A case for a broader education: Daily Bullshit, August 30, 2016

Humanities

I comment on Scott Newstok’s article in a new blog entry.

Scott L. Newstok, “How to Think Like Shakespeare,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 29, 2016, http://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Think-Like-Shakespeare/237593

Ride-sharing

Google will charge riders a maximum of 54 cents a mile,^[1] barely the amount allowed by the Internal Revenue Service as a per-mile deduction,^[2] and, at least for now, take no cut. Unlike Uber and the Lyft, the intention is not for drivers to actually make money. “Waze [owned by Google] wants to connect riders with drivers who are already headed in the same direction. The company has said it aims to make fares low enough to discourage drivers from operating as taxi drivers.” In so doing, Google hopes to avoid taxes, treating “payments through its service effectively as money for gas.”^[3]

Jack Nicas, “Google Takes on Uber With New Ride-Share Service,” Wall street Journal, August 30, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-takes-on-uber-with-new-ride-share-service-1472584235

Scholarly journals

It’s bad enough that even libraries struggle to pay for subscriptions to journals publishing research that, by all rights, ought to be publicly accessible. It’s worse when so many “open access” journals charge authors to publish. It’s even worse yet when journals are predatory.

Paul Basken, “Federal Prosecutors Join Fight Against Predatory Journals,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 30, 2016, http://www.chronicle.com/article/Federal-Prosecutors-Join-Fight/237615

1. ^[1]Jack Nicas, “Google Takes on Uber With New Ride-Share Service,” Wall street Journal, August 30, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-takes-on-uber-with-new-ride-share-service-1472584235↩
2. ^[2]Internal Revenue Service, “2016 Standard Mileage Rates for Business, Medical and Moving Announced,” December 17, 2015, https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/2016-standard-mileage-rates-for-business-medical-and-moving-announced↩
3. ^[3]Jack Nicas, “Google Takes on Uber With New Ride-Share Service,” Wall street Journal, August 30, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-takes-on-uber-with-new-ride-share-service-1472584235↩