Links and Thoughts 35: 13 October 2014
Jerry Masucci Presents Salsa, Fania All Stars Live at Yankee Stadium, 1973 [1hr 17min]
Good Morning.
Music:
Our first link (and also the musical embed from YouTube, above) go to a great conversation I heard on NPR last Friday, remembering and celebrating “salsa dura”, the music created in New York in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, by Peurto Rican immigrants (and others) in what was called Spanish Harlem. 48 minutes of audio at the link:
“Crisp, hard, irresistible music for dancing. Not the softer, romantic salsa of today, but the driving, percussive salsa you could have heard any night down at the Palladium Ballroom. These days, Spanish Harlem Orchestra keeps it hot and alive. Old school. Still irresistible. This hour On Point: the music of Spanish Harlem Orchestra and bandleader Oscar Hernandez, with salsa dura.”
There Is An Orchestra In Spanish Harlem, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, NPR, 10 October 2014
Cities and Citizens:
“Richer people, the researchers found, tend to own single-family homes and drive cars even when they live in highly urbanized neighborhoods. In other words, even though there is a diverse range of suburban and urban neighborhoods, the affluent people who live in them lead relatively similar lifestyles. As the rich move back to cities, they take their preferences for and abilities to purchase larger home or condos and private cars.”
The Fading Distinction Between City and Suburb, Richard Florida, 6 October 2014, City Lab [citylab.com]
Education:
“About half of the graduating class of 2014 has already found gainful employment. But a survey by jobs site CareerBuilder.com has found about half of those people are working in jobs that do not require a college degree.
“The survey found that 31% are not working at all, while 4% are in internships and 12% are working at temp jobs. Only 51% of those currently working said their position was related to their college major.
“There’s nothing wrong with starting at the bottom and working your way up – as long as you aren’t carrying a massive student loan balance. In some cases, the first post graduation jobs is simply stop-gap employment – on the way to something better.”
Most employed 2014 college grads in jobs that don’t require degree, Mark Huffman, 9 October 2014, Consumer Affairs [consumeraffairs.com]
“Only 44 percent of Americans now say getting a college education is ‘very important.’ That’s down from 75 percent in the same annual poll just four years ago. The real answer is: It depends. If you’re a Columbia grad with a computer-science degree, you can probably write your own ticket. But if you’ve spent six years and gone into debt for a degree in hospitality, you probably won’t get the return on investment that would make it worthwhile. The poll numbers reflect this reality, as people see their children coming out of college and then taking jobs that require no more than a high-school diploma.”
Is college worth it?, Post Editorial Board, 22 September 2014, New York Post [nypost.com]
“There is talk about the poor educational outcomes apparent in our graduates, the out-of-control tuitions and crippling student loan debt. Attention is finally being paid to the enormous salaries for presidents and sports coaches, and the migrant worker status of the low-wage majority faculty. There are movements to control tuition, to forgive student debt, to create more powerful ‘assessment’ tools, to offer ‘free’ university materials online, to combat adjunct faculty exploitation. But each of these movements focuses on a narrow aspect of a much wider problem, and no amount of ‘fix’ for these aspects individually will address the real reason that universities in America are dying.”
How Higher Education in the US Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps, Debra Leigh Scott, 16 October 2012, AlterNet [alternet.org]
just one more link this morning, an ‘in case you missed it’:
Anime:
“The sheer size of the [Mobile Suit Gundam] franchise though, combined with all the twists and turns and alternate timelines, is daunting (to say the least) for the casual anime viewer. All the information you need is available from Wikipedia and other sources, but once again, the volume of material is a huge barrier to entry. Where do you start?
“I still can’t tell you where to start – but I can give you a list:”
Gundam Reference, Rocket Bomber, posted yesterday (12 October 2014).
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