Technology and engineering, both critical dimensions of our global economy and society, require mastery in science and advanced math.
The good news: STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) occupations are expected to grow 17 percent in 2008-2018, versus 9.8 percent for non-STEM jobs, and earn 26 percent higher wages.
The bad news: An estimated 3 million STEM-related jobs remain unfilled because of learning and skills gaps.
Henry Allen, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2000, was a Post editor and reporter for 39 years.
Let me dust off my favorite Sufi parable.
A man loses a ring inside his house. A friend sees him crawling around outside and asks, “If you lost your ring in the house, why are you looking for it here?” “You fool,” says the man, “the light is much better out here.”
We’re talking about the very best people, the people with statistics and proposals for regulation, crawling around in the sunlight of their social-scientific rationality.
They never find a solution because all their legislation, academic studies, mathematical proofs, and proposals for waiting periods, background checks and buying limits aren’t going to do much more than they ever have.
Nor are the pleas of the progressives asking why anyone would ever want to own a gun — thereby demonstrating their arrogance toward the people who own the hundreds of millions of guns in the United States.
Both the problem and the solution lie elsewhere, in what historian Richard Hofstadter called “America as a Gun Culture.”
Healthy People provides science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans. For 3 decades, Healthy People has established benchmarks and monitored progress over time in order to:
Encourage collaborations across communities and sectors.
Empower individuals toward making informed health decisions.
Healthy People 2020 provides a comprehensive set of 10-year, national goals and objectives for improving the health of all Americans. Healthy People 2020 contains 42 topic areas with nearly 600 objectives (with others still evolving), which encompass 1,200 measures. A smaller set of Healthy People 2020 objectives, called Leading Health Indicators, has been selected to communicate high-priority health issues and actions that can be taken to address them. Continue reading “Worth a Look: HealthyPeople.gov”
Matt Damon is not only one of Hollywood's best actors, but also a top interviewee. The 42-year-old star rarely censors himself in interviews, offering unfiltered opinion and honesty that belies his standing as an A-list star. In a new chat with Playboy, Damon continues that trend by providing commentary on the recent presidential election and politics in general.
“We're at a point where politicians don’t really get any benefit from engaging with long-term issues,” Damon said. His new film, “Promised Land,” is tangentially about fracking, an environmental issue of growing concern in the United States, but not one politicians seem eager to discuss.
“It's all about the next election cycle. Those guys in the House don't do anything now but run for office,” Damon continued. “So unless they can find some little thing that zips them up a couple of points in the polls, they're not interested.”
Matt Damon
Damon is often open about his politics. In a widely disseminated interview with Elle last year, the star dinged President Barack Obama for not being forceful enough.
“I've talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, ‘Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician,'” Damon told the magazine. “You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.”
Still, when asked by Playboy if he voted for Obama after those comments, Damon replied, “Definitely.”
“I assume there will be some Supreme Court appointments in this next term; that alone was reason to vote for him,” Damon said. “I don’t think I said anything a lot of people weren’t thinking. It’s easier now more than ever in my life to feel the fix is in, the game is rigged and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn’t matter.”
The lengthy interview with Playboy is a must-read for Damon fans, and includes insight into much more about the star than just his politics. Head to Playboy.com to check it out.
Black-Market Abortion Drug Sales Appear To Be Rising
The New Republic‘s cover headline this month is a topic that pro-choice activists speak about occasionally amongst themselves, but rarely address in public: “The Rise of DIY Abortions.” The reason that it's not much discussed in public forums is that reproductive health advocates are data-driven people, and one thing that's nearly impossible to get data on is the prevalence of women quietly buying an ulcer medication named Cytotec from sleazy online dealers and using that to terminate pregnacies at home, far out of the reach of doctors and agencies like the CDC or the Guttmacher Institute that compile statistics on abortions. The writer of the piece, Ada Calhoun, admits that there's no way to know how common these black-market abortions are, but points out that the rise in websites peddling Cytotec specifically to terminate pregnancy (instead for its on-label use to treat ulcers) makes it hard to deny that this is a growing trend:
STEM Is the Key to Stronger Education
