Everyone who took Econ 101 remembers Comparitive Advantage... you do what you do best, and let the competitor do what they do best, and then you trade.

Same thing applies here. Right now, India/China make engineers & coders cheaper than we do. Same quality? I'm not going to touch that with a 10-foot pole.

What "home grown" Americans can generally offer more effectively than offshore coders is meaningful analysis, communication skills and "big-picture" items. The long-term model trends towards managers, designers and architects onshore, and coders offshore. For better or for worse.

Designing the system rather than coding it. Writing the requirements rather than developing reports. Things along those lines. That's where onshore resources need to offer value.

Even as a coder, you need to offer these skills in order to remain viable.

Introducing more H-1Bs is going to benefit a lot of workers (globally) and a lot of companies (globally and locally). Workers need to find their niche in filling in the gaps that H-1Bs can't fill.

The example that always gets trotted out is that canal workers fought like hell to get the government to keep railroads from growing, and railroad workers fought like hell to keep airlines from growing. Fighting offshoring is a losing battle. Find your niche. There are some things that don't make sense to outsource. Figure out what they are.

Kudos to these bands (specifically TMBG) for putting this music out. It's very refreshing to have "safe" musical common ground with the kids. That said, most kids love punk if you put it on for them too... this stuff just has less swearing.

Niggling point with the article -- re: They Might Be Giants, Lamb writes: "Their transition from quirky indie pop band to quirky kindie rock act has been almost total...", but I'd disagree... they're still putting out adult music and playing adult shows at a pretty steady rate. The kid stuff is an integrated career, I wouldn't say they've shifted to being a kindie band full time.

Here's hoping we'll see even more high quality cross-generational music coming out soon! Worried about this becoming a pervasive trend though... I don't look forward to an [insert crappy band here] kids album just to capitalize on the trend. (If Kiss did a disco album, what's to stop a Linkin Park kids record?)

This is real interesting stuff. As a former Morgan Stanley-ite, I've read a good deal of Stephen Roach's stuff, and have found him to be more insightful than most when talking about international developments, esp. China. I'm a big fan of Ricardo, and I'm always interested in seeing whether time can poke meaningful holes in his stuff. (Ok, you can argue that plenty of holes have been poked already, but I still think it holds up. No need to start a flame war on that front.)

Sarbanes is obviously a big proponent of gov't involvement in business regulation (see SOX), but I haven't heard much re: his stance on this. Not sure any effort to put strong anti-China or India bills in front of Congress could withstand the corporate lobby.

Anyway, as the headline says, I wish I had a day to absorb this kind of info... in the meantime, I'll follow along here. Thanks for taking the bullet for us!

Similar (though raunchier) Onion headline.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29215

They're experts at glorifying the mundane.

Well, at least it's pretty cut and dry. You aren't going to find too many people saying the refs called him for something that didn't happen. In this case, idiocy isn't controversial. Fascinating clip.

Pearl Jam, though, just had like an 8-page article in Entertainment Weekly.

I'm not going to argue Pearl Jam's relevance, but using Entertainment Weekly as a litmus test is a sorry measure.

The line that caught my eye...

And yet Wheatley, 40, who's still nursing her 3-year-old daughter, rarely breast-feeds in public...

I'm completely pro-breastfeeding. Great, natural thing of beauty, and wonderfully utilitarian. But continuing to breastfeed a kid who can walk up and request it just strikes me as kind of creepy.

If anything, the man's got a way with words, and is willing to work for his craft.

Everyone remembers my favorite Tyson quote of all time "I'll f*ck you till you love me!"

Given, it was directed at a reporter he wasn't particularly fond of, but if he put that same ethos into the studmongering trade, he's bound to get some repeat customers.

As a working father, one persistant problems I face is the perception that this issue is a women's issue. I fully agree with Prof. Shapiro's comments, but could replace "she" with "he" and "women" with "men" in a number of the statements and have it describe the struggles I've had convicing bosses that I needed to take kids to the doctor, leave early for day care pickups, etc.

I'd argue that one of the things that keeps this a "women's issue" is women's own framing of it. I received tremendous pushback to expanding the Working Mother's Group to a Working Parent's group when working at a large company, but never got a good reason why. By framing this issue as one affecting all working parents, it'll gain more traction. Or so I think.

Double airfare prices across the board. Fewer people will fly, which means fewer planes to schedule, and less impact to the overall schedule in the event of a weather issue. Airline margins increase, so the smaller passenger load isn't a problem, and quality of life for airline employees increase with nicer schedules and (potentially) increased pay.

Sure, a lot of us will fly less, but if you're just going to complain about flying all the time, is that really a bad thing?