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The Great Stagnation for College Graduates
Categories: Economics of Education
By Arnold Kling, Oct 29 2011
Michael Mandel presents an arresting chart on the decline in real earnings of young male college graduates over the last decade, and writes,
no one has given me a good explanation yet of why young American college grads should have been hit so hard. Is there increased competition with young college grads around the world? Are new college grads lower quality than their predecessors? Has information technology reduced the need for young grads? I really would like to know.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen, naturally.
1. My daughters attended college during this period, and what I saw among them and their friends was a strong resistance to business. My lament is that I would like just one of my daughters to want to work for a profit.
I don't know whether the anti-business ideology at colleges became stronger in the last decade–it's something that has been there for decades. But it's possible that it had a stronger effect. Steven Jobs' Stanford graduation speech struck a chord in part because it plays to this "I don't have to sell out and work for The Man" mindset.
2. I wonder how much earnings of recent college grads can be skewed by some unusually lucrative opportunities. I am thinking of the Internet sector in the late 1990s and the financial sector until 2008. Remember when just about any Ivy League grad could get a job on Wall Street if he or she wanted it? If those opportunities were unusual, then what we are seeing is in part a reversion of the mean to the median.
3. Some college graduates are starting to lose the race against the machine and to be affected by the Great Factor-Price Equalization.
4. There is some effect from the changing gender mix at colleges. Off-hand, I cannot think of a reason that the decline in the relative supply of male college graduates should reduce their wages, but there must be some plausible just-so stories one can contrive.
5. The rising cost of health insurance, which makes health insurance the most important cost component in hiring. It could be that with employer-provided health insurance, young single workers tend to subsidize older workers with families. The result is that younger workers are bearing the brunt of higher health insurance costs, and so they are absorbing the largest decline in earnings.
Daniel Kuehn
Oct 29 2011 at 10:25am
Tyler's fifth point is incredibly important for the declining wage and salary share of national income, so I'm guessing it's relevant for this as well.
Do you know if "earnings" means "wage and salary" or if it is all compensation? If it's not all compensation, that would probably be an important thing to see.
The other interpretation is simply that in what Goldin and Katz called "the race between education and technology", the standards for education are just getting higher. I am guessing that graduate wages are not behaving this way. I'm working on a chapter on the engineering labor force and one of the things I'm doing is tracking graduate wage premia and the response in the production of graduate students. It's high and students are very responsive to the incentives (predictably). Annual production of graduate level engineers have more than doubled in the last three decades while four year degrees have stayed pretty stable. Human capital requirements are getting higher – that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Of course, the caveat that I always have to add with that point is that there are a range of skill requirements and a lot of people would be able to cope with changes in the structure of the economy better if we had a more robust trade school, technical education, and apprenticeship system in this country. High skills are not just for graduate students.
Oct 29 2011 at 1:27pm
How about "there are too many college grads"?
In the UK we've recently seen that the returns to an arts degree for males (on average, of course) turn negative.
No, not thaty grads earn less than non grads, but that three years out of the workforce and a much, much, lower wage premium mean that the costs are higher than the benefits.
Falling prices usually mean over supply relative to demand don't they?
Chris Koresko
Just looking at the plot suggests to me that your idea #2 is the dominant effect over this period of time. The short-term (few years) fluctuations correlate well with the behavior of the overall economy, with the peaks coming at the height of the dot-com bubble and the run-up to the financial crisis. It's true that the second peak occurs a couple of years before the "big crash", but that seems consistent with other indicators showing economic problems ("fore-shocks"?) leading up to that event.
There may or may not be a secular trend here as well. Fitting a straight line to the graph would show a decline of around 10% from 1999 to 2010 (fit by eye; I haven't actually digitized the plot and done the fit properly). That's about half the full range from the peak in 2000 to the lowest point in 2010.
Daniel Kuehn notes that the original poster doesn't tell us whether we are looking at raw wages or wages plus benefits. If it's the former, I'd guess that rising health insurance benefits have offset a large part of the decline in wages. We could then argue over whether or not there has been a real loss of living standards.
The original poster also doesn't tell us whether the plotted data include people who don't have regular jobs (maybe they're in grad school?).
Another missing piece of the puzzle is the mix of educational backgrounds. Has there been a shift from more-productive to less-productive fields? If so, it could be interpreted as support for your idea #1. It would be interesting to have a set of plots for, say, engineers, scientists, and humanities grads separately. It's possible for the wages of all groups to be rising, while the wages of the average grad are falling as the mix among these groups changes.
As Michael Mandel notes, there could also be changes in the quality of the grads. The long-term reduction in the number of hours spent studying, and the increase in the fraction of people getting college degrees, both suggest that we should expect to see a secular decline in their average ability.
In short, it's hard to draw any solid conclusions based on these graphs alone.
Patrick R. Sullivan
I'd go even further than other posters; Mandel's charts are useless. 2000 (the tenth year of an economic expansion, unprecedented) is a lousy year to use for comparison. Newspapers in the late 90s were full of stories of the wild job market where people were allowed to bring their infant children and/or pets to work with them. 2010…not so much.
College graduates are not created equal. You'd need breakdowns by, at least, choice of major and quality of institution.
We don't even know what wages are being measured, median?
jseliger
I posted something like this on Marginal Revolution but think it worth repeating here: people do not emphasize, or emphasize as much as they should, student choice in college majors and how that affects earnings and post-graduate opportunities. I wrote a post on Student choice, employment skills, and grade inflation observing that colleges and universities are, to some extent, responding to student demand for easier classes and majors that probably end up imparting fewer skills and paying less. To what extent can changing major composition account for earnings compositions?
From what I've observed, even naive undergrads "know" somehow that engineering, finance, econ, and a couple other majors produce graduates that earn more and have better job opportunities, yet many end up majoring in simple business, comm, and other fields not noted for their rigor. As such, I wonder how much of the earnings picture in your graph is really about declining wages and how much of it is about people choosing majors that don't really impart job skills of knowledge (cf Academically Adrift, etc.) while leaving plenty of time to hit the bars on Thursday night.
In The Marketplace of Ideas, Louis Menand shows that close to a quarter of all undergraduate degrees are in business, so I'm not sure the anti-business bias is as pronounced as you describe. It may be that such a bias is most obvious in prestigious schools.
I wonder whether the earnings picture in these graphs is for real. What is this? — looks like the average earnings of all bachelor's holders aged 25 to 35, or thereabouts. That is, 10 one-year cohorts lumped together.
But how can the earnings of so many people be so unstable year to year? Entry into and exit from the group has to be small, relative to the size of the group.
I'm thinking these data are worthless, and perusing them a waste of effort.
[broken url removed–Econlib Ed.]
Rick Hull
Regarding #1, I think that making a profit is very challenging and requires sacrifices in terms of comfort and leisure. There are few cultural cues, outside of family, for American teenagers to think "I want to go into business". When I was an engineering freshman at 18, I recall trying to talk a liberal arts peer out of applying to the business school. It seems odd to me now, but it made sense at the time as I thought he would be going to "the dark side".
At that point, I was already politically and philosophically libertarian, and my preference for free markets stemmed more from civil rights than economics. So I should have been ripe for the plucking, but it still took until well through or even after undergrad to appreciate the economics of prosperity.
Bryan Willman
Jseliger is on it.
What we need are historical charts showing earning power versus degree, broken down by type.
Are chemical engineers, oil field engineers, and electrical engineers really that far down?
How about over the time period starting in, say, 1980, instead of at the end of the dot-com boom?
My guess is lowering quality overall.
Beside, can you compare a 'post-colonial cultural studies' degree to a math one ?
How many of those 'fields', only there to justify some tenures, have blossomed ?
It is a great disservice, with obvious consequences, that a critical time in one's life to get exposed to rich and powerful concepts gets wasted in the dump of academia.
RPLong
Oct 31 2011 at 9:11am
Was it Bryan Caplan who suggested that technology has out-paced labor skills? I think there is a lot of sense in that explanation.
I also see a lot more competition from students in developing countries. Top-tier universities are hand-picking some of the best students from around the world and offering them free-ride scholarships. Naturally, these gifted students go on to be hand-picked by top-tier job recruiters. Even a straight-A student from North America can't compete with that unless he/she has some personal back-story that is equally as attractive to university recruiters as someone coming from a developing country.
Recruiting "bias" might be another explanation. (It's not really bias, though, because these kids invariably make the best students and best employees.)
English Professor
Oct 31 2011 at 12:55pm
I think the supply and demand issue is important–too many college grads entering the workforce each year and not enough demand for their skills. The 90s were almost certainly anomalous, giving a false indication of the number of college graduates that the economy could accommodate. But I also think the quality issue matters a great deal. The average college graduate lacks strong analytical skills and writes poorly. Writing that would have earned a grade of C thirty years ago (and a D forty years ago) now typically earns a B. I would not be surprised to find that employers have recognized a drop in the overall quality of graduates, with the result that the signaling aspect of a degree has weakened. That is, employers look for other evidence than merely a degree to signal that a recent grad is "educated" and thus competent. This would mean that students with degrees in more demanding fields should be more desirable, as well as students from more prestigious universities (because they had to demonstrate earlier achievement simply to get admitted). Under these circumstances, I would expect the premium to remain intact for the top half of all college graduates, but for it to disappear for the bottom half.
Mark Bahner
Nov 2 2011 at 11:54pm
Petroleum Engineering diploma…aka, a license to print money. 😉
"The name is Bucks. James Bucks."
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The Fall of Ctesiphon and the Battle of Jalula
Posted on September 6, 2020 by MSW
Syria, Palestine and Roman Mesopotamia were not the only regions in which the Muslims were steamrollering an increasingly desperate defence. Much like their victory at Yarmuk, their victory at Qadisiyyah and Sa'd's ruthless pursuit of Jalinus had exposed the entirety of Persian Mesopotamia and left the road to Ctesiphon open. With its potential as a focal point and possible springboard for a counter-attack whilst still in Persian hands, Umar and Sa'd quickly decided that neutralising or capturing the Sassanid capital should be their next objective. Less than a fortnight after the victory at Qadisiyyah, Sa'd's army, now reorganised into five separate corps under Zuhra, Abdullah, Shurahbeel, Hashim and Khalid b. Arfatah, set out across the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia towards Ctesiphon. Seemingly aware of the garrison forces along the route to Ctesiphon, Sa'd sent Zuhra on ahead with a strong advanced guard of cavalry, with orders to subdue the garrisons if he could but, should he come up against a sizeable imperial army, he was to await the main column that was proceeding at a more restrained pace.
However, despite the mixture of caution and alacrity, the Muslim advance met with only limited resistance. Zuhra was able to occupy Najaf without any opposition and, while the garrison at Burs resisted, Zuhra defeated its commander, Busbuhra, in single combat and the garrison was quickly overwhelmed. A battle near the ancient site of Babylon is recorded in December 636 against a large concentration of Persian forces, which given that its commanders were Hormuzan, Mihran, Nakheerzan and Beerzan suggests that it was the remnant of the force that Jalinus had extricated from Qadisiyyah. However, given the presence of Beerzan, supposedly killed by Qaqa, and the lack of clear information regarding any battle at Babylon, aside from there being dissension in the Persian ranks and the information that Hormuzan retreated to his homelands in Khuzestan the whole event should probably be downplayed as a major engagement.
Zuhra then continued his pursuit of congregating Persian forces. He is thought to have defeated a Sassanid force at Sura before catching up to Nakheerzan's force at Deir Kab. Despite the killing of the Sassanid commander in a duel by one of Zuhra's subordinates, the Persian force seems to have offered stiff resistance. It was only a successful flanking manoeuvre by Jarir that captured a bridge to the rear of the Persian lines that seems to have finally encouraged the Persians to retreat. 15 The last Persian attempt to stall the Muslim advance to the gates of Ctesiphon came in early-January 637 at Kusa, a mere ten miles short of the capital. However, this time all it took was the defeat of the Persian commander, Shahryar, in a duel by one of the mubarizun to force the Persians to retreat.
With the capture of Kusa, nothing now lay between Sa'd's forces and the walls of the Persian capital. However, despite the rapidity of Zuhra's advance, properly defended, Ctesiphon would not be easily captured or even surrounded. This was because it was not a single city but a metropolis that incorporated several settlements including Seleucia, Veh-Ardashir, Vologaesocerta and others on the banks of the Tigris, as well as Ctesiphon itself. Indeed, in Arabic, Ctesiphon was and is known as al-Mada'in, meaning `The Cities'. With the direction they were approaching from – the west bank of the Tigris – the Muslims were to come to the sub-cities of Vologaesocerta, Seleucia and Veh-Ardashir first. Of these three, it appears that Yazdgerd and his generals focused their defensive efforts on Veh-Ardashir, probably due to it being the closest to Ctesiphon itself, digging ditches and placing ballistas and catapults. The presence of such siege engines forced the Muslims back from the walls but they quickly evened the odds by employing Persians to build siege engines for them.
By March 637, after almost two months of blockade, the Persian garrison was becoming desperate and sallied forth in an attempt to break the siege. In the subsequent fighting, Zuhra is said to have killed the Persian commander in a duel before being killed himself by an arrow. But one peculiar story stands out most from the siege of Veh-Ardashir: the Persians are said to have used a specially trained lion to disrupt the Muslim cavalry and infantry, with its rampage only being stopped by Hashim, who killed the beast with a single blow with his sword. One cannot help but suggest that this is a prime example of the corruption of the record of a Persian commander either called `lion,' such as the Greek name Leo, or being described as fighting as fiercely as a lion.
As their sally proved ineffective, the Persians offered to recognise the Muslim conquest of all territory up to the banks of the Tigris in return for an end to the fighting. Sa'd replied by saying that peace would only come when Yazdgerd accepted Islam and paid the jizya. The next morning, the Muslims found Veh-Ardashir abandoned as the garrison had somehow managed to slip across the Tigris to Ctesiphon, destroying many of the bridges and taking any available boats with them.
Despite these measures and the fact that the river seems to have been in flood, the Persians failed to prevent the Muslims from crossing the Tigris. Taking advantage of local knowledge, Sa'd found a location where the river was fordable and sent a contingent of around 600 volunteers under Asim to force a crossing. These were intercepted by Persian cavalry, but Asim's men were able to fight off this attack, establish themselves on the eastern shore and hold their position long enough for Sa'd to get reinforcements to them. With the Muslim army safely across the Tigris, the Sassanid force in Ctesiphon under Mihran and Rustam's brother, Khurrazad, decided that any attempt to defend Ctesiphon itself was futile and prompted Yazdgerd to abandon the city with his army and treasury. With that, aside from small pockets of resistance, Sa'd and his Muslim Arab force took one of the ancient world's greatest cities, along with the large amounts of booty it possessed, without a fight.
This lack of an organised defence of their capital not only demonstrates the poor state to which the Persian military had fallen through its defeats by Romans, Turks, civil war and now Muslim Arabs, but also how unprepared the Persian defences of Ctesiphon were for an attack from the south. Centuries of warfare against the Romans and the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppe had concentrated Persian defensive efforts to the north of Ctesiphon. The contrast between the destruction of the bridges over the Nahrawan canal to block Heraclius' approach in 627 and the ease with which Sa'd approached Veh-Ardashir and then took Ctesiphon in 637 demonstrates the direction in which Persian defences were facing. It could be argued that, by leaving troops in Mesopotamia to slow the advance of the Muslims on Ctesiphon, Yazdgerd assured the capture of his capital by depriving its defence of much needed manpower. However, without garrisons at the likes of Burs, Babylon and Kusa, Zuhra's advanced guard would have arrived at Ctesiphon before any defensive measures were implemented. Therefore, after the defeat at Qadisiyyah, the Sassanid king and his generals were left with what was a no-win situation with regard to defending Ctesiphon.
However, this Persian evacuation of their capital without a fight meant that there were still sizeable Sassanid armies in the field that needed to be defeated before Muslim control of Mesopotamia could be consolidated. The main Persian force under Mihran and Khurrazad retreated north to Jalula, which, as well as being near the modern site of Baghdad, lay on a strategically important route between the Persian provinces of Mesopotamia, Khurasan and Atropatene. There were also forces congregating to the north at Birtha, usually identified with modern-day Tikrit, as well as the significant garrison of the fortress further up the Tigris recognised as modern Mosul. Its governor, Intaq, appears to have moved south to Birtha with his garrison and along with some survivors from Ctesiphon and new recruits from the local Arab tribes formed a sizeable force.
The relative proximity of Birtha to the main Sassanid force at Jalula meant that Intaq could move to join his forces to those of Mihran and Khurrazad as well as providing a potential route of retreat for the Persian force should it be defeated at Jalula. Therefore, whilst Sa'd sent the majority of his force against Jalula under Hashim in April, he also sent about 5,000 men under Abdullah to preoccupy if not neutralise Intaq. Upon arriving, Abdullah attempted to storm the walls with a lightning attack. However, Intaq's men held firm and it appears as though Abdullah became concerned about the size of the garrison. To deal with this perceived strength, the Muslim commander attempted to drive a wedge between the elements of Intaq's force. Muslim spies made contact with the Christian Arab contingent and persuaded them to side with Abdullah rather than Intaq. The Persians seem to have gotten wind of this betrayal or at least suspected it, as they attempted to abandon Birtha along the river. However, they found themselves trapped between the attacking Muslims and their former Arab allies and the Persian garrison was quickly overrun. A few days later, a small Muslim force received the surrender of Mosul without much of a fight.
Battle of Jalula, 637: Deployments.
Battle of Jalula, 637: Qaqa's Flank Attack
While Abdullah was cutting off a potential route of retreat and reinforcement for the Sassanids, Hashim had squared up to the Persian forces at Jalula. While the strategic position of Jalula as a crossroads for the Sassanid state meant that it was vital for Mihran and Khurrazad to try to defend it, the position of the town with the Diyala River to the west and foothills of the Zagros Mountains to the east also offered an excellent defensive position. Knowing that the naturally narrow plain in front of Jalula would funnel the Muslim army towards the town and protect their flanks, Mihran prepared diligently for the Muslim attack he knew would come. Jalula itself was turned into a fort, protected by a line of trenches stretching from the broken ground of the Zagros foothills to the Diyala and caltrops to further hinder the Muslim infantry and cavalry. Archers and artillery were also positioned on the fortifications to bleed the Muslims as they approached the walls. Only after inflicting crippling damage on the Muslim ranks would Mihran then leave this defensive position in order to win a decisive victory.
Upon surveying the disposition and defences of the Persian force, Hashim recognised Mihran's ploy in presenting the Muslims with only one offensive option – a costly frontal assault. This was something that he could ill afford given that the size of the forces arrayed at Jalula were likely very similar, around 12,000 each. Therefore, Hashim decided to draw the Persians away from their defences by employing one of the riskiest manoeuvres in battlefield tactics – the feigned retreat. The danger of this tactic is that a feigned retreat can quickly become an actual one if the morale and discipline of those attempting it is not strong enough and a counter-attack from the opponent is so well pressed and coordinated as to be impossible to resist. Clearly, after the numerous victories they had won up to the battlefield of Jalula, Hashim had every reason to believe in the discipline and prowess of his men to even attempt such a tactic. While there is no evidence to suggest that Mihran's counter-attack was not well pressed, it could be argued that the presence of their own trenches and caltrops could have prevented the Persians from launching a fully coordinated assault on the `retreating' Muslims as they had to waste time in placing a bridge over the defences.
The battle therefore began with a Muslim attack on the defences of Jalula, only for them to retreat under the hail of Persian archers and artillery. Mihran took this as a sign that his plan was working and that the Muslim forces were on the verge of breaking and quickly launched his planned counter-attack. Unbeknownst to the Persian commander, his opposite number will have also been pleased that his own plan was going well. His men had fooled the Persians into thinking they were retreating whilst still retaining their own discipline and order. With the Persians now drawn away from their defences, an infantry confrontation took place on the plain before Jalula. Further staged withdrawals by Hashim's men then opened up a gap between the Persian lines and the bridge route back into the fort and it was then that Hashim launched his counterstroke. Having gathered together a strong cavalry contingent in his rear under Qaqa, Hashim now sent them in an attack around the Persian right flank against the lightly defended bridge. Once word filtered through the battlefront that the Muslims had cut off the only escape route, Hashim ordered his men in a full-scale attack on the Persian lines while Qaqa attacked their rear. Trapped by geography, their own defences and the Muslim forces, the Persian army broke. Despite many men making it back to the fort of Jalula, the defeat of Mihran and the death of Khurrazad had neutralised it as a threat. The exact date for the Battle of Jalula is difficult to pin down from the sources, some of which place the battle at the end of a seven-month siege while others say that the seven-month siege succeeded a battle in April 637.
Whatever the order of events, Jalula had fallen to Hashim by the end of 637. The Muslim general then sent Qaqa after those Persian forces under Mihran who had managed to escape. The cavalry commander caught up to them at the city of Khanaqin, some fifteen miles to the east. Some reinforcements from Hulwan may have reached Mihran but they were not enough to prevent a further defeat and the capture of Khanaqin. It is recorded that Qaqa defeated Mihran in a personal duel, removing one of the more capable Persian commanders as an obstacle. Qaqa was now within 100 miles of Yazdgerd III's base at Hulwan and was to appear before its walls before the end of January 638. However, upon hearing of the defeat of Mihran at Khanaqin, Yazdgerd had retreated further east into the Iranian heartland of his empire, reaching Qom, around 100 miles south of modern Tehran. This hopping from Ctesiphon to Hulwan to Qom was to become a repeating pattern for the rest of Yazdgerd's life as he attempted to outrun the Muslim advance whilst at the same time trying to bring together an army strong enough to retake his lost lands.
With the emperor gone and only a modest garrison left to defend it, Hulwan also swiftly fell. Having settled affairs with the citizenry, the ever ambitious Qaqa then sent to his commander, Sa'd, asking if he could drive further into Iran in pursuit of the fleeing Yazdgerd. Sa'd himself appears to have been in favour of such an advance, perhaps thinking that the Persians were sure to return once they had reorganised their forces. However, Umar was unwilling to further stretch his forces given the effects of the `Year of Ashes' and the Plague of Amwas throughout 638 and 639 and, as he had done in ordering his men to pull back from a potentially decisive confrontation in Roman Anatolia, he denied Qaqa and Sa'd permission to continue east. What is now the border between Iran and Iraq was to be the effective frontier between the lands of the caliph and those of the Persian emperor, albeit temporarily.
The loss of Mesopotamia, let alone their capital at Ctesiphon, was a huge blow, not just to the prestige of the Sassanids but perhaps more importantly to their continued ability to wage war, as those provinces contained a vast proportion of their population and tax revenue. The Persians still held significant territories all the way east to the Oxus and Indus rivers and their Roman neighbours had demonstrated that by identifying the strategic necessity of regrouping such losses were survivable. However, as will be seen, Yazdgerd and his advisers would not exhibit the same restraint and strategic good sense of Heraclius, allowing their loss of dignity to force them into challenging this `Iran-Iraq' frontier before they had laid any defensive or infrastructural groundwork.
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Aside from a distinct lack of toys and hoping my friends' children enjoy playing with tupperware (on a good day) and socks (on a bad day) as much as mine, deciding what I'm going to feed mini guests when I have Jack's friends over for a playdate is always a bit of a worry, isn't it mums. Below I've listed my top 3 snacks that I keep up my sleeve and that always go down well with other children. They are genuinely super easy to prepare or even better, to do as an activity with the kids. They're all vegan but I've also given non vegan alternatives.
Slice a banana thickly. In a small bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons of almond butter, 1/2 teaspoon of cacao powder and drop of agave. Dab some of this mixture onto a slice of banana and place another slice of banana on top. Keep building until you have a banana tower. Alternatively, cut an apple horizontally into slices. Spread with a thin layer of almond butter or peanut butter. Place another slice of apple on top and keep building.
Pre-heat the oven to 180′ C. Spread tomato sauce on to the surface of a tortilla / pitta / chapati / whatever flat carb you can find. Sprinkle with cheese / nutritional yeast and load with whatever you happen to have in the fridge. We always use sweetcorn and broccoli. Cook for no more than 10 minutes, add some olive oil and any avocado or herbs if using.
I hope you enjoyed these quick snack ideas. If you want to see more food posts, it's actually Jack's third birthday coming up which I'll be blogging about so keep an eye out for that. I've decided to make him a breakfast party largely to avoid a load of sugary cakes (though I have a feeling there'll be a good few croissants to make up for it!) I don't want to be a scrooge either and deny the children of any 'treats' so there'll be some Organix Goodies cinnamon popcorn dotted around too.
Finally, this post is in conjunction with Organix who I will be collaborating with over the course of the next six months as one of their No Junk Mums working on their No Junk Journey project – an awesome initiative helping families make good food choices and avoid junk (which is totally possible when you realise how many tasty alternatives there are!) I'm super passionate about this concept and am really excited to be able to share my thoughts with you over the coming months.
I'd love to know what you give children when they come over for playdates? And do you worry what your little one will eat when they go over to someone else's? What's your number one rule when it comes to kids snacks?


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Can this Republican Congressman from Virginia Save Legal Weed?
By Claire Kurowsky
When Senator Bernie Sanders in 2015 introduced his bill, which would remove marijuana from the federal Controlled Substances Act and allow each state to decide if adults may consume cannabis, the Vermont lawmaker failed to acquire a cosponsor, let alone get the measure passed.
But it's a Freshman Republican Congressman from Virginia (where no form of cannabis is legal, even for patients) that likely has the best chance of resolving the conflict between federal and state laws over medical and recreational use of the drug.
Virginia Rep. Thomas Garrett has introduced a bill identical to Sanders' – If H.R.1227 (Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017) survives, it would end federal prohibition on marijuana use and allow states to decide their own course on legalization.
The measure is in no way a blanket legalization of the sale or use of marijuana in the U.S., but allows states to do so without the threat of federal interference. Shipping and transporting marijuana into states where it is illegal would still be a federal crime.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R-Va.) and Rep. Jared Polis (D.-Colo.) have already signed on to the new bill.
"Virginia is more than capable of handling its own marijuana policy, as are states such as Colorado or California," Garrett said in a statement.
Related Items:Colorado, D.C., Featured, Legalization, Virginia, Washington
Two in Three Americans Now Favor Legalization
Cannabis Sales are up in Colorado – Despite Competition from Cali
Highly Anticipated: Will Canada's Legalization Spell the End of Cannabis Prohibition in the US?
Illinois to Legalize Recreational Cannabis This Week
Church of England to Invest in Medical Marijauna
Trump Deletes Opposition to Marijuana Legalization from White House Website
Florida Unveils Disappointing Medical Cannabis Regulations
©2017 A wholly-owned subsidiary of Bang Holdings Corp.


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‧Sports
Sun, Dec 31, 2017 - Page 10 News List
South Korea naturalizes athletes for Olympics
Reuters, SEOUL
Naturalized athletes on the South Korean ice hockey team Brock Radunske, right, and Alex Plante on Dec. 1 attend a training session in Jincheon, South Korea.
Photo: Reuters
What does it mean to represent your country at the Olympics? For Brock Radunske, the question has some nuance given the towering, blond-haired Canadian will be suiting up for South Korea at the Winter Games.
The ice hockey forward is one of 16 foreign athletes granted South Korean citizenship ahead of February's the Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, under changes to the nation's immigration laws that came into effect in 2011.
The changes were aimed at boosting competitiveness in sectors such as sport, science and the economy, the South Korean Ministry of Justice said.
The key point was that dual citizenship was now an option for those deemed to have "outstanding ability" who could "contribute to the national interest."
The first athlete without any Korean lineage ever to be naturalized, Radunske said it was an "honor" to be chosen for Team Korea, but that being able to retain his Canadian passport had been a key factor in his decision.
"I grew up in Canada and I'm proud to be a Canadian, and in a sense I'm representing Canada too ... when I'm playing for Team Korea," the 34-year-old said. "I'm proud to have lived in both countries, so when I'm on the ice I'm going to do everything I can for Team Korea."
Radunske has played professional ice hockey in South Korea since 2008, when he became the tallest player ever to sign for Anyang Halla. The signing was hugely popular with female fans, who fawned over his imposing 1.96m frame and good looks.
However, their nickname for him appears to have got lost in translation, with Radunske unlikely to encourage the use of "Canadian Big Beauty" after retiring.
A third-round draft pick by the Edmonton Oilers in 2002, Radunske never made it to the NHL and representing Olympic champions Canada was always out of reach.
South Korea was therefore an attractive option, but becoming a citizen of one of the world's least ethnically diverse countries was no easy task. Radunske had to pass a battery of tests, including of his Korean-language skills and knowledge of local culture and history.
His fellow Ontario native Matt Dalton also came through the notoriously difficult process and said his decision to take on citizenship had caused some confusion back home.
"Being in Canada, some people didn't even know where Korea was," the goaltender said. "And some people were asking, they thought I was representing North Korea, they just didn't know the difference."
At a tournament in Russia earlier this month, Dalton said he had conflicting emotions during the playing of the anthems when South Korea took on Canada — as they will in their final group game in Pyeongchang.
"When O Canada was going on, it was special, but it was definitely a little awkward," he told Yonhap news agency. "I didn't sleep very well that day."
South Korea will have seven naturalized players on their men's ice hockey team and forward Park Woo-sang said his teammates had proved their worth on the ice as well as their love for South Korea off it.
"We don't think of them as naturalized players, we think of them as Korean players," he said. "You could say they are foreigners that love Korea more than Koreans themselves."
With about 100 registered professionals in the nation, South Korea needed all the help they could get just to secure an Olympic spot in a sport where the hosts are not guaranteed a berth.


text:
/* mafFrames.h was originally generated by the autoSql program, which also
 * generated mafFrames.c and mafFrames.sql.  This header links the database and
 * the RAM representation of objects. */

/* Copyright (C) 2008 The Regents of the University of California
 * See README in this or parent directory for licensing information. */

#ifndef MAFFRAMES_H
#define MAFFRAMES_H

#define MAFFRAMES_NUM_COLS 11

struct mafFrames
/* codon frame assignment for MAF components */
    {
    struct mafFrames *next;  /* Next in singly linked list. */
    char *chrom;	/* Reference sequence chromosome or scaffold */
    unsigned chromStart;	/* Start range in chromosome */
    unsigned chromEnd;	/* End range in chromosome */
    char *src;	/* Name of sequence source in MAF */
    unsigned char frame;	/* frame (0,1,2) for first base(+) or last bast(-) */
    char strand[2];	/* + or - */
    char *name;	/* Name of gene used to define frame */
    int prevFramePos;	/* target position of the previous base (in transcription direction) that continues this frame, or -1 if none, or frame not contiguous */
    int nextFramePos;	/* target position of the next base (in transcription direction) that continues this frame, or -1 if none, or frame not contiguous */
    unsigned char isExonStart;	/* does this start the CDS portion of an exon? */
    unsigned char isExonEnd;	/* does this end the CDS portion of an exon? */
    };

void mafFramesStaticLoad(char **row, struct mafFrames *ret);
/* Load a row from mafFrames table into ret.  The contents of ret will
 * be replaced at the next call to this function. */

void mafFramesStaticLoadOld(char **row, struct mafFrames *ret);
/* Load a row from old style mafFrames table into ret.  The contents of ret will
 * be replaced at the next call to this function. */

struct mafFrames *mafFramesLoad(char **row);
/* Load a mafFrames from row fetched with select * from mafFrames
 * from database.  Dispose of this with mafFramesFree(). */

struct mafFrames *mafFramesLoadOld(char **row);
/* Load an old style mafFrames from row fetched with select * from mafFrames
 * from database.  Dispose of this with mafFramesFree(). */

struct mafFrames *mafFramesLoadAll(char *fileName);
/* Load all mafFrames from whitespace-separated file.
 * Dispose of this with mafFramesFreeList(). */

struct mafFrames *mafFramesLoadAllByChar(char *fileName, char chopper);
/* Load all mafFrames from chopper separated file.
 * Dispose of this with mafFramesFreeList(). */

#define mafFramesLoadAllByTab(a) mafFramesLoadAllByChar(a, '\t');
/* Load all mafFrames from tab separated file.
 * Dispose of this with mafFramesFreeList(). */

struct mafFrames *mafFramesCommaIn(char **pS, struct mafFrames *ret);
/* Create a mafFrames out of a comma separated string.
 * This will fill in ret if non-null, otherwise will
 * return a new mafFrames */

void mafFramesFree(struct mafFrames **pEl);
/* Free a single dynamically allocated mafFrames such as created
 * with mafFramesLoad(). */

void mafFramesFreeList(struct mafFrames **pList);
/* Free a list of dynamically allocated mafFrames's */

void mafFramesOutput(struct mafFrames *el, FILE *f, char sep, char lastSep);
/* Print out mafFrames.  Separate fields with sep. Follow last field with lastSep. */

#define mafFramesTabOut(el,f) mafFramesOutput(el,f,'\t','\n');
/* Print out mafFrames as a line in a tab-separated file. */

#define mafFramesCommaOut(el,f) mafFramesOutput(el,f,',',',');
/* Print out mafFrames as a comma separated list including final comma. */

/* -------------------------------- End autoSql Generated Code -------------------------------- */

char *mafFramesGetSql(char *table, unsigned options, int chromIdxLen);
/* Get sql to create the table.  Returned string should be freed.  No options
 * are currently defined.*/

#endif /* MAFFRAMES_H */

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Foldable screens were set up to obscure the gruesome scene, where at least four areas were covered with white plastic sheets. The man's body which lay nearby was covered with a blue police tent.
SINGAPORE - A man believed to be in his 30s was found dead in front of the Swissotel The Stamford at Raffles City on Tuesday afternoon. He is believed to have plunged from a height.
According to a spokesperson from the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), the incident occurred at about 12.38pm. One ambulance was dispatched to the scene.
The man was pronounced dead on arrival by paramedics.
This is the third such case within these two years.
In March 2013, a Russian tourist fell to his death from Swissotel The Stamford.
It is believed the 33-year-old was staying on the 59th floor of the 73-floor hotel. His body was removed from a fifth-floor beam by officers from the Singapore Civil Defence Force.
In May last year, an American hotel guest at the Swissotel The Stamford died from a fall from a height of at least 60 storeys in the wee hours of the morning.


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text:
Karl von Habsburg eller ærkehertug Karl af Østrig Karl Thomas Robert Maria Franziskus Georg Bahnam von Habsburg (11. januar 1961 i Starnberg) er overhoved for Huset Habsburg, efter hans far, Otto von Habsburg, "abdicerede" den 1. januar 2007. I Østrig er hans titel ikke anerkendt, og han er her hr. Karl Habsburg-Lothringen.

Karl har studeret jura og haft sit eget tv-show på østrigsk tv. Han blev i 1996 medlem af Europaparlamentet for Österreichische Volkspartei, ÖVP. Imidlertid løb han ind i skandaler om magtmisbrug og blev ikke genvalgt i 1999, men er stadig politisk aktiv.

Han blev gift den 31. januar 1993 med baronesse Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza og parret har tre børn:
Eleonore von Habsburg (1994-)
Ferdinand Zvonimir von Habsburg (1997-), "tronarving"
Gloria Maria von Habsburg (1999-)
Parret blev separeret i 2003.

Huset Habsburg-Lothringen
Medlemmer af Europa-Parlamentet fra Østrig
Tronprætendenter

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia