19 Oct 2004
The retirement squeeze: How would they fix it?

Of course the candidates are vague on this: there's no good way to fix the problem, at this point. We've successfully put off until tomorrow what we should have done yesterday, and it's my generation that's gonna pay for it. I'll be lucky if I can retire by age 80 ...

Whoever wins the election may have to make tough choices about Social Security's finances.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]

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Specialty majors are the rage on some campuses

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined "Sports Sales" as a university degree ... we used to joke about having taken everything except "Advanced Basket Weaving", but we were joking. But this is no joke. Or is it, ultimately? And on whom?

At the start of her freshman year in college, Nici Smith declared her major in financial planning. But when an e-mail about a new major in sports sales popped up on her computer screen during sophomore year, she started to rethink her career track.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor]

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An update

And a hearty "Thank You!" to orangeguru for applying some of his Photoshop magic to this picture. I wish I had the excess bandwidth/disk capacity to display both, but the improved version will have to do for now! (And I did have to compress it just a wee bit for page loading performance...)

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Lawyers

"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half."

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "Breathing Space", The Baltimore Evening Sun, Aug 4, 1924.

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Web radio gets $1.7 billion boost

This is probably a good thing, but I still believe that online royalties should be treated exactly the same as on air royalties. But this seems to be a step in the right direction. We'll see.

Music publishers, radio group say their new licensing deal is the biggest in the history of American radio.

(link) [CNET News.com]

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U.S. Programmers An Endangered Species?

How encouraging... I feel like an endangered species, which is why I'm ramping up the farm as coding work is slowing down. With a little luck, the former will come to full fruition before the latter becomes extinct.

USA Today reports that US Programmers are an 'Endangered Species' and expects them to be 'extinct' within the next few years, replaced by offshoring and H-1B visa holders. They suggest people will manage overseas projects, become self-employed, or switch to other fields.

(link) [Slashdot: ]

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