The Co-Op Casino in Ann Arbor, MI (my home during graduate school) has been robbed, reports The Onion:

Thus far, no firings have been made or even suggested, but the casino’s members have agreed to beef up oversight measures by replacing the position of casino pit boss with a 15-person pit coordinating committee.

Categories: Community, Funny, Governance, Graduate School, Managing
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When I interviewed 1,000 people for What Should I Do With My Life?, it was plainly apparent that so many of our smartest college students from our best schools are actually very risk averse. Coming out of college, they took jobs where the “track to success” was spelled out and clear. Wall Street, law school, corporate America - there was no imagination or creativity in these choices. And nothing daring about it. Ten years later, many of them were unhappy and unfulfilled. But quitting - even though they had lots of money in the bank - was absolutely terrifying to them. The loss of status scared them; the idea of jumping off a track and freestyling their career was frightening. They didn’t want to look not smart. They were afraid of taking a job that didn’t broadcast to the world how smart they must be to have that job.

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s blog has some great posts about self esteem (start with that one, then look more recent) and the insane science and practice around promoting it.

I’m also shocked with the risk aversion among my peers, but it gets worse than Po sees. So many people graduate college and skip the job search because they fear getting rejected, or don’t apply to graduate school because they think they need more experience. The worst thing that happens - they say no and you try again in a few years. What I worry about the most, though, is the tendency for people not to pursue a career because they might not like it, so instead they languish in jobs they already know they don’t like. The best way to find out if you like a job? Try it! It’s OK to quit and try something else, but they are so afraid of success, or of leaving, they don’t even give real employment a chance.

Categories: Careers, Education, Graduate School, Matching Mechanisms
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FuturTech Panels are today.  Everybody come!

Categories: Business and Economics, Futurtech, Graduate School, Information Economics, Science, Social Software, Technology, Winter of Dave
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Wired’s Bodyhack is taking votes for this year’s sexiest geek of 2006, with SI’s own network superstar Lada Adamic as one of the 10 finalists! Head over to the BodyHack blog to vote, and help score one for the home team. Maybe a victory here will make SI a new powerhouse in geek sexy.
Full Disclosure: I was a student of Lada’s last year for her Special Topics course on Networks: Theory and Application.

Categories: Ephemera, Graduate School
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Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias looks into how much “helping professions,” actually help:

You may really want a helping job so that you can feel and look morally superior to those in non-helping professions. If so, you gain value at the expense of others who look worse; shame on you again.

That’s his #6. I’ve often said that the reason politicians and non-profits can get away with paying employees so little (see here), especially at the entry level, is because they compensate them with self-righteousness. In the end, it ends up attracting a certain type of individual, and requiring costly signaling mechanisms (think Masters Degree) later on to sort out the riff-raff. Doctors go through the signaling early, and don’t seem to take the same financial hit.
I came to the conclusion a few years ago that nearly everyone participating in the economy is helping somebody else in some way. The engineer who designs screws for farm equipment is contributing to helping people get food, and the purchasing representative at the farm equipment company is helping them get it cheaper. And don’t forget all the times people help others outside their job without getting paid for it.

Categories: Business and Economics, Careers, Community, Education, Graduate School, Philanthropy, Politics
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