American Innovation's Black Swan....Our Dysfunctional and CorruptGovernement

There is a book on the shelves entitled "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  I confess to only reading the free sample portion on my iPad.  Essentially the book is about the unpredictable and the unforeseen.  The 9/11's of our lives and of our time are the things that reach out and bite us that are totally out of left field.

The minimum wage - what's that got to do with STEM?

President Obama's fifth State Of the Union address featured several plans to stimulate the economy.  But none of them were so direct and so essential as the proposal to raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $9/hr.

So now my readers are scratching their heads and asking "What on earth does that have to do with STEM fields."  To that, I would say "plenty".

But What Happens to Excellence...?

Recently, The New York Times had a series of essays about being over 50 and out of work.  The "Older and Out Of Work" series fell well short of what I imagine to be the standards of the New York Times.  They offered the familiar bromides to those who are older and out of work including "upgrading your skills" ($$$) by "reinventing yourself".  Start your own business - risky and even more ($$$).  Impractical as it was superficial many of the experiences of the respondents over 50 - helped set the record straight.

But more to the point of this blog was a common thread that ran through the entire series.  That thread was that job skills are as transient and fleeting as the latest fad.  Gangnam Style may be all the  rage now - but does anyone expect it to remain on the top of the charts for the next year?  That's to be expected in the popular music industry.  But this sort of transience is now being applied to job skills - and that's alarming.