Ben Wyatt

I'd never thought I would see the day ... my manager let me off 3 hours early today because there was neither work I was qualified to do nor people qualified to train me elsewhere, and she was apologizing ... this real world outside of school you all speak of intrigues and amuses me. In a fit of celebratory verboseness, I have decided to blog until my keyboard bleeds.

A number of newsworthy items have crossed my attention:

* Those praying for Abdul Rahman, the Afghani convert to Christianity who faces death, may be interested in the link between Rahman, and Rehmatullah Hashmi, a former Taliban official and current student at Yale. Apparently, Yale's so tolerant, they'll even tolerate the intolerant. I don't know if I should tolerate that.

* The Weekly Standard has a couple of articles out on topics that are sore to me. The first concerns South Dakota's abortion law, and the ultimate future of Roe v Wade. The points are made that:
- South Dakota's law will almost certainly not see the Supreme Court, but that's the best thing we can hope for, given that a reaffirmation of Roe would be the probable outcome. As much as I want to disagree (guns-blazing, intellectual warfare imagery abounds), realpolitik reels its ugly head.
- Roe will be overturned, eventually. It's just bad law.
- Abortions will see little decline Post-Roe. Demographics and whatnot. It's a reasonable point, but doesn't account for a long term shift of ideas.
- Roe was almost a good thing. Judicial tyranny on abortion is exclusive to the US. Elsewhere, a battle of popular opinion has been fought and lost. The US remains free of that. I wonder sometimes if that is providential

* The second deals with a increase in Italian monasticism, and projects long term trouble for European secularism. Color me skeptical, but hopeful.

* In a more personal triumph, I had the audacity this Fall to switch majors from electrical enginnering to economics, despite definite questions about how I would survive after school. Matthew 6 helped a lot. I ran across a recent Reuters news story highlighting the 'best job market in 5 years.' The best is yet to come:

The survey also found higher starting salaries this year. Graduates with economic or finance degrees will see the biggest gain with starting salaries up 11 percent to $45,191 ...