Staples

Today at work, I went to staple something and found that there were no staples left. I rummaged through my desk drawer and found the box of staples I was issued upon starting my job. As I pulled a row of staples out of the tightly packed box, I had the same thought I'd had the last time I refilled my stapler: It's going to take me a really long time to go through these staples.

Then, I went to the next logical step that I hadn't pursued last time: Can I estimate how long that will be? Turns out I had all the necessary information at hand.

Today I took the fourth row of staples from the box, meaning I've used three so far.

There are 210 staples in each row, for a total of 630 used.

I've been at my job for almost exactly four years now, so my average staple use per year is 157.5.

There were 5,000 staples in the box, leaving 4,370 there now.

If my staple usage continues at the rate of the last four years, it will take me about 27 years and 9 months to use my remaining staples.

I guess I'll go ahead and submit retirement paperwork for March 29, 2039.

Small Worlds, Part IX

My friend Mike is in a band, and my friend Jocelyn is in a band. Last week, Mike emailed me to say he had met Jocelyn at a concert, and ask if I wanted to go to see a show they've got coming up. He was unaware that I already knew her...funny, but not that big of a coincidence, given that he saw I "like" the band on Facebook.

Later, however, Mike was telling a friend about this coincidence while they were having dinner, and at the very moment he was talking about it, I rode by the restaurant on my bike.

(This is part of a subgenre of coincidences where the telling of the story yields another coincidence.)

Doughnut Plant in DC

You may recall that Doughnut Plant was the overall winner of our Doughnut Quest 2010, sweeping the top three positions. I make a point of going there every time I'm in New York -- in fact, I've been going there for almost 10 years now. I think the area around their Lower East Side location may be the neighborhood I'm most familiar with outside a city I've actually lived in.

Now, Jess S. tipped me off to some earth-shaking news: Doughnut Plant owner Mark Israel plans to open a DC location. I guess maybe I'll gain some weight?

California

I went to California for a long weekend to visit my brother. It was quite nice -- got to walk around the Marin Headlands (where he's living now), camp on the beach with him and his girlfriend Molly near Santa Cruz, and spend some time in San Francisco as well. I posted a few pictures on Flickr.

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Hamsters?

Not to make light of the ecological issues involved, but I was drawn to this article on the Great Hamster of Alsace by the phrase "wild hamsters," which is highly amusing to anyone whose only experience is with their wheel-running relatives.

Clearly the reporter had the same American childhood associations, given the opening line of the article: "France was punished on Thursday for not taking proper care of its hamsters."

Har har har.

Songs of the Moment (An Occasional Feature)

> TV on the Radio - Second Song
> Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero
> US3 - Tukka Yoot's Riddim
> Free Energy - Free Energy
> Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
> Beck - E-Pro
> Caribou - After Hours

Bonus PSA at the beginning of that US3 video.

Giving the labor market too much credit

A recent article in the Washington Post covered a new report from Georgetown University that looks at average annual earnings by college major. This was made possible by the fact that the Census has just started asking people with bachelor's degrees about their major. The data showed that those who majored in sciences earned substantially more, on average, than humanities majors.

The individual major with the highest median earnings was petroleum engineering, at $120,000, followed by pharmaceutical sciences at $105,000, and math and computer sciences at $98,000. The lowest earnings median was for those majoring in counseling or psychology, at $29,000, and early childhood education, at $36,000.
...

"I don’t want to slight Shakespeare,” said Anthony Carnevale, one of the report’s authors. “But this study slights Shakespeare.”

That Shakespeare jibe irked me a bit, but I was much more dismayed when I got to the kicker quote at the end of the article:

“The engineering major makes more money because he or she is more productive. In the end, the market is very discriminating,” Carnevale said.

Ugh. Productive in the strict economic sense, perhaps, but let's not confuse market value with actual value. I've no doubt the market reflects value in some useful ways -- for instance, the need for people with computer science training is very strong, which is probably a big part of the high median earnings of those in that major. But do we really think that earnings are a good reflection of the value of the work people do? It's convenient to think so if you have an above-average salary, but the link is tenuous.

Petroleum engineers make more than three times the salary of those in early childhood education. But I would submit that their earnings are so high because their work is related to the extraction of a commodity with a well-defined market value. The market for early childhood education, by contrast, is nonexistent. Child futures are not traded on the stock exchange, and the "market" determining how much early childhood educators are paid is a mishmash of government programs and affluent parents paying for Montessori preschool. The impact of their work is huge, and long-term, but it is not reflected in their pay in any meaningful way.

Or, to take an example from within a single field, lots of research has shown that primary care doctors are the most important players in ensuring that patients gets high-quality and economically efficient health care. But there's a shortage of primary care docs, in no small part because they get paid less than most specialists. (E.g. this site says that general practitioners report an average income of $118,000, while plastic surgeons report an average income of $203,000.)

My point is, there are lots of things that can make your work valuable, both in an economic and social sense, but only a small portion of them are reflected in the labor market. When it comes to picking a college major, future earning potential is something to consider, but don't mistake it for a proxy for the usefulness of your chosen field. The market is not equipped to determine that. But with a well-rounded education (maybe including some Shakespeare), you are!

Becky and Andrew

I spent a great long weekend in Minneapolis. Went to a Twins game on Friday, and was cold! (Not so much now that I'm back in DC.) Also got to bike around the city, and try a few local pastries with Doug.

But the purpose of the visit was to see Becky and Andrew get married, which was lovely. I posted some pictures on Flickr.

It's a sign

I was briefly in New York the weekend before last, and saw this cleverly edited sign in a subway station.



(I was reminded of this by the construction sign I passed on the way home today, which had been altered to read "EEL PLATES AHEAD.")

Mission critical carpet

Being a new homeowner, I found myself in Home Depot a couple weeks ago. Walking through the floor coverings department, a carpet sample panel caught my eye. Not because of the carpet itself, but the name of the style:

Mission Critical Visionary? What? That's a strange name for carpet, even stranger because the display made it clear that this line of carpet is for homes, not offices.

I flipped through the rest of the panels of samples, showing the different styles, and every single name was straight from corporate-speak. There was "Corner Office," "Value Added Self Starter" (all the necessary hyphens were missing), "Chairman," and -- I kid you not -- "Ground Breaking Due Diligence."

How on earth did someone decide these would be good names for home carpet styles? This is difficult for me to fathom. (I did not note the manufacturer, and Googling some of these names and "carpet" didn't turn up anything....)