Nine Shift

Newspapers to survive! Kids go retro

There's a whole wave of Gen Yers into the old arts and crafts.

One hundred years ago, the great artists like Picasso and Orozco, writers like Hemingway, and movie directors like Charlie Chaplin, called attention to the shortcomings of the Industrial Age.

So I asked Willie whether newspapers as "paper" would survive. He said yes, noting that there's a difference reading a screen and paper.  Then he told me about the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, where kids can learn typography, the art of setting linotype, the old metal letters placed upside down and backwards in trays before printing.  One of Willie's friends, a girl, spent 3 months learning how to set type. 

Photo: Kentaro, a New York photographer, in our backyard this summer with his old fashioned camera. He processes the black and white photos in a dark lab.

Where the boys are

Tears came to my eyes as I drove up to the campus of the University of Wisconsin Platteville last week.

It was 7:45 a.m., and the kids were streaming onto campus for their first classes. I stared. They were all boys. Hundreds of boys.  A few girls scattered in between.  But basically hundreds and hundreds and boys.

The campus is the only one in the entire state of Wisconsin where males are half of the students. Every other campus in the state, and most every other campus in the whole country, are dominated by female students. 

In a few months we mark 30 years of gender bias keeping smart males out of college.  If you want to know why the economy is slacking, we don't have enough engineers or scientists or food animal vets, this is why. For a moment I felt what it could be.  I was glad for the boys at this campus.

Photo: Welcome desk at the student union.

Education: The next overhaul after healthcare

Our education system is wasting much of the money given to it, just like healthcare.

It is slowly but surely moving to an overhaul similar to healthcare. The signs are the increasing movement towards a focus on outcomes and accountability.

Only 55% of students enrolled in higher education actually graduate.  That means taxpayers and society is wasting almost half of every dollar spent on higher education.

We could then discuss the disgusting edifice complex of "more is better" building on campus, the obsolete notion of sabbaticals where faculty spend 14% of their time, and more.

Photo: Obsolete computer lab at University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where we did a seminar last week. Reminded me of Richard Thieme's rendition of "Pencil Labs" to illustrate how computer labs are already out of date.

Breaking news! Trains to make Big Money

The movement to high speed trains in America took another huge leap last month.

SCNF, the French high speed rail company, proposed to the U.S. government that it build 220 mph train service in America (see Chart). 

The news was reported by Foreh Freemark on his terrific blog, The Transport Politic. 

Big news in these ways:

1. First and foremost, this for-profit company thinks there is Big Money in high speed trains. They should know. They run them in Europe.  This takes the discussion to a whole new level.  It's not just a government 'bail out.'  It's not going to poke along at government speed, because there are for-profiteers who want to make money Now. 

2. Any plans for 220 mph trains is good news.  It is the Interstate of rail, while 110 mph is the 2 lane highway of rail.

3. Where does SNCF think all the train riders will come from?  From people switching from cars to trains!

Check out Freemark's inside story here.

We're dancing on the desk here at NIneShift over this terrific news!