Student financial aid

J.W. Pope Center: Who do student loans really favor? Students or Colleges/Universities? Take a guess.

We should phase out federal student aid programs. They do not make higher education more affordable, but fuel an academic “arms race” where spending is mostly for jockeying in the college ratings beauty pageant. And federal loans induce students to myopically borrow for college degrees that are apt to do them no good, a phenomenon one student wrote about for the Pope Center.
Government subsidies always have unintended consequences, usually overwhelming whatever benefits they were supposed to produce.

Wisconsin Supreme Court election

The controversies in Wisconsin just seem to go on and on.

The Masters: A course set up for left-handers - San Jose Mercury News

This AP article argues that the Augusta National golf course has been changed to favor left-handed golfers. In the past eight years lefties have won four times, Phil Mickelson three of the four. The course favors hitting the ball from right to left, which is easier for left-handed golfers than right-handers. Several pivotal holes have a right-to-left shape. You might want to watch for this on the 13th, 10th and 9th, as well as the 2nd and 4th, perhaps others.

I Googled this topic and found other articles that made the same point.

Crunch time

We are facing another big budget crunch.

The 100 Most Desirable Women in Sports | Bleacher Report

The 100 Most Desirable Women in Sports | Bleacher Report

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is predicted to be a big topic this year, and so far it has been. This is a development that will shake up the computer world and especially the music industry. One interesting quote: "Throughout the history of technology the slowest industry to keep up has always been the music industry... We all recall the debacle of a response when peer-to-peer sharing first began with Napster in 2001. Eventually file sharing junkies moved on to Torrents where there was no central server for the music industry to attack and still the music industry tried to fight against the current. See this article by Mike Swift.

Cloud computing will also affect other kinds of sharing like file space and who knows what else.

Amazon's Cloud Player

The music industry does not like the Amazon Cloud Player at all. Amazon encourages users to upload their music libraries, arguing that no license is required. This is a coming battle, it appears.

Gov. Beebe Accuses the House of Partisanship

Jason Tolbert comments on Gov. Beebe's comparison of partisanship in the 2011 Arkansas House and Senate. You should know that more Republicans were elected to the Arkansan legislature than anyone can remember. Beebe's statement is very amusing. He bragged on the Senate but was critical of those bad House Republicans. Year ago I recall hearing administrators really brag on subordinates (department heads or deans) who did not give them any trouble and just went along quietly. But if you stood up and made demands, well, that didn't earn you any brownie points.

AARP Tax Exemption Report at Center of Contentious Capitol Hill Hearing - FoxNews.com

A Congressional investigation claims that AARP violated its tax exempt status by selling insurance and lobbying for Obamacare. This is the first time I've read that AAPR has tax exempt status. But I've always believed that AARP was an insurance company in the business of selling insurance while posing as an advocate for seniors.

Obamacare a year later

Bill Kristol on Obamacare:

I think March 21, 2010 [the day the bill was passed], will be the high watermark, historically, of big government liberalism and of the entitlement state. This is sort of the overreach that shows how insane the modern entitlement state has become. And they expected their support to build, because in previous entitlements, when they got passed, people liked them once they were passed.
That has not happened in this case. The polls haven't changed. They're not changing. And I think it's going to be a burden for the president and his re-election effort. And as I said, I think this will be repealed.