Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Richard Vedder at the Chronicle notes that 5,000 Ph.D.s are working as ... janitors.

Did those of us who went to college before a political party decided a college education was 'a right' know there would be diminishing returns to a college education once everyone had one?  Sure we did, but that's no miracle of economics.  Heck, even Paul Krugman could have figured that out.   

Vedder agrees.

Appearing on CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” program last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that people who don’t like Google’s Street View cars taking pictures of their homes and businesses “can just move” afterward to protect their privacy. Ironically, he said this on the very day that Google admitted those cars captured more than just fragments of personal payload data.

Interesting trivia fact; who is the only player in baseball history to appear in the World Series against the team that traded him that same year?   If you guessed Bengie Molina because his name is in the title, you are correct.

The Giants had Molina as a catcher from 2007 until they discovered rookie Buster Posey was an offensive force and should be playing every day, so Molina was traded to the Texas Rangers, where he helped them get to the World Series as well.   That was a good move because Posey is much better on offense and much younger but Molina was a valuable guy to San Francisco in developing their young pitchers to where they are today.

Want to become a terrorist?  It's easier than you think to get sucked in, writes New Scientist.

The anthropology of terrorism makes for compelling fieldwork and Scott Atran is on a quest to understand what makes people kill and die for a cause.   He says he has met with the Hamas high command in Damascus, unpacked the web of connections behind the 9/11 and 2004 Madrid train attacks and been forced to flee for his life from militants in Indonesia and Pakistan unsettled by his probings.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his organization are famously liberal with the secrets of the U.S. military but he is not so forthcoming about his own private affairs.

Assange walked out of a CNN interview after the reporter asked him about his often terse relationship with fellow workers and the court case in which he was cleared of sex abuse charges in Sweden.

The Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies posted its assessment of 800 health claims earlier this week, including some from manufacturers whose products include so-called functional ingredients like probiotics, which are food additives proponents claim can stimulate the immune system to aid digestion or inhibit pathogens.

In a move designed to help revive the tradition of taking a nap after lunch, Spain's first national siesta championship is underway in Madrid.

Participants are monitored as they lie down for a 20-minute nap and they have pulse monitors attached to their bodies.   A maximum of 20,000 points is awarded to those who manage to sleep for the full 20 minutes and sleeping fewer minutes means fewer points but judges also award marks for original sleeping positions, the loudest snore and the most eye-catching outfits.

AFP

Autism was described as early as 1940 but only recently has there been a marked increase in the diagnosis of the broader class of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) - one in 110 children in 2006 and that diagnosis increased at an average annual rate of 57% between 2002 and 2006. The escalating health care expenditures associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has the health community concerned.

NPR news analyst Juan Williams gets nervous about people who put religion before anything - it's a sentiment shared by most of the progressives who listen to taxpayer-funded National Public Radio - but he was wrong to say it, according to NPR, so they fired him.

It isn't just conservatives who are siding with freedom of speech over political correctness - though Whoopi Goldberg and Bill O'Reilly on the same side is a rarity.