Friday Water Cooler

Michelle Busha – seen here in police sketches – spent
more than three decades known only as “Blue Earth
Jane Doe.” The FBI estimates there are some
80,000 people missing on any given day.

Left for Dead: How America Fails the Missing and Unidentified (revealnews.org). "The FBI estimates there are some 80,000 people missing on any given day." Do yourself a favor: Read this story. Look at the pictures. It's deeply affecting; haunting, gripping, horrifying. Let's hope it wins an award.

Survey: More than 1,050 University of Kentucky Students Sexually Assaulted in One Year (kentucky.com).

How Wall Street's Bankers Stayed Out of Jail (theatlantic.com). "Wall Street bankers make it their daily business to figure out ways to abide by the letter of the law while violating its spirit."

Understanding the Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker's Pay (s1.epi.org). Documents the what but not the why. For the latter, see Why the Super-Rich Get Richer (this blog).

U.S. labor force participation rate.

Plunging 5.1% Unemployment Rate Belies Record Low Labor Participation (economicpopulist.org). A long article, with many graphs, parsing the labor situation (U.S.) carefully. Only 62% of Americans work. The rest are too young, too old, or have stopped looking.

As Shanghai Stock Market Tanks, China Makes Mass Arrests: ‘You Could Disappear at any Time’ (wallstreetonparade.com). The arrests will continue until morale improves.

Amazon hiring staff for new restaurant division in Seattle, New York (reuters.com). Bad news for GrubHub?

How Giving Up Refined Sugar Changed My Brain (fastcompany.com). Try the experiment yourself sometime. Knock sugar out of your life for two weeks. See how you feel.

Latest SAT Scores Raise New Alarms Over 'Test-and-Punish' Education (commondreams.org). "New statistics show that average SAT scores countrywide have dropped to their lowest level since the college admissions exam was redesigned in 2005, continuing a 10-year trend that education advocates say illustrates the failures of test-driven schooling."

Heroin "Back with a Vengeance" (foxnews.com). Maybe should be retitled "Demand for Heroin is Back with a Vengeance." It's easier to demonize a drug than deal with why people want it in the first place. The problem is demand, not availability. That's always been the case and is why our "war on drugs" always fails.

APIs Are the New FTEs (techcrunch.com). 

Who Will Be the First Trillionaire? (toomuchonline.org). It could happen by 2040.

Slipping Away (site.macleans.ca). What it's like when your husband has Alzheimer's at age 38.

Journalism isn't dead; it just takes frequent naps. Join us here every Friday for the best in alternative news.

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