I believe Apple when they say that the abortion clinic thing was unintentional. The real question to me is… would they approve of an app that lets parents know that their kids are looking for an abortion clinic?

I’ve pondered switching to e-cigarettes. I fear this bodes ill for that ever happening. I’d never smoke it in the workplace, but I fear before all is said and done, e-cigarettes will be made just as inconvenient as the regular kind. Not because they’re remotely as bothersome, but because the war on tobacco has become so punitive in nature.

Rural America is fighting back against a proposed Department of Labor regulation that would hinder the ability of young people to work on farms.

A look at who is dropping out of the labor force. Also, is it a good sign that people are quitting their jobs?

St. Louis disbanded the occupiers in the right way. There are some things the police across the country have taken grief for, but far too many were excessively confrontation. The only counterpoint is whether the missteps of others made the St. Louis occupiers know what the alternative to evacuation was.

The occupiers, meanwhile, are looking at occupying homes with faulty foreclosures (or allegedly faulty foreclosures). If they target the right houses, I think this could be a worthwhile project. But they’d better be sure, otherwise they are disrupting the proper eviction of deadbeats.

Step 1: Bring back the wooly mammoth. Step 2: Find out how they taste.

If the government was putting guns in the hands of bad guys in order to track them and learn about the flow of illegal guns, that’s one thing. If they did it to make a political argument, that’s inexcusable.

An interesting view of the Occupy Movement, from China.

Is Verizon throwing in the towel on FiOS?


Category: Newsroom

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15 Responses to Linkluster: Counties in Minnesota

  1. Peter says:

    Discussing labor force dropout rates in terms of educational level is interesting but misses the real point. What I very strongly suspect is that the main characteristic which determines whether or not people leave the labor force is age. I would imagine that the typical dropout is in his or her mid-50’s or above, and decides to take an early retirement (many private pensions can start as early as 55), a decision often made easier by a company buyout offer.

  2. trumwill says:

    Except that appears not to be the case. Labor participation is among dropouts is increasing and it’s the educated where it is going down.

    Why? I would guess that it’s among the educated where people can afford to drop out, either because they can retire or because they have a spouse or family that can support them.

  3. Brandon Berg says:

    But they’d better be sure, otherwise they are disrupting the proper eviction of deadbeats.

    I don’t think they’d see that as a problem.

  4. David Alexander says:

    Hehe, cute milk jug. 🙂

    Re: FiOS

    I suspect that the (big) shareholders have made it clear that they’re not willing to support massive outlays for more FiOS deployment, and ultimate, Verizon has grown tired of coming up with franchise agreements to get it approved with every dinky township and village government, and I suspect that they’re simply not finding the profit centre in trying to undercut the cable companies, especially as broadcasters and network operators seek even more money from the cable networks.

    So in exchange for some spectrum, Verizon promises to end the only real competition to the cable operators. It’s a bit disheartening to see that the only firm that’s capable of beating the cable companies has decided to bail on their project, which leaves one questioning if the cable companies will see any real competition? Yes, there’s satellite, DSL, and various VoIP solutions, but otherwise, it’s still not the tightly integrated solution that the cable company offers in terms of television, internet access, and telephone service. Fiber to the home was basically the only solution that could deliver properly deliver similar services without degradation, and if Verizon is bowing out, it doesn’t leave much that any other firms will bother any time soon.

    BTW, I am a FiOS customer, but only for internet access.

  5. David Alexander says:

    Labor participation is among dropouts is increasing and it’s the educated where it is going down.

    I suspect that you may have a situation in which the dropouts are slowly becoming a proxy for immigrants who are willing to work for low wages and poor conditions, while the high school graduates and some-college/college drop-outs are either living with family members that are middle class and potentially riding out the poor economy or trying to go back to school full-time, or they’re slowly realizing that they have no value in the economic system. Too good to work at McDonalds, but not good enough to be a professional or even a basic white collar worker with so-called middle class wages. In earlier times, these people may have found work, but their labour has been replaced by professionals with machines. Nobody needs a bookkeeper anymore when there’s Excel, or some guy to pull files out of storage when everything is computerized. The college degreed with poor job prospects are those who technically should have never gone, but can’t find work due to their somewhat useless degrees, or the market for their practical degrees may be lacking either at the regional or national level.

    FWIW, I an AS holder, so I’m in the “some college” category, and I basically live at home off my mother, and there’s little to no chance of employment that pays beyond $14 to $15 per hour unless the government begins hiring en masse again.

  6. David Alexander says:

    Labor participation is among dropouts is increasing and it’s the educated where it is going down.

    I suspect that you may have a situation in which the dropouts are slowly becoming a proxy for immigrants who are willing to work for low wages and poor conditions, while the high school graduates and some-college/college drop-outs are either living with family members that are middle class and potentially riding out the poor economy or trying to go back to school full-time, or they’re slowly realizing that they have no value in the economic system. Too good to work at McDonalds, but not good enough to be a professional or even a basic white collar worker with so-called middle class wages. In earlier times, these people may have found work, but their labour has been replaced by professionals with machines. Nobody needs a bookkeeper anymore when there’s Excel, or some guy to pull files out of storage when everything is computerized. The college degreed with poor job prospects are those who technically should have never gone, but can’t find work due to their somewhat useless degrees, or the market for their practical degrees may be lacking either at the regional or national level.

    FWIW, I an AS holder, so I’m in the “some college” category, and I basically live at home off my mother, and there’s little to no chance of employment that pays beyond $14 to $15 per hour.

  7. trumwill says:

    I don’t think they’d see that as a problem.

    From a moral perspective, perhaps not. From a PR perspective, though, they’ve been careful to emphasize that these were people that were wronged. If this turns out not to be the case, they will have some egg on their face.

  8. trumwill says:

    Nothing to add to your two comments, David, except to say that you make some great points.

  9. ? says:

    Indeed, a quick experiment from NPR headquarters in Washington using a colleague’s borrowed phone found Siri unable to find a single birth control clinic (“sorry about that”), but 16 drug stores where Viagra could be purchased (“12 of them fairly close to you!”)

    Right. Because it’s 1900 and William Jennings Bryan has forbidden drug stores to carry birth control. So we can only get it from “clinics” operated by fearless pioneers of sexual liberation.

    “Birth control clinics” Good grief!

  10. ? says:

    Sorry, but I can’t let this go. Seeing as how NPR takes such a great interest in mis-directing search engines, check to see how many stories NPR did when Google deleted Pat Buchanan from its auto-fill feature. (This would be the same Google that has had “years” to refine its search results.)

    Didn’t find anything? Imagine that.

  11. SFG says:

    NPR’s liberal bias is well-known and practically part of their marketing at this point.

    I wonder, though, Phi, are you against contraception? Seems to me a pretty good way to decrease the number of abortions.

  12. ? says:

    are you against contraception?

    That’s not the point. My point is that I bought my first condoms at a Walgreens barely a couple of miles from Focus on the Family headquarters, yet NPR wants to pretend this is something I need Siri or specialty “clinics” to help me accomplish.

  13. trumwill says:

    I wonder, though, Phi, are you against contraception? Seems to me a pretty good way to decrease the number of abortions.

    In theory. Of course, in theory, extra padding is supposed to reduce the number of injuries in football. In fact, it more likely increases it (if we compare to rugby, or football over time). The illusion of safety plays all kinds of tricks on us. It comes down to a lot of other aspects of behavior.

  14. trumwill says:

    Right. Because it’s 1900 and William Jennings Bryan has forbidden drug stores to carry birth control. So we can only get it from “clinics” operated by fearless pioneers of sexual liberation.

    I found that odd, too. I just wasn’t sure that it wasn’t poorly written or that I wasn’t misreading it. Either it doesn’t make sense or it’s a really sloppy comparison.

  15. SFG says:

    They’re being disingenuous, of course: the point is that Siri was made by dudes (probably true) and hence didn’t bother to include abortion clinics.

    The whole problem is that if you believe abortion is murder, then an app that helps you find an abortion clinic is kind of like an app that helps Nazis find Jews hiding in attics; if you believe it isn’t, then, it’s part of women’s rights. Middle ground on this issue is hard because there’s such a huge moral gap between ‘murder’ and ‘not murder’.

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