Archive for April, 2006

In my irregular series of postings on Britain’s social decline I bring you a column by Theodore Dalrymple concerning a young under-class woman. It’s Jerry Springer-esque, of course, not just paid for but practically ordered by a welfare state that has more or less abandoned all pretense of fostering or even supporting decent citizenship.

***Update*** Associated Press reports that Vaakya Viswanathan’s publisher Little, Brown and Company has asked book stores to pull “How Opal Mehta…” off the bookshelves and return all copies to the publisher. ***End update*** I love the smell of plagiarized-driven outrage and outrage moderation in the blogosphere. It smells like… I don’t know what that smell [...]

Bostonist catches Beantown at its finest: A story that leaves you with sympathy for none of the involved parties (save for the black woman).

One post on Opal Mehta just isn’t enough, so here’s my second one. Why am I attracted to this story? Because of all the proper, high-minded reasons: Integrity, honesty, creativity. Plus Harvard, a hot young chick, Ivy League admissions counselors, freaking half a million bucks (“half a rock” as Tony Soprano called it a couple [...]

A Harvard student – a sophomore – who was fortunate enough to land a $500,000 book deal has been exposed as a plagiarist. Side by side comparisons* strongly suggests that the young author, or “typist,” as Dan Kennedy, visiting assistant professor at Northeastern University and Boston’s ranking media critic, calls her on his blog, has [...]

Congress may on the verge of passing of an immigration bill that would add hundreds of thousands of unskilled foreign workers to the U.S. labor market every year. The reason is that America supposedly doesn’t have enough workers to fill certain kinds of low-end jobs. Econ 101 tells you that such reasoning most charitably can [...]

The skinny, as reported by the Boston Globe: Senate leaders this week will propose legislation to offer all workers in Massachusetts up to 12 weeks’ paid time off to care for newborn and adopted children or sick family members, financed by an employee payroll premium of at least $1.50 a week. The bill, which would [...]

Today I had an otherwise pleasant conversation that reminded me of Boston College’s heart-crushing 31-26 loss to Notre Dame in 1998. The Eagles had fallen behind, but then rallied fought their way to a first down on the 2-yard line in the final minute. From there, the Eagles somehow failed to score. They did so [...]

Anywhere else, apparently. The United States Census Bureau has released migration statistics for the periods 1990-2000 and 2000-2004. Note that these numbers only cover net movement within the United States, not immigration to or emigration from the Republic. It is no surprise that Massachusetts had a negative migration, that is, more people moved out of [...]

Boston Phoenix’s media reporter Mark Jurkowitz has an interesting post on his blog regarding the commercially and sometimes journalistically shaky ethnic media in our region. Apparently, even the bilingual Chinese-American Sampan is having financial troubles. I’d be lying if I said I was a friend of foreign-language ethnic media. I am not and I wish [...]