ShoehouseFor cleaner fuel burning, European utility companies are turning to wood. What could go wrong?

Matt Yglesias lauds changes in Houston’s bus transit system.

Two Rotterdam School of Management professors argue that gender quotas in management drive away both women and men.

America’s true silent majority: German-Americans. I’ve got some German on my mother’s side.

Janet Halley looks at sex, gender, race, and Title IX enforcement of rape charges on campus. Whitefaces maybe should be changed, though.

Here are some awards for the weirdest high school mascot names in Texas. In a world of Tigers and Wildcats, I consider these to be a relief and wish there were more of them.

Noah Berlatsky argues that the elongated copyright terms restrict scholarship. As the creators’ families and DC fought over the rights to Superman, it was just amazing to me that someone can still own the rights to Action Comics #1.

Between thesmug superiority of the left and the know-nothingism of the right, Roberta X seems to have gone apolitical.

Marryin’ cousins make for more babies.

McMansions are back.

Ryan Cooper believes self-respecting atheists should ditch New Atheists.


Category: Newsroom

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23 Responses to Linkluster Cyprus

  1. Peter says:

    I would imagine that there aren’t many pure German-Americans left, with most being a mix of ancestries who identify as German based on surname.
    When the Economist article said that Germans have prospered without any special help it immediately gave examples of social organizations for other European groups. I wonder, though, if that was actually a very subtle reference to affirmative action, more accurately the lack thereof.

    • trumwill says:

      I remember being surprised at how many states where German was the third language.

      • aaron david says:

        The town of Lodi, of Stuck in Lodi again” fame, was known in CA as being a German town. My great grandmother had a boarding house there, and she apparently spoke no English.

    • fillyjonk says:

      the town where my parents live used to have a strong German heritage, I believe there was a “Volksblatt” newspaper in German, there were German-American clubs and mutual-aid societies and the like…

      That’s all gone, now.

      Part of it, I am sure, is the effect of two World Wars in which Germans were the bad guys – I have heard of people who Anglicized their names to avoid trouble.

      I’m about 1/4 German….More Irish than German, actually, but I know more traditional German recipes than I do Irish, thanks to my (German) paternal grandmother’s influence.

      I suspect rural areas in the Dakotas and Wisconsin (and perhaps Minnesota) may still have some stronger ties than urban areas do – in urban areas, it doesn’t particularly give you “cred” to have European heritage, except maybe for Irish around St. Paddy’s Day…

  2. superdestroyer says:

    a lot of the schools mentioned with unusual mascots are small schools. Compared to the largest high school in the State of Texas, Allen, who are the Eagles and spent $100 million on a new football stadium.

    The Nazareth Swifts have won the smallest high school division state girls basketball championship 17 times. As a stunt one year, the boys and girls teams had the same coach and both won the state championship. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=nazareth

    Also, the odd mascots left out the Knippa Purple Rock Crushers. http://www.knippaisd.net/athletics.aspx

    • trumwill says:

      Yeah, they do seem to mostly be small schools. No reason that bigger schools couldn’t, though.

      • superdestroyer says:

        A small town is more likely to tolerate someone with a sense of humor or irony who proposes an odd name. A large school district is going to pick the names of schools and mascots using a committee. That means names that will create no issues.

        • trumwill says:

          Committees ruin everything.

        • trumwill says:

          I’ve said this story before, but oh well. A new middle school was created when I was going through. They asked the students what the mascot should be and there was a quick consensus around Cobras.

          Not knowing any school with that name, the district assumed it must be some gang thing, and so decided on Cardinals.

        • James Hanley says:

          Spanish Cobras! A very real gang, which obviously you clever young middle schoolers knew all about.

          It would have been really cool to suggest Pharaohs, and see if the school administrators had ever watched American Graffiti.

        • trumwill says:

          I’ve never actually seen that movie…

          That’s actually a pretty cool team name, though.

      • Oscar Gordon says:

        I think this line of text:

        “Whitefaces maybe should be changed, though.”

        is int he wrong spot.

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    The gender quota story is, actually, unsurprising. This is just evidence of a common criticism of such systems.

  4. Oscar Gordon says:

    Title IX article is good as well.

  5. Kirk says:

    Regarding Germans: my father used to work with a “Mr. Marks,” who had all sorts of Nazi memorabilia. I was too young at the time to realize its significance: Mr. Marks’ father had been a member of the Gestapo, and had been executed as a war criminal.

    I would think that’s got to mess you up.

  6. Matt Yglesias lauds changes in Houston’s bus transit system.

    FWIW, that’s the kind of stuff that some marginal cities cities should do before spending money on anything resembling a light rail system or a streetcar network. One must remember that the rail network is the backbone that’s fleshed out with a supporting bus network. Hopefully, in the long run, ridership can increase enough to convert some of these routes into rail-based routes as well. Hell, I don’t know of Houston can even have LA levels of ridership, but hopefully, residents approve the changes, and ridership can be maximized…

  7. America’s true silent majority: German-Americans. I’ve got some German on my mother’s side.

    There’s been rumours of German ancestry in my paternal side for some time, but the people old enough to remember passed away nearly two to three decades ago. It’s somewhat possible as there was a small German community in Haiti during the early 1900s, and they married local Haitian women in order to bypass laws on foreign ownership of businesses and property. Their role in Haiti was brief as the United States occupied the country in an attempt to mitigate the Germans from having leverage in the Caribbean Sea.

    I guess one day, I’ll get that DNA test done. 🙂

    it doesn’t particularly give you “cred” to have European heritage, except maybe for Irish around St. Paddy’s Day…

    Primarily because it’s a de facto drinking day, and nobody else really has any large scale festivals connected with their ethnicity. Hell, Cinqo de Mayo is basically a glorified drinking day to tide us over until Memorial Day.

  8. McMansions are back.

    FWIW, they’re back because they’re still cheap and easy to build, and most people will accept it as perfectly acceptable. Mind you, that doesn’t magically preclude any desire for more compact urban housing, especially in certain housing markets. It’s not as if that much really changed in the past seven years to create these massive shifts.

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