WordPress was down most of yesterday, preventing me from posting. Here are some of the topics I was considering for a post:
- I finally saw The Social Network. As always, I enjoyed Aaron Sorkin’s clever, rapid-fire dialog, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how creepy it was to write a fictionalized and unflattering account of real, living people. There is no evidence that Mark Zuckerberg is the status and girl-craving jerk that Sorkin made him out to be, but there is plenty of evidence that Sorkin behaves that way. I guess the film is really a fictionalized autobiography of Aaron Sorkin, except that Sorkin didn’t create a multi-billion dollar enterprise that tens of millions enjoy using and that has helped topple despots in the Middle East.
- I saw that my fellow Manhattan Institute-refugee, Walter Olson, has a new book out on how law schools perpetuate a political ideology that gives more power to lawyers and government. Schools of Misrule sounds like it has a fascinating thesis except I suspect that the same argument could be made about almost every department at universities. I can assure you that the social sciences are filled with people who sit around in their offices dreaming about how the rest of the world should be structured if only the world would listen to them. I guess the difference is that law school grads are actually more likely to have to power to put their dreams into action.
- Jim Stergios has a great post over at Pioneer comparing Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on their visions for education. He writes:
So Bill Gates lets us all know what he really has in mind on standards and the liberal arts. In a speech to the National Governors Association in late February, he suggests that higher education spending be devoted largely to job-producing disciplines.
In his view we should drop funding at the higher ed level for the liberal arts, because there is not much economic impact/job creation impact from the liberal arts.
Be sure to read the full thing because the quotations from Gates and Jobs are illuminating.
Posted by Jay P. Greene 
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