quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

ice dig your style of cr?mentary

yeah man

right on

white people

so funny

I'm easy!

Diet Plan With Hormone Has Fans and Skeptics

“From an anecdotal point of view,” Dr. Bissoon said, “physicians all around the country are making $1200 a month off each of these suckers and we don't intend to change that.”

Why do some links to NYT require log-in and some don't?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/nyregion/08hcg.html?partner=rss&emc=rss - this one doesn't, in case the one above did for anyone else.

cuz they're gearing up for their paywall

Because coming in off of a "partner" link is treated differently iirc

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/us/13bcstevens.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

classrooms decorated with room-size hand-hooked rugs depicting scenes of American history, the kitchen, where Gordon Getty occasionally pads around in his bathrobe and where a chef trained at Chez Panisse prepares organic, multicourse lunches for the teachers and children

Making poorly thought out diagnoses of Asperger's, sounds like ilx

That's golden, but I loved the bit where the headmistress is diagnosing the kids though best. "Aspergers, definitely. And Paul is going to be a violent schizophrenic. And Claude is showing all the signs of a teenage bedwetter. Just letting you know in advance."

xp

So let me get this straight. Super rich parents are sending their kids to an unlicensed, un-inspected, illegal daycare run out of somebody's home where a dude in a robe makes food and a vindictive lady with a Montessori certificate hands out psych diagnoses like Flintstone vitamins because it's invite only and that makes people think it's special? That is like some limited edition Beanie Babies, manufactured scarcity, straight bullshit right there.

Oh I'm sorry. A chef makes the food. The crepe lurking around in his bathrobe is the owner. It all makes sense now.

TBF, (1) it is free, and (2) I get the sense that people either (a) are afraid to refuse or (b) don't know what they're getting into and then are afraid to leave when they find out. Which is perhaps the quintessential agony of the ruling class.

What are they afraid of? I mean, if they are really worried that refusing to send their kids to this crazy ass daycare would result in some thing really bad, why the hell are they entrusting their little kids to these crazy ass mofos' care? "Oh, sorry Caleb, but I'm going to send you to stay with these vengeful weirdos all day because if I don't, they might black ball us from the yacht club and then you'll never get into Stanford."

basically

The chef serves crepes out of his bathrobe?

xp Or they may be mistaking her nastiness for strictness in the beginning and not bolting when the scales fall from their eyes.

weird fucking scene man

Mrs. Getty — who runs the school as “a gift to the community,”

rich on rich philanthropy is the worst - eg donating to harvard or w/e - way to give to people who dont need it

um, pretty sure donating to harvard = scholarships for people who actually do need it.

I mean at least it can = that.

they have like a 5b endowment youre aware

'scholarships for people who actually do need it' = pretty inconsequential part of the harvard money machine

xp

no way, it's way more than that

(looks it up)

27b

ok actually

*marin of error +/- 22b

The preschool director's website states that "never before have people wanted to be parents more than the current generation". That doesn't seem right. I thought population growth was slowing down.

http://www.lipplan.com/

harvard does have a pretty generous financial need program, but its purpose is to breed future billionaires who will donate back to harvard

my friend worked in a development office once, its pretty scary what they do

oh yeah no doubt it's pretty sweet to be a poor kid admitted to harvard in 2011 but if the school was really interested in helping the disadvantaged they could increase their class size and admit way more poor kids / fewer philips exeter types

lol yeah they have tons of ways of manipulating the data. one commonly bandied fact is that more than half the undergrad pop is on financial aid - well, even if you're just receiving like a 2,000 loan or getting like a 5,000 grant that counts. and that means that about half the kids are paying full sticker. and harvard fin-aid is need-based, so if you're due fin-aid in some form, you're gonna get it - which means those kids paying sticker come from some pretty rich families.

a bit off topic and minute but anyone else notice the times been fucking around w/their favicon

http://grab.by/9up2

i mean three different ones right there!

the oldest one the bold one on the top right there is still active on some pages, then came the one on my bookmark bar which is live on the home page AND then some pages have this newest transparent one!

i mean chill out nytimes dudes!

um, pretty sure donating to harvard = scholarships for people who actually do need it

LMAO at this, so far from the truth. Harvard could easily pay for the education of all their students just off the interest they earn from their endowment. They have no interest in doing this. Instead they use their vast resources to aggressively buy up land in Cambridge and Boston.

Harvard's endowment is the size of panama's GDP

paywall deets http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/opinion/l18times.html

http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp0145.html

20 free articles a month then $15-$35 dollars a month depending on how you wish to access it

fivethirtyeight Nate Silver
FYI II: ALL incoming links to NYT from Twitter and Facebook, and up to 5/day from Google, will be free reads. Not just a 538 thing.
47 minutes ago

fivethirtyeight Nate Silver
FYI: even if you hit the 20 article/mo. paywall, you will ALWAYS be able to read any 538 articles, for free, by linking over from Twitter.
54 minutes ago

who will be the first to set up an account tweeting every article

huh, at those prices you might as well subscribe to the weekender or whatever its called--wonder if theyre trying to goose their print subscriber rate

yeah this is nagl imo - plummeting readership ahead - $35 a year i could see

but w/e limting access idk - what abt incoming links - what will the bloggers think

prob won't be too hard to get around this but I think I'll probably just end up reading fewer 'marginal' nyt articles