Grad School Bubble?

Both of these articles make convincing arguments, that the high cost and modest rewards simply are not worth it for aspiring MBA's and JD's.  Is grad school, or education in general, the next bubble?

I think so, but I think that the rapid rise in online education will reign in costs to a point at which a decent quality education is attainable to anyone, not just the rich or those who want to be in debt up to their eyeballs.

MBA: http://www.economist.com/theworldin/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14742624&d=2010

Law: http://lawyerist.com/law-school-admissions-bubble/

More on Grass Fed Bison

Even though Wegmans provided a great response to my questions, I decided to ask the supplier, Great Range Bison, about what goes into their bison.  Here is their response.  It is interesting to note that they are audited by Whole Foods.  Bottom line: it is still probably the best red meat you can buy.

Our buffalo are fed grain as well as grass the last 120 days prior to butchering.  The buffalo are not fed the levels of grain that cattle are during typical cattle feed lot programs.  We do this to produce a premier, high quality, fresh product year round.  It would impossible to produce consistent product given variations in weather patterns, geographic areas, grass species, and seasonal changes that affect grass quality. 

 

By supplemental feeding we are referring to the natural grains and forages that we feed in order to supplement what the animal can't get from pasture feeding. We do not use any antibiotics, hormones or animal by-products on any of the bison. They are raised as naturally as possible. In order to produce a consistent product year round it is necessary that we feed additional forage and grain prior to slaughter - i.e. supplemental feeding.

 

The Bison Meat is still much leaner than beef!

 

All buffalo calves are born in pasture and spend most of their lives in a free range situation.  They are humanely raised on wide open ranches of the Western United States.  We DO NOT have animals in traditional feedlots!  We purchase our buffalo from several different areas; Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Mexico and Oklahoma are just a few of the places. 

 

All ranches and plants are audited by Whole Foods to ensure animal safety.

 

Thank you for your interest in our company and let us know if you have any other questions.

No Grass Fed Bison?

I'm a fan of bison meat.  If i'm going to eat something bovine in nature, its going to be a bison (not technically a buffalo, those are only found in Asia).  The meat itself tastes better and is much leaner.

However, when I was at Wegman's I looked up the supplier of their bison and read on their website that it is "grain fed".  I prefer grass fed meat when I eat it.  I asked Wegman's about their choice of suppliers.  Here is their response, supposedly from one of their buyers:

"There is really no such thing as grass fed meat in America. This is because there is no source for fresh grass in the winter. U.S. grass fed claims are false in that dried hay or dried grass is fed or worse they are left to forage through the snow for what little brush they can find. Bison are not put on feedlots they are given a ration that consists of 60% grain (corn, oats, milo, barley and wheat are all used depending on what is available to the particular ranch) and 40% grass only in the final 110 days or so of their 800-900 day lives. They do this to improve the eating quality of the meat and to give the consumer a consistent, high quality product year round. They do not get the levels of grain fed to beef and so do not get as fat. The animals spend far more of their lives"out" than "in". There is a huge difference between the nutrients in fresh grass and dried grass. Imagine if you went to a restaurant for a salad and they gave you dried lettuce. For truly grass fed beef that is leaner than bison and processed in state of the art facilities, we offer Organic grass fed Angus / Herford beef from Uruguay. We went 7,000 miles south to find a place that had fresh grass all year to substantiate our grass fed claim. The USDA allows hay fed animals to be called grass fed but this was in my opinion not correct to do." 

Review: Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds is a great movie, one that I would recommend to any fan of Quentin Tarantino, or of action/western type movies with great dialogue.  I don't want to give too much away, but the premise is a group of American Jewish soldiers who want to kill as many Nazis as possible during World War II.  Brad Pitt is their leader.  Need I say more?

I give it 5 stars.

Will fear reduce healthcare costs?

Several weeks ago, new guidelines came out calling for a reduced schedule for employing mammograms.  Many citizens groups condemned these decisions, even though it was supported by many doctors and medical groups.  

Today, it is being reported that giving a child a CT scan carries a 1/500 chance of them developing cancer, not a trivial number.  Mammograms carry much lower, but similar risks.  Additionally, 1/3 of CT's are characterized as "unnecessary" but many people are now so scared after the death of Natasha Richardson that they feel any bump on the head merits one.  Perhaps this will scare them the other way, and also reduce medical costs for everyone.

The Year Of The Gun?

That's what MSNBC is calling 2009.  Many states passed laws making it easier for individuals to carry guns.  I don't have any problem with this, since CCW holders tend to be the most law abiding citizens around.

Christmas Trees!

Yesterday I bought my first real Christmas Tree ever. When we moved, we dumped our artificial tree since it was in such bad shape. Decided to get a real one this time. Seems to be a better deal at $34 (at Home Depot) vs a fake tree for $150 or more for a decent one. And even the "decent" ones last for a couple years.

Regarding environmental impact, it is actually less for a natural tree. They are mostly carbon neutral, since they absorb a lot of carbon during their lives. They are also recycle after. On the other side, artificial trees are made from PVC and other plastics, which can be traced back to oil. While neither is especially green, given transport, a real tree seems the way to go.

Google Public DNS

I am a big proponent of not using your ISP's DNS services, since they are often much slower than alternative such as Open DNS. Well, Google has just launched a public DNS. Word is that it is very fast, but not as fast as Open DNS if you live in the US. It is also not nearly as configurable.

While I may use Open DNS, for most users (especially international users), Google's solution will likely be the best option. Here is the page for instructions on how to configure your computer or router.

Food, Inc.

I watched Food, Inc several weeks ago, and it has made a big difference in the types of food I have consumed since. I always have tried to eat natural foods when possible, and organic when it is a good deal but after watching this movie I realized it is very difficult to avoid certain things, like corn, especially high fructose corn syrup.

I'm happy to say that in the past two weeks, I have not consume any meat other than fish. I'm not against eating meat, I just don't want to eat corn fed industrial farmed meat. Which does leave me a lot of choices, most notably bison (sometimes called buffalo) a grass fed animal that is mostly carbon neutral.

It is especially disheartening to learn about the big push to silence critics of the food supply, as if this is some type of god we ought to deify, leaving aside the impacts to all of us.

One criticism I have of the "healthy food" movement is the reluctance (or outright opposition to) food irradiation. Food irradiation has the potential to make our food supply much safer and more efficient, whether it be killing salmonella or helping fruit stay fresh for much longer without preservatives, and thereby lowering costs for consumers.

I recommend that everyone watch this film, the trailer is below.

Swiss crackdown on minarets

This is practically an "oddly enough" news item: Swiss voters have banned minarets in a referendum.

Switzerland prouds itself as being a direct democracy, wherein the voters are the ultimate decision makers. In this case, they have voted to ban minarets which appear to be pointing tops on mosques. Though I think they may also be on churches. Not sure.

Here is a good article on the pros and cons.

I agree that it would have been easier to have local bans on buildings of certain heights instead of singling out minarets, but the Swiss are known to be somewhat xenophobic at times.

Lions win in a crazy way

The Lions won today in a very unorthodox way, with a truly gutsy performance by rookie QB Matt Stafford. Here are the highlights from the game.

Incidentally, I will be attending the Thanksgiving Day game in person.

Go Lions!

Climate change "smoking gun" is nothing close to that

Fox News had a big headline today, that climate change had been disproved due to "secret emails" that had been found by a hacker. Is this true? Not even close. The email in question was basically talking about changing the presentation of a graph in order to make it look more convincing, from a visual perspective. Is this a questionnable tactic? Yes. Is it unethical? Possibly. But does it blow out of the water the millions of observations made over the past 30 years? Hardly.

Palin still stupid

Here's Sarah's foreign policy experience:

Didn't see anything did you? Good, me neither.

Seems that Ms. Palin supports Israeli settlements, an activity that the US must bring an end to to create peace. Yet another reason she's nuts.

Water on the moon

NASA has found that water exists on the moon. Preliminary results from the LCROSS mission shows that water is present on the moon in ice form and has been there for billions of years. Interesting to see that even in 2009, we can still make new discoveries like this. What this means is that we're one step closer to Mars, or a moonbase. Water can be used to make hydrogen, which is a very good fuel.

Unintended consequences in the war on banks

It is interesting to see how quickly people have moved against bank overdraft fees. These are nothing new; I was once dinged with one 5 years ago and have only myself to blame. Now we are looking at congressional regulation of these fees. While that's great in theory, what could the unintended consequences be of stripping banks of one of their money making enterprises?

1. The end of free checking
2. Reduced bank hours
3. Higher ATM fees
4. Lower interest rates

Trust me, the banks will make up for this somewhere, and instead of the people who are financially irresponsible paying for it, people like me, who keep a decent balance in their accounts, will likely end up footing the bill.