Fix that Password-Now – Ellen Schultz wrote great tips on securing your online presence.

Jonathan Haidt: He Knows Why We Fight – by Homan Jenkins Jr. in the WSJ, 6/29/12. A search for “civil disagreement”, it is a review of Haidt’s new book, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” Haidt, a self described ‘liberal’ acknowledges the legitimacy of his opposition.

excerpt:

Mr. Haidt, until recently a professor of moral psychology at the University of Virginia, says the surveys conducted by his research team show that liberals are strong on evolved values he defines as caring and fairness. Conservatives value caring and fairness too but tend to emphasize the more tribal values like loyalty, authority and sanctity.

Conservatives, Mr. Haidt says, have been more successful politically because they play to the full spectrum of sensibilities, and because the full spectrum is necessary for a healthy society. An admiring review in the New York Times sums up this element of his argument: “Liberals dissolve moral capital too recklessly. Welfare programs that substitute public aid for spousal and parental support undermine the ecology of the family. Education policies that let students sue teachers erode classroom authority. Multicultural education weakens the cultural glue of assimilation.”

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe and Pundicity, No Danger of a Nuclear Iran? Seriously?, 7/1/12

But Iran is not like Russia, India, China, or the other existing members of the nuclear club. Time and again Iran has called explicitly for the extermination of Israel, while making clear that it sees nuclear weapons as a practical means to that end. “The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything,” Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani baldly explained in 2001. “However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.” Tehran still contemplates it. Just weeks ago, a news release from Iran’s FARS News Agency was headlined: “Top Commander Reiterates Iran’s Commitment to Full Annihilation of Israel.”

Let a regime that hungers for apocalypse and genocide get the bomb? Welcome it? Even Dr. Strangelove wouldn’t go that far.

Economist Richard Vetter writes in Imprimis, Federal Student Aid and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

What about higher education being a vehicle for equal economic opportunity or income equality? Over the last four decades, a period in which the proportion of adults with four-year college degrees tripled, income equality has declined. (As a side note, I do not know the socially optimal level of economic inequality, and the tacit assumption that more such equality is always desirable is suspect; my point here is simply that, in reality, higher education today does not promote income equality.)

Finally, in regards to the argument that capital markets for student loans are defective, if financial institutions can lend to college students on credit cards and make car loans to college students in large numbers—which they do—there is no reason why they can’t also make student educational loans.

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