fact, that a reader might wonder whether any psychiatrists are genuinely concerned with helping people.

Actually, says Whitaker, most psychiatrists honestly believe there is good evidence supporting the use of psychiatric medications, and are genuinely trying to help.

However, they don’t see the whole picture. According to Whitaker, “The practicing psychiatrist doesn’t see what happens to patients who are never exposed to medications, and thus the psychiatrist doesn’t see the natural course of the disorder.” Only science, he says, tells us what happens when people receive no medications. And science says that overall, they do far better than those who take drugs.

(The Young and the Connected.)

The most audacious advertiser-funded programme ever. The first daytime soap to show the realities of how young people live today. Its storylines focus on the drama that social networking adds to life in our modern connected world.