The following tool lets you see what percentage of the news bandwidth a topic has compared to the rest of the week. For example, you can see that news articles about Bill Clinton have been growing in number all week – probably because of his book that’s about to come out. All items are in alphabetical order. stamen: google news
Kerry Proposes Raising Minimum Wage
John Kerry is proposing raising the federal minimum wage to $7/hour! While I still think it should be higher, that’s a big step. As the article says, it “would provide a family with enough money to buy 10 months of groceries or pay for eight months of rent.” I figure it would be about $320 extra a month after taxes.
University Diversity Plan in Texas Is Working
Texas has a law that guarantees admission to public universities to the top 10% of any high school graduating class. While the law has a lot of critics, it sure has been a success from a diversity perspective. According to
We had an interesting after dinner conversation last night. Yet another new Super Walmart is moving into town and we were discussing if they were good or bad for the local economy. The majority of the room was in favor of Super Walmart saying it would bring cheap goods and lots of jobs to the area. While I agree it will bring cheap goods and lots of jobs to the area, I believe it will replace small businesses and higher paying jobs with minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage jobs are evil. Not only can you not live well off a minimum wage job, they rarely come with paid time off, sick time off or benefits. So any accident or health problem kills you, financially speaking. Let’s just play with some numbers here. Minimum wage is $5.15/hr. Take that for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year (who needs vacation?). Subtract 10% federal tax and divide by 12 months. You come up with $803/month. I challenge you to come up with a budget that allows you to live off $803/month without any help from others. Average rent for a one bedroom apartment in my hometown is $550/month! Even with a roommate, you’d have a hard time affording a car, gas, food, utility bills, phone bill, etc. And I’m assuming you don’t have any kids, medical bills or credit card debt. And yet I was told last night that I should be glad Super Walmart only paid minimum wage because that’s how I get cheap groceries and goods. Personally, I can afford to pay a few dollars more on my weekly grocery bill if it means the kids across town get to eat well too. [6/11/04 Modified to take out social security as earnings under $11,640 are exempt.] I knew it! Dogs can understand words. Yahoo! News – Research Shows Dogs Can Comprehend Words My dog knows all her toys and most of her human and dog friends by name. I’ve always said she got left behind at the level of a 1-2 year old human child. This article claims the border collie they tested, tested at a 3 year old human level. Not only does the border collie, Rico, know all of his toys by name, but if an unknown toy is placed in the middle and he is asked for the unknown toy by name, he correctly assumes 7 times out of 10 that the toy he doesn’t know cooresponds to the name he doesn’t know AND a month later he still remembers the name of the new toy! Pretty amazing. I raise guide dog puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind, so I pay attention to any articles about raising service dogs. This
In this article, Census report: It pays to be a man, discussing the difference between men and women’s pay, the fact I found most interesting was the fact that women tend to earn the same as men in fields dominated by men such as hazardous waste removal. In fields dominated by women, such as nursing and preschool teachers, men earn substancially more. I’ve seen and heard a lot of debate about private vs public schools and within private schools, coed vs single sex. There’s an interesting article,
Good news. If you’ve ever been frustrated by the check engine light in your car and paid $100+ to get it diagnosed. And probably gotten it diagnosed multiple times because you didn’t get any real info, there’s now a bill in Congress to require car companies to release those codes to the public. See Drivers Want Code to Their Cars for more info. Foresight Exchange. Another site where you can bet on the future. A political options market. This one is much more active than the previous ones I wrote about. Bet on (or buy options) things like “GW Bush remains US Pres. ’04” or “US gasoline prices reach $3.00”.Minimum Wage
Research Shows Dogs Can Comprehend Words
Who Let These Dogs Out? The Warden
Women’s pay is closer to men’s in male dominated fields
Dividing the Sexes, for the Tough Years
Wired News: Drivers Want Code to Their Cars
Foresight Exchange