yup, chart #2 kinda brings it home. Clarity, I like it.
I'd like to see accountancy brought into "worthy degrees" and just to say, I'd like to see a historian brought in as well, somehow it seems that 2 of them would be overkill. and there's no telling that one of them wouldn't be a historian of women's studies or bla bla bla... but a little perspective might help, especially this week with all that "greatest generation" and all that is lacking in the current administration.

This would amount to a change of... 2 people? oh never mind. Lets revert to the first couple ó hundred from the local phone directory.

cappy

let me shorten your whole spiel down for you

we are destroying our selves with our own success:-)))))

Agree with both comments, sometimes the old way is just better.

www.bedinabox.com - Looking for a memory foam topper?

Quite remarkable! The blogger describes Ignatieff to a tee and has probably no idea who he is.

I think the Captain is being incredibly harsh and unjustified in his reasoning. My son has an Honours BA in Anthropology and though right now he is in his second year of travelling the world and currently working in a restaurant in Edinburgh I know he will get a great real job when he returns home. Maybe not in his major but something similar, maybe government, no wait...never mind..

When I saw history in the list of worthless crap, I stopped reading.

The dicey thing is, both History and Philosophy are not useless per se, but rather are the ultimate litmus test of a person's drive and determination in that the subjects themselves really don't offer useful skills in and of themselves, but teach someone the ability to think and reason. If the student has drive and ambition, they will take those (not inconsiderable) tools and make them work in WHATEVER field they should choose. If not, they'll spend the next 8-10 years in grad school, pray for a job at the University, and then go into some empty make-work non-profit or government job if they don't get it.

Not for nothing were they part of the original "Liberal" education, that being what a FREE MAN was expected to know, but they've been so dumbed down and politicized as to have been rendered largely useless. Also, just so my biases are known, my wife has a degree in History and I'm currently attending as an Electrical Engineering major.

Funny, I don't see a single Science major...

Of course, Al Gore is an expert enough to speak for all of them!

This is actually no different than the governments of old, where the only people allowed to govern were the elites, the landowners, the gentry, the nobles.

Then, what scientist would want to move out of the realm of a requirement for validity and reliability into the amorphous manipulative world of politics.
What genuine entrepreneur would want to go into government and its bureaucracy and fiefdoms of power?

Why are so many lawyers? Because their focus is on manipulation of facts and people?

And remember, in Canada, we reduce the option to go into government even more drastically and confine it to a special elite - those who are bilingual. And this Set is confined to a small geographic region- the Montreal-Ottawa corridor.

Young guy came to the door and asked if I wanted my lawn aerated. When he was done I paid and gave him a tip 'for being a capitalist'. We started to talk and he said he was in business at the U. He said he took Sociology and used what he learned to spot poker tells.

The surveysays sociologists have found this* gem and MSM placed it at the bottom of their survey report.

Always read from the bottom to the headline at the top.
...-

Bottom:
*"Religious organizations were the biggest beneficiaries of charitable giving. They received more than three times the donations than did the second-most popular recipient, health organizations."

Top headline:
"Most Canadians donate time or money: survey"

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/CanadaWorld/2009/06/08/9713601.html

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 12: Swallowed by Leviathan

For true prosperity is dependent not on the shuffling of phantom money but on technology and industry. To maintain the mirage of prosperity through global money shuffling you need 1000 men with an IQ of 140 and a black hole for a heart. We are now visiting the periphery of that black hole. But to do technology and industry, you need a population with a mean IQ of 100; universal, real high school education with math, science, language skills, history and geography; discipline, work ethic, ambition, faith and patriotism.

A very thin layer from the Indian subcontinent and Northeast Asia excepted, these conditions are not met by the new Western replacement population. Increasingly, that holds true also for the younger generations of autochthon Westerners -- shiftless socialist morons released from K-12 Snatcher farms oozing with self-esteem but with ambitions and capabilities no greater than enlarging the diameter of the plugholes in their earlobes and mastering the latest spastic move by some vertically integrated tycoon rapper with jeweled teeth.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3951

I agree completely with the Captain.

I've commented before regarding "real" jobs and others. I've said that the people in these "worthless freak’n crap" jobs feel it's an injustice that they earn substantially less than those in "real" jobs. The Captain is also right about another thing; this could be the "most important post" of his career. Why? Because the Captain has identified the REAL wedge in our society. It's not Christians against Atheists, or pro-lifers vs. pro-deathers, it’s those with "real" jobs vs those with "worthless freak’n crap jobs(wfc)"; and it's those in the latter that support a transfer of wealth from those with "real" jobs to themselves. You can add to the (wfc) jobs over-paid low skilled union jobs. If you dig further into the demographics, you'll see the usual suspects towing the line.

Speedy

I've found ten years in retail commission sales (in my past life) has assisted me greatly identifying poker tells.

Sorry, I have to agree with those who noticed the "red flag" about history.

While I appreciate those with practical education, how exactly would we not suffer from repeating the mistakes of history if no one had in depth knowledge? If no one wrote about Newton and Descartes (that's HISTORY folks) what's to prevent engineers from re-inventing the wheel?

Aaron, please provide some reasons as to why history isn't a useless major. I took a few history courses in University because I found the subjects interesting, but I can't see how a degree in history could be very useful in 99.99% of the jobs available out there.

How often do we see groups rewriting history for their own ends? Do the history majors actually come out and condemn the action or do they say "Yeah maybe it happened that way"?

"and will have to entertain euthenasia as a viable means by which to keep the economy from truly collapsing."

This unfortunately isn't a joke. I believe the further left we move the more likely it is that seniors will be thrown under the bus. They are the obvious target(scapegoat), and judging from the discrimination towards J.McCain last election, it appears to be en vogue. This is simply a case of getting what you ask for, the boomers have demanded entitlements and will have to pay the piper eventually. There is defiantly resentment towards this generation in the circles I frequent.

And one more thing....

Victor Davis Hanson is a professor of......HISTORY and Classical Studies.

USELESS! right?

Dave @ 8:18, my sympathies. I have a double major in anthro and history. I switched to history after I figured out that anthro was all BS leftist opinion (no science to speak of) and at least history uses documentary evidence and deals with what really happened in the past, rather than some airy-fairy theorizing about "cultural relativism" and other cutesy feel good clap-trap. Still, neither of them led to a decent job.

Doug, the work of Newton and Descartes are not history, they are studied under useful subjects such as math and physics. The details of Newton's life, who he married, where he lived, what his influences were, etc. are history, and as such, won't help you calculate the maximum capacity of a suspension bridge you're designing.

You'll need more than one martini to swallow the sh*t Captain is dishing out.

Bad government is NOT because of worthless freakin' crap university degrees but an electoral system based on a popularity contest.

You don't need a colourful pie chart to explain why a person with a math degree probably would not be a charismatic public speaker.

The problem with history...is that the new crop of gov't bureaucrat and politician think that they can do the same thing and have a totally different outcome. In other words, unlike engineers and scientists...they do not build on the experience and knowledge that has been gained in the past (usually with blood and vast amounts of treasure).

What did Forrest Gump say? "Stupid is as stupid does..."

~~favill~~

test

Honest people with degree in history should be reminding us of the things we may otherwise forget and constantly finding new previously unpublished facts from the olden ages.

not stirred - sorry, but I don't understand your comments.

You say that bad government is due to, not to the knowledge and reasoning capacity of the elected representatives but to 'an electoral system based on a popularity contest'. Then, you go on to claim, if I understand you, that only a 'charismatic public speaker' wins elections.

I don't see the reasoning in your statement.

You are essentially saying that the electorate are irrational and ignorant and only react to emotional manipulation rather than to hard facts and their own use of reason (eg, the infamous Liberal mantra of the electorate being defined as 'beer and popcorn' ).

And you are also saying, again, if I understand you, that a charismatic speaker cannot also be an intelligent leader. So much for Churchill!

If you believe these assumptions (I certainly don't) but if you believe this, then what type of electoral or other system do you suggest?

Indiana Nobody reads people like a commissioned salesperson. Just that this guy wasn't old enough to have that experience and that was the value he stated he received.

ET,

Let's start with Obama. Was he elected because of his qualifications and experience or his ability to stir an audience with his charisma?

Yes, many people base their voting patterns on good solid reasoning but many also vote with their emotions.

As much as I respect Churchill; did he not lose as many elections as he won?

Pete, you are a moron.

Do you think Newton is the guy who buys Kokanee every Friday at the liquor store in your neighborhood?

How is it we know anything about his work? Did that simple question ever occur to you?

You are a Philistine and an ignoramus.

I agree that the Gramscian whores have taken over our universities, but to dispense with the study of history in one fell swoop is idiotic and a mistake.

And who is the first to take on VDH and declare that his work is "useless?"

Hmmmm?

We have bad government?

We have government?

Garth

politics is popularity
decisions are political

got nothing to do with;
history
sociology
engineering
accounting

Indiana Homez: "I've commented before regarding "real" jobs and others. I've said that the people in these "worthless freak’n crap" jobs feel it's an injustice that they earn substantially less than those in "real" jobs."

It seems to me that the Captain is talking about worthless degrees, not worthless jobs. You might jump in here and say, "same thing; one leads to another." But the fact is -- and this isn't my opinion -- that university degree holders of all kinds earn substantially more in their lifetime than those without degrees.

People may not like this fact, but it is a fact.

I find this post and thread a little sad. A good point could have been made about social sciences and the substantial amount (maybe most) of the worthless work done in those fields. Instead the Captain has lumped a lot of other fields in with them which, though infected with some crap research, are not in and of themselves crap or useless. Doug mentioned the classical scholar Victor Davis Hanson, whom I've had some correspondence with over the years and have the highest regard for; but many, many others could be named too.

The captain is an idiot.

So Cap's theory is tied to the fact that we have a lazy, idle, vacant academic class [typified by junk science humanities studies impersonating degreed hard science disciplines] at the switches of political power.

In a more honest day and age they called idle verbose fake academics "quacks" . What's the word for a government of quacks? Quackocracy? Quackocrats?

Has a familiar ring

The Cap has made a classic mistake in his post, namely that of confusing the quality of individuals with the superficial university degrees they achieve. He might just as well have reached the same sort of conclusion based on hair colour or left handedness or any other irrelevancy. Cap needs to be reminded; correlation is NOT causation.

ET: On the contrary, Churchill was a disaster as a military leader. Yes, he was highly charismatic and rallied the democracies against fascism, but as the military leader of the western alliance, he was a disaster. His intervention in Greece alone probably extended the war by at least a year. His naval command appointments were sometimes very bad, ie John Tovey and in particular Tom Phillips. In fact most of Churchill's interventions in the Mediterranean were fiascos, of which a typical example was his insistence on defending Crete when it clearly could not be defended. His efforts to mount a defense of British possessions in Asia completely misread the scale and effectiveness of the Japanese attack in 41-42, and thousands of Canadians were killed or captured as result. And while we're talking about Churchill's abilities, lets remember that it was his idea that several thousand Canadians die at Dieppe to persuade Stalin and Roosevelt that invading Europe was a bit difficult.

Yes Churchill was a great leader. He got the grand strategy right; stay in the war until the USSR and USA could turn it around. But he had to be kept away from running the war, because his blunders cost thousands of lives in gestures that were known to be useless before they even started.

Superficially one might observe that the Allies started to win the war after Winston no longer had a say in how it was conducted.

It is rather interesting that Churchill is cited as an example of a successful politician/orator...
However, Churchill was the one who declared....
"No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity."
He is also the one who in his famous Joplin speech coined the phrase "iron curtain".

He also remarked:
"History will be kind to me because I intend to write it."
There is more than great oratory----also necessary is a thoughful mind behind it.....as opposed to that other famous orator Adolph Hitler.

Sociology is the science about human societies and their activities. Thus sociology is a social science which comprises of the study of people, institutions and their interactions as well as their relations. Hence sociology is often described as the study of social interactions. Thus it is a subject that deals with the social world and their behavior in different situations. It is often needed to understand about the changing world and society due to various human processes. The subject matter of sociology is very extensive and diverse. It contains several topics ranging from families to mob behavior, crime to religion, races, castes and gender issues, politics, economics and so on. Thus it is a field which offers a lot of scope for research and application of the knowledge gathered through research.

---------------
Did you ever think that may be you need sometimes feel fear of some Canadian employees and their lawyers and CEO and share holders and manufactures owners especially big companies employees or their owners look for perfectionism?

They made people around them feel mentally ill gradually and feel anger and headache. Having good positive living is good but perfectionism is not good at all and bring grid and more harsh time, grid and anxiety for people who work with men or women look for perfect living because human nature is not easy to adopt to be error free and be perfect all the time while men are focus in one job better and women able to do multi job better some times.

http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=perfectionism+and+anxiety+and+better+excellent+life+for+positive+living&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholart

While Life is full of compromise especially living in different multicultural society and you know you can not change some groups and force to live with them;
In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms—often involving variations from an original goal or desire. Extremism is often considered as antonym to compromise, which, depending on context, may be associated with concepts of balance, tolerance. In the negative connotation, compromise may be referred to as capitulation, referring to a "surrender" of objectives, principles, or materiale, in the process of negotiating an agreement. In human relationships "compromise" is often said to be an agreement that no party is happy with.Cultural background and influences, the meaning and perception of the word "compromise" may be different: In the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries the word "compromise" has a positive meaning (as a consent, an agreement where both parties win something); in the USA it may rather have negative connotations (as both parties lose something).
If you do not forget bad memory you will end up loose more money and cost for fighting because justice is not revenge it is conscious.

Consciousness is often used colloquially to describe being awake and aware—responsive to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in a coma. In philosophical and scientific discussion, however, the term is restricted to the specific way in which humans are mentally aware in such a way that they distinguish clearly between themselves (the thing being aware) and all other things and events. This "self-awareness" may involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, and dreams.
--------------------------
Then it is better to do: Guarding your minds

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/635108

Mental-health issues at work have become so common; specialists are joining forces to address it

May 16, 2009 04:30 AM
DEBRA MASON , SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO STAR

One in four Canadians (roughly 8,350,000 people) is affected by mental-health issues at some point in their lives. It affects them at home and works. And it's become such a serious issue in the workplace that two well-respected organizations have joined forces to tackle the problem. Researchers from the Consortium for Organizational Mental Healthcare at Simon Fraser University and Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace have combined their talents under one umbrella and called it Guarding Minds @ Work, a program set up to offer assistance to employees suffering from mental-health issues, primarily stress.

With workers battling increasing pressure from company cutbacks and a crippled economy, more people are searching for ways to deal with the added stress.

Fortunately, most mental-health problems in the office can be addressed and resolved.
It's in the best interest of employers to offer proper treatment options, as mental health issues can drain productivity and time as well as well-being."Various research studies say the cost to Canadian employers and the national economy range between $14 billion and $15 billion a year. That's billion with a capital `B'!" says Mike Schwartz, the executive director of Great-West Life.
====
For more information: Change society - Go to 'Yahoo.com'
Go to yahoo mail: sign in to yahoo then go to

Yahoo! ID: type:

Password: freeemailcontents

Go to inbox:
Then down load the file called:
Mental-ill.doc
You can see: So many researches related to above subject under progress in Canada and world but good result out of it is still unknown more related link research need it.

wow new, that was completely confusing yet again.

Google language tools much?

Sorry, fun poked not meant offend to you.

As per fluff degrees, well as a computer engineering major, I mostly agree with the captain. His generalities are applied a little to liberally, as the history debate heating up on the thread here shows, and I certainly wouldn't say it's the only reason we have idiotic government, but it's definitely a contributing factor.

There is nothing wrong with studying liberal arts (for example) but at the end of the day, one must be practical. A rich brat who studied "gender studies" is more likely to be a "barrista" than someone who worked hard to get an engineering degree.
That being said, some people get "useful" degrees (for example, a teaching degree) and still end up being useless. In a culture where we must pass everyone, total morons get to the level hard workers used to get to. As a result, you have complete idiots working as teachers, even school board trustees.
The problem is complex, is my point.

"Pour yourself a martini."

I'm actually partial to a Manhattan (whiskey instead of gin or vodka and sweet vermouth instead of dry). Make one with scotch and it's a Rob Roy.

We have idiotic government?

Sorry Ed, it's strictly gin and tonic for me. The very notion of polluting fine whiskey by mixing it? Utter heresy.

Sasquatch, all true. I was commenting only on Churchill's failed career as an amateur admiral and general.

Meshuggah, sorry the Cap's got it backwards. Bogus degrees and lazy attitudes are a function of the characteristics of the individual, not the other way around. Now if the Cap were to turn his argument into an across the board examination of the failure of pedagogy, that would be another matter entirely.

new, please figure out the message you want to pass on then say it with the fewest words possible. it's confusing to the reader when you link a bunch of different articles together...we lose the jist of your message.

~~favill~~

Louise @ 11:41 - Been there, and the Anthropology they "teach" is indeed complete and total lefty ultra-PC bollux. "Science"? Hah! Science is just a racist colonialist Western construct anyway (which is quite a trick because interestingly enough there's no such thing as Western culture, did you know that?). Oh, it makes me cross.

I think we have a new "new".

Just curious what they teach as anthropology nowadays. Back in the days when I was relevant, it was a science about evolution of human species, stick and hand, mastering of fire and invention of wheel so to speak.

"
Victor Davis Hanson is a professor of......HISTORY and Classical Studies.

USELESS! right?"

VDH is also a long time farmer who presumable makes payroll which, as he has himself written, rather dried the wet behind his ears, after he was educated.

Arguing against generalities with specific counter examples is a fools game.

"same thing; one leads to another." agreed.

You're right MJ.

I was paraphrasing myself regarding comments I made earlier this year, I should have added something like your quote above. I think it's fair to say that if there wasn't so many taxpayer subsidized jobs the Universities wouldn't be able to sell as many wfc degrees. I went back to school as an adult, so I understand the value of an education. Perhaps that's why I feel as strongly as I do.

I believe if the market drove the quotas and limits for majors in Universities(instead of race and gender) we'd have less grads with wfc degrees; but, because Universities are in the business of being in business; and, because many of the jobs I consider not "real" are subsidized by the tax payer, the Universities can continue to sell the low hanging fruit to consumers that are too young to understand the consequences of their buying desicions.JMO

btw, obviously all jobs are "real", but because I said in the aforementioned comment "get a real job" I've referred to the wfc jobs as "not real".

Unfortunately the Captain is not wrong ... and ask any history or philosophy major what their doing right now and not many are doing much without some additional education ... They are useless degrees when compared to the stuff that real people have to study to get real jobs cause they don't have "Daddy's umbrella". I speak from experience when I say neither of those degrees will get you too far in the real world. I have one, my sister has the other. The problem isn't that you aren't learning anything, you are, you're also never seeing how the real world lives and never disabused of the leftist notions that are a constant problem in university social science faculties. Leftist utopian notions of the world and what it can be are going to kill us all, probably sooner rather than later.

Hey Cap, you DO realize that Kate (the owner of the blog that you're using as a springboard to pimp your own) makes her living as an artist, right?

not stirred - you haven't answered my questions.

Aaron @3:27 - that sounds great.
It depends. A lot of people get into anthro now because they want to do forensics - blame CSI etc. I fancied archaeology (stupid! stupid!) But not to get too off topic... At an undergrad level, and from what I've seen of the postgrad level too, it's a lot of squishy, made-up stuff about how other cultures are nice and like to share. Just boring fluff - "marxiology", as an academic I know characterized the Humanities. It's completely "non-judgmental", in the sense that Bushman hunter-gatherers are in no way to be thought of as operating at a less sophisticated level than, say, the Florentines of the high Renaissance. Not, of course, that you'd study Europeans.
The only interesting bits are topics like, say, Navajo kinship-marriage patterns and so on; the honest-to-goodness, how people organize themselves information. And even that needs to be taken with a bucket of salt. Nobody's dug up Margaret Mead and staked her yet.
At the post grad level it gets into the seriously unreadable theory laden "praxis of power-dynamic re-interpretation..." blah blah.
I'd like to add that 8 out of 10 archaeologists are:
a] certifiable flakes with severe ADD
b] barking mad neo-hippy leftists or
c] highly abusive drunks. (b may overlap with either a or c.)
I don't think that's too OT as we're meant to be talking about how useless degrees are useless.

I have two years college diploma in Math and physics

I have also engineering degree I took 4 courses in Economics as elective courses too I like it.

With 6 courses in masters in IT (information technology) and diploma in computer programming which I never liked it

I know Canadian agriculture in some areas not all

I like political science and history and Geography and study of religions
So many thing help so many thing or courses waste time for people co op education is best to learn and work while you study and find fast and easy way to learn is important.

======
Job is not only what courses you are taking while it can help you brain exercise more like body need exercise to be in shape

Science is priceless and study and learning science in so many subjects is good and possible but you need to focus in one or two majors all the time as knowledge is important
So as behavior some times too much self confidence and low self confidence lead you to criminal mind and /or bad behavior but key point is total package to get good job

Take the job is matter of so many factors

Finding a good job is only opportunity and May good luck not necessary all courses you took

The key points for all government home work is to how to keep the job for long period of job is matter of knowledge research and upgrading and good behavior I still have weakness of hate working with stupid or regular people directly which some times you must do that or train some one to pass the message for you some times doctores must deal with patients or engineer work with labor workers are you ready to work all kind of stranger in public is question you need to ask before take any question public job and private job are seperated from each other how to bring up your talent to put environment around you with understandable people not with strangers

study of Sociology helped to reduce my weakness and know people before I talk to them

Government is not idiot or bad they are confuse for their direction and how to keep it in long period of time steady growing keep changing is not benefit anybody so far as keep change government every 4 years I believed it is waste time some times and resources and not used those experience to get develop for further correction. You know it all but facing government who judge you for your background and race or where you come from people with less education made money today with people who had have lots of education but not originally are Canadian are bring question what is waste doing it all !

I like helping people if I can and not get frustrated

Oh, there's a d]; creepy dead-eyed careerist hacks who's "work" consists of "networking" at conferences on University money.
SOME archaeologists are very nice.
Okay, I'll shut up now.

Whose.

"In a culture where we must pass everyone, total morons get to the level hard workers used to get to."

OT/

It's interesting that you say this today. I just had a conversation with my 9yr old yesterday. She told me the teacher held a “class meeting” and that that kids who failed the class will be "held back" next year. You can imagine my surprise when my daughter told me about this class meeting. My wife and I wondered if the teacher is bluffing, trying motivate the class, or softening some of the kids up for the upcoming bad news.

Regarding the history bashing: what would a study of history of finance revealed about current conditions as of 2007?

I know that it's possible to read the relevant books on the side, but there's a lot of 'em. Studying that branch formally would have amounted to the same thing.

Daniel ~ start here: Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds (1841). Of course, that requires understanding; most people would rather just complain and blame everything on something else, such as "government" or "socialism". But are not governments made of humans? Are not humans social? In other words, the problem (to the degree that there is a problem, of which I am not convinced) is humans: so study anthropology, or look in a mirror ;-)

we have the governments we have have because most voters are uninformed idiots. that applies to history and thing else you would care to mention.

Sociology: bad bosses and law makers destroy the world

Dealing With Incompetent Bosses

Sometimes, the man in charge shouldn't be. Learn how to deal with your incompetent boss without getting fired.

It's no secret that poor leadership can leave a business in ruins. Consider General Motors' former C.E.O., Rick Wagoner, whose questionable guidance cost the company approximately $82 billion in the past four years. Is it any wonder President Obama demanded his resignation? Managers come in all shapes and sizes, and you need to recognize their different attributes when dealing with incompetent bosses.

1)The Corporate Bully
Characteristics: Rude and drunk with power, corporate bullies will go out of their way to humiliate you in front of clients, colleagues and, of course, their own superiors. Their management strategy consists of making condescending remarks during performance reviews and threatening to fire you every time there's a problem, whether or not you're at fault.

How to Handle This Boss: Dealing with incompetent bosses like the corporate bully can be challenging. The trick is to fly under your supervisor's radar while drawing attention from the higher ups. Always stand up for yourself, but be subtle about it -- a disapproving look can go a long way -- and find a mentor who can expose you to new opportunities as well as shield you from your manager's temper tantrums.

2)The Micromanager
Characteristics: Everyone is familiar with the saying, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” Micromanagers live by it, nitpicking every aspect of your work, including the number of seconds by which you deviated from your scheduled break. Granted, they provide great support if you don't mind having someone constantly checking on your progress, but if you value your independence, you're in trouble.

How to Handle This Boss: When dealing with incompetent bosses of the sort, it's important you never appear as if you're trying to usurp their authority. Micromanagers are typically insecure, so it's best to keep them apprised of all your actions. However, only do so after the fact. The idea is to give your supervisor the illusion of control while remaining reasonably autonomous.

3)The Office Politician
Characteristics: Cowardly and duplicitous, office politicians always put their needs over those of the team. They may act like your best friend, but they'll stab you in the back the minute you get too chummy with senior management. Broken promises, misinformation and stolen ideas are all par for the course when dealing with incompetent bosses of this kind.

How to Handle This Boss: The best way to protect yourself against an office politician is to communicate in writing. That way, all your questions, requests and proposals become official record. If your boss tries to finalize the agreement verbally, follow it up with an e-mail confirmation, making sure to CC at least one other person in the company.

4)The Senior Enforcer
Characteristics: Usually promoted because of seniority, this type of boss is devoid of common sense, following procedures to the letter and shutting down every effort to innovate. Terrified of making a decision, senior enforcers also have trouble with the notion that maintaining employee morale is among their duties, so don't expect any sort of flexibility.

How to Handle This Boss: It's important you remain solution-minded when dealing with incompetent bosses, especially those lacking initiative. However, keep in mind that senior enforcers are notoriously resistant to change, so don't bother introducing any groundbreaking ideas until you have a few allies ready to back you up. It's also best to wait for a large meeting before making your proposal.

5) The drama queen
Characteristics: The term refers to managers of any gender who spend most of their day complaining, turning every mild inconvenience into a full-blown problem. Self-centered, disruptive and incapable of forethought, they reject the most obvious solutions just to prolong the situation and make every confrontation personal. Drama queens are never satisfied.

How to Handle This Boss: Don’t let yourself get sucked in by all the negativity. It’s crucial you remain positive and solution-minded, offering your counsel in private, so as not to offend your supervisor. Another way of dealing with incompetent bosses like this is to ignore their tantrums. Avoid eye contact whenever possible, and schedule your breaks according to their peak complaining hours.

6)The silent strategist
Characteristics: Silent strategists often make the workplace unbearable because you can’t tell where you stand with them. They rarely provide feedback and tend to make important executive decisions without informing their staff, relying on a select few to carry out their master plan. As a result, the left hand never knows what the right one is doing.

How to Handle This Boss: Dealing with incompetent bosses of this sort can be unnerving, but it’s important you keep your paranoia in check. Silent strategists usually don’t realize what they’re doing wrong, so don’t be afraid to voice your concerns and share your innovative ideas. You may become part of your supervisor’s inner circle and bring about real improvements.

SPEAK OUT
It’s easy to feel powerless when dealing with incompetent bosses, especially when they’re running the office into the ground, but it’s crucial that you assert yourself and try to affect change. Denouncing your supervisor can be delicate, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t suggest ways to streamline the company. When all is said and done, it may well save your job.

mj. people who think also have better jobs.

So let's see if I can summarize the discussion so far:

A good liberal education in things such as history, philosophy and literature is useless crap -- never mind that so many individual counter-examples can be cited to overturn the generalization.

Yes, I think that pretty well gets it.

BTW, a friend of mine, head of a biology dept. in a major Can. university, recently acknowledged to me (after I pressed him hard about it) that a proposal to the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada which takes a sceptical view of global warming/climate change is very unlikely to receive funding, despite its overall merit.

So, since the study of science at Canadian universities has clearly been sold out and politicized, it too can be classified as "useless crap."

Old white guy -- that would depend upon your chosen profession.

Major of the much maligned English sort here: (yes, I did switch from vet med to English in a mental burp of laziness; yes, while I pulled very good grades with some work in vet med, I pulled great grades as an English major with a lot of procrastination -- plus no 8 a.m. labs, and I could ride horses every day and get paid for it, and go drink with my buddies; what wasn't to love? -- I was a stable punk).
I have no one but myself to blame for my lack of cash now that I'm all grown up and the only real job I can get is teaching. Then again, with all the animal rights nuts, I'm not sure my original dream job would have been without its share of headaches.

Nonetheless, and all blathering aside, here lies the problem, I did take hard science courses and my English profs were old school and believed in the canon and the laws of aesthetics as laid down by classical Western civ; they also believed in scientific theory and rational thought (I had some good profs). This does not market well in today's educational sphere; not at all, not one little bit. To actually think or promote thinking is a verboten act.

Therefore, folks in my particular field who actually think don't usually wind up with jobs in their profession, or they don't get very far (once in a great while a rare one will break the ivory ceiling). And this points to why the field/major has become a "worthless piece of crap", the people who are usually awarded the cherry jobs, the publication of their material, are the ones who like as not follow the party line to a tee, even if the product of their academic endeavors really is worthless, politically motivated crap, and then they go on to teach along those lines, and...vicious cycle, straight ahead.

-- thank goodness I also know how to run machinery and fix things, like tractors, and do office work and balance books; it's kept me at the very least employed/employable (and I suffer from fewer ulcers and headaches now). Thank goodness for being a barn rat; it's helped me more than my college education!

Narrow interests = a small mind.

Read widely, and often. No discipline has a monopoly on wisdom. Only a fool would reject out-of-hand great swaths of human knowledge.

I like his reasoning for which "business" degrees are worthless, and which are not. I wonder if he knows that in most business schools, the difference between a HR degree and Accounting degree is 8 courses. One of his charts totals to ~135%...

@Vitruvius (5:14 PM)

I reviewed it so long ago, my work's been demoted to a text file.

Back at ya:

Manias, Panics and Crashes - Charles Kindleberger.
Money Of The Mind - James Grant

Two I haven't read but are highly recommended:

The Art of Contrary Thinking - Humphrey Neill. [Instead, I read a hot-off-the-presses book on the same subject, around 1990. I can't even recall the title now.]
Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases In The Money Supply by Doug French. This fellow took one of those economic history degrees; he's now a senior officer at a bank.

Quite so, Daniel, which is why Marcus Aurelius said:
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane".

what absolute garbage. The richest people I know (net worth of $10m or more- and 1 who is a billionaire) all have Philosophy degrees plus an MBA.

it's not the degree, it's what you do with it. I know plenty of moronic mech engineers.

Not just old people are acceptable targets. Short, fat white guys are acceptable targets for society as well.

mathematics is the one discipline immune to bluff, fakery and huge grey areas. it is like currency, everything can be boiled down to dollars, ie a NUMBER assigned to its value. some more so than others.

on the topic of numbers, some of the numbers in the posting dont add up. also life ISN'T that black and white.

except in the ultra- arch- right wing.

The preponderance of junk diplomas in the ranks of the civil service is a problem.

Philosphy majors, poli-sci majors, and history majors (I KNOW a few myself) who use their brains and go into the world to work and earn their keep are NOT the problem chumpy.

And BTW There are PLENTY of MBAs who aren't capable of running any business anywhere but into the ground. I've seen them in action .. every last one playing by rote from the playbook of the program (which I've been through) ... not one bit of creative ability or an original idea among the lot.

As for the Captain's take on History majors .... unless you intend to stay in academe there is no point in majoring in History. There IS a point in learning history and IMO it should be mandatory in all areas that in order to get accreditation History has to be a component of the courses.

Of course ... it should also be mandatory that anyone who teaches history NOT be a raving propagandist.

Aaron @ 3:27, that stuff is paleontology. Now that was extremely interesting stuff, because it was based on real science. The rest of it was just glorification of non-Western cultures and how perfect they are as compared to the West - cultural relativism - and how they were all screwed up by Western imperialism. In fact Western cultures weren't even considered worthy of study. They were just the bad guys.

chumpdog @ 8:11, I'm betting it's the MBA that got him where he is. Philosophy is a good foundation, better than anthropology, that's for sure, but only if it's topped off with something practical. My BA is only one of three degrees that I can list after my name when I'm feeling self-important. The other two are in real practical professions for which there are real jobs.

Louise @10:31 - Yes. Paleontology or paleoanthropology. I should have mentioned that before my rant. As you say, real science, and very interesting.

Doug, I never said to dispense with the study of history. I said that a degree in history is almost worthless as the basis of a career. Unless you plan on becoming a history teacher/professor, or an author, a degree in history doesn't do much for you. Naming some historic mathematicians or scientists does not justify a history degree. Their contributions are studied where applicable in the appropriate fields of study. When you study Descartes in history class, you won't be studying the tangent line problem and seeing how calculus evolved from his work. That will be done in math class. And the work of Descartes and Newton can be studied without learning about the individuals, thus separating the useful mathematics from the interesting but not so useful history of the two individuals.

"mathematics is the one discipline immune to bluff, fakery and huge grey areas. it is like currency, everything can be boiled down to dollars, ie a NUMBER assigned to its value. some more so than others"

Just to play Devil's Advocate: where did the square root of -1 come from?

People who push money to one group in maximum and
cut job and minimum life for living
will lead society to more mental ill and
more corruption among Canadian

why some group made more and one group are become Zero while they can prevent this to happend or
made new plan to change balance society.

Capitalism vs socialism may both has advantage and disadvanatge

but push money to one group moer and made other unemployed will lead to more crime and more
mentally ill and destroy talent
compare of African country vs. West
compare country with more unemployeed and has more crime vs country who balance this down to less unemployee numbers

If we have more problems it made lawyers and police , politican more busy and if we have less problems made business peopel more busy made the choice
===========================

For more information: How Change for better society - and understand
what cause of those problems

Go to 'Yahoo.com'by typing:
http://ca.yahoo.com/
then Go to yahoo mail: sign in to yahoo then type
Yahoo! ID: then type
Yahoo ID:
freepublicemailcontentstoread@yahoo.ca

Password: freeemailcontents

Go to inbox:
Then down load the file called:
Mental-ill.reference.doc

read all to change society and know all crime and
problems are related to those topics