Zagaja.com

Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money basically concludes the same thing as I about these mythical manufacturing jobs:

And yet, even as classes like Goldenberg’s are filled to capacity all over America, hundreds of thousands of U.S. factories are starving for skilled workers. Throughout the campaign, President Obama lamented the so-called skills gap and referenced a study claiming that nearly 80 percent of manufacturers have jobs they can’t fill. Mitt Romney made similar claims. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that there are roughly 600,000 jobs available for whoever has the right set of advanced skills.

This year I am thankful to my friends in the fields of medicine and science. Today we live in a world where we can literally bring people back from being dead, cure cancer, and build replacement limbs. In our world a robotic exoskeleton can let a paralyzed person walk again. Immunizations mean that we need not experience the pain of polio or scariness of smallpox. Miracle drugs treat or cure diseases and conditions that would otherwise make life unbearable for many. What the doctors and scientists accomplish never ceases to amaze me, and I can only imagine what they will do next year.

I think that the looming Connecticut budget crises is a bit scary. I am a bit too tired to process the entire report that the CT Mirror linked to from the Office of Fiscal Analysis but skimming it one thing stands out at me: tax collections are less than expected. The Mirror also explains that enrollment in Medicare is higher. Whenever the governor and legislature put together a budget they are playing a guessing game. They can set tax rates for the future but they do not know how much revenue it will create until it actually occurs. Spending on these social insurance programs is not certain either. The accountants and economists have methods to predict what these might be, but these are always subject to uncertainty. That is why we are left with a gap: the guess was different from the actual revenues or expenditures.

If you’ve ever been thinking about starting your own company and are interested in technology you probably follow Paul Graham. Today he posted his essay on how to get ideas for your start-up company and it’s a great read:

The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.

Instead of a long post I am sharing an eclectic collection of interesting links today:

• Clay Shirky wrote an essay on the future of higher education. I think he neglects one issue: the enthusiasm gap. Online learning works great for people who are interested in learning. How do we make it work for the disinterested or people who just want a job?
• The New York Times had an interesting article on app makers. It seems that the App Store on Apple's website has created downward price pressure on software which is good for consumers but is hurting developers. I think once the flush of venture funding for new apps dries up we'll see higher prices again. Free is not a sustainable model, and quite frankly most of the software I have paid for is much higher quality than the free stuff.
• The Atlantic had a fantastic article on Harper Reed and Obama's technology team.
• If you have an iPhone I recommend downloading the DuoLingo app if you are interested in learning or brushing up on a foreign language. It syncs and works with their website.
• Quora is a question and answer website. Right now it has lots of focus on technology and startup issues but they have sections for a large variety of things. They recently updated their iPhone app.
• Did you know GMail has keyboard shortcuts? Try them out and see if they save you time.
• I recently picked up Sublime Text 2 for code editing. I thought this tutorial on Tuts+ was helpful. I am still learning the ropes but I think this might be a keeper. If you do not do web or software development this is probably not worth bothering with.