the world needs more boffins….

my army / american council on education transcript.

basic training:
recommendation: 1 semester hour in personal physical conditioning, 1 semester hour in
outdoor skills practicum, 1 semester hour in marksmanship, 1 semester hour in first aid....

military occupational speciality 11b10:
recommendation:
vocational certificate level: 3 semester hours in mechanical maintenance.

lower division baccalaureate/associate degree level: 1  semester hour in map reading, 1
semester hour in first aid, and 1 credit in surveying after institutional evaluation.

military occupational specialty  95b10:
lower division baccalaureate/associate degree level:  3 semester hours in patrol
operations.

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interesting enough i suppose. these were produced in 1995, i left the guard in 97, i think i was actually 11b20 at that time.

found the driver safey course certificate the army put me through too, through out a bunch of other crap, 3 garbage bags full of stuff i'd moved 3 or 4 times. these particular documents i've had for 9+ years and i found notes that i had from my first semester at american university.

take the poll.

The End Of The Last Best Hope.

Joshua Micah Marshall, following the Wall Street Journal, reports that a Justice Department memorandum, planning strategies by which officials accused of torture should defend themselves, claims that the President of the United States has inherent authority to set aside laws. This is breathtaking.

Is this the end of the American experiment, that last best hope of mankind?

[Mark Bernstein]

Too many graduates, not enough jobs.

In case anyone’s suffering a burst of Invisible Adjunct nostalgia, here’s a story about bright-eyed young things being lured into expensive an time-consuming graduate programs with unrealistic hopes of rewarding employment at the far end, and here’s the first rumblings of discontent from “the academy”. Yup, and pace a lot of grass-is-greener talk by commentors on the old IA site, MBA programs are subject to more or less exactly the same supply and demand economics as the fine arts brigade. I would be an avid reader, btw, of an “Invisible Associate” site if a lowly MBA-grunt at a managment consultancy were to set one up to gripe about the vagaries of consultant life and the difficulty of getting on the partner track. But I don’t think there is one … yet.

[Crooked Timber]

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well…. i must say that i think most degrees are only relatively important as a function of the effectiveness of their possessors. as such, an mba may be utterly useless, but for some it is an excellent certification.

Histomap of World History. Compact timeline of global history [Cool Tools]

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maps like this are cool.

what's next? some other sign that in any large population, there is someone with the propensity to act in ways that are beyond belief?