Rotundus.com

College has been oversold

"... going to college is not enough. You also have to study the right subjects. And American students are not studying the fields with the greatest economic potential." Are US universities seriously handing out fewer computer science degrees than 25 years ago? (Although there's at least one university that apparently is eliminating computer science while keeping other programs of dubious value around.

The Rich Get Poorer

"Here is a fact that you might not have heard from the Occupy Wall Street crowd: The incomes at the top of the income distribution have fallen substantially over the past few years."

Drink Cheap Wine: I mean, really cheap.

"Europeans seem perfectly comfortable cracking open a 1-euro tetra-pak of wine for guests. Germans, for example, pay just $1.79 on average for a bottle of wine. Not long ago, American wine-buying habits were very similar to the Germans’." I still prefer beer though.

Hell hath no fury like a woman whose state pension age has been raised

Amazing how raising the age that women can get a pension to the same age as for men can provoke outrage, despite longer life expectancy for women (see the British government's info on pension ages).

St. John's taxis leery of young women

"A taxi company official in St. John's says some of his colleagues are thinking twice about who they pick up downtown because they fear they'll be falsely accused of doing something wrong." Here's a Canadian example from a few years back of the sort of thing they seem to be worried about.

Where child sacrifice is a business

Seems that this may be coming back in Africa: "A BBC undercover reporter is told: 'We can bury the child alive on your construction site'"

Death industry reaps grim profit as Japan dies

Been hearing quite a bit lately about increasing population sizes - but here's another side. Coffin hotels, etc, as crematoriums exceed capacity.

Noise-Canceling Devices for a Good Night’s Sleep

A lot more out there than just earplugs - although I think that even basic old earplugs seems to work reasonably well.

From an article in The Independent:

I'm not against e-books in principle – I'm tempted by the Kindle – but the more they become interactive and linked, the more they multitask and offer a hundred different functions, the less they will be able to preserve the aspects of the book that we actually need. An e-book reader that does a lot will not, in the end, be a book. The object needs to remain dull so the words – offering you the most electric sensation of all: insight into another person's internal life - can sing.

I'm inclined to agree. If only the publishers weren't demanding so much money for them (as I'm still running into quite a few books cheaper in dead-tree than electronic version).