I’m feeling a bit swamped today, but thought these posts worth a note:
Kieran Healy on cloning: "I’ve half-joked before that, purely because of this basic point, sociologists should welcome human cloning with open arms. Technically achieving the sort of things many people imagine they could do with cloning —recreate a lost child or relative, produce a new version of themselves—would in fact have just the opposite effect. It would show just how important social structure, local environment and historical contingencies are to forming people."
Ezra Klein discusses fighting immigration from the demand side. I think those who counter that anti-immigration policy is not xenophobic and based in ethnic/racial othering needs to answer why measures are targeted simply at employee rather than employer.
Sean McCann discusses the overproduction of PhDs relative to the academic job market. No easy answers here, though he and the commenters are considering the British/European model of a three-to-four year PhD program. The Chronicle of Higher Ed notes that only about 40 percent of English PhDs get tenure track jobs, which if true is even more sobering than I imagined.
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