1-18-14 Hodgepodge

The Higher Education Bubble, Visualized

Directly pertinent to last week's post is a graph that Glenn Reynolds posts of increasing student loan debt and decreasing earnings for holders of bachelor's degrees over time.

Note that Barack Obama wants to make higher education into a universal entitlement.

Weekend Reading

"When you speak, you're also listening to yourself, and it all starts with the words." -- Michael Hurd, in "Listen to What You're Saying!" at The Delaware Coast Press

"Not acting on your choices can result in feeling depressed or trapped." -- Michael Hurd, in "If You Regret a Major Decision, Consider This" at The Delaware Wave

"Laissez-faire capitalism: the political-economic system of America in the 19th Century which is to blame for the 2008 financial crisis." -- Harry Binswanger, in "A Dictionary of Obamaspeak" at Forbes

My Two Cents

Binswanger definitely saved the best entry for last in his Obamaspeak Dictionary, but you'll need to go there to find out what it is.

Yep.

Marco Arment offers a succinct explanation of when (and why) a web site should or should not force hyperlinks to open new windows when clicked.

I believe the former [leaving an important activity, like a banking transaction, undisturbed] is justifiable, the latter isn't, and reading a news or blog article does not qualify as an undisturbable session for most people...

Most people know how to open your article's outbound links in new tabs or windows, ... Modern browsers make multiple-tab/window management very easy for almost everyone who wants them, and the people who don't know how to manage them usually don't want them.

I agree with him that this is an "argument that should have ended fifteen years ago". Perhaps his title already addresses another issue, but I'll say it again, anyway: Doing this annoys many users who know how to browse the web.

--CAV