What Caught My Eye Today - Royalty, China, Saudi Arabia, Potpourri
Royalty - For those of you who keep track of such things, the British monarchy has four generations of monarchs for the first time since Victoria, way back in 1894...which can mean only one thing. Will and Kate had a baby! The son of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, was born on 22 July 2013 in London. He is the couple's first child, as well as the first grandchild of Charles, Prince of Wales. And what might the future king have to look forward in 60 or 70 years? He is third in line to succeed his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, to the British throne, after his grandfather and father to the thrones of the 16 Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Not to mention endless media coverage and constant invasion of privacy by the paparazzi. No word yet on the lad's name, which has generated a lot of business for odds makers and sports books. For my money, I'm thinking Edward and George are pretty good candidates, with Philip being my dark horse pick (nothing like a little shout out to the queen's hubby to stay on her good side).
China - China has made it a crime for adult children to neglect their elderly parents. So much for relying on one's moral compass to do the right thing? Millions of Chinese workers now live thousands of miles away from their parents, and under a law that recently went into effect, those who fail to visit or call can be fined. You know, it wasn't that long ago when parents were wondering if their children would ever leave home. Heck in the United States, college graduates are moving back home with mom and dad in droves, unable to find jobs or weighed down with student loans. The law does not spell out how many visits are required, so it is up to disgruntled parents to lodge complaints. Wouldn't it be fun to see that law enacted in the U.S.? I can almost see a bunch of parents scheming to mess with their offspring with the threat of criminal charges as payback for being such horrible teenagers. Almost immediately, vendors began offering to send strangers on filial visits. Say what you will about China being an oppressive communist regime. Seems to me like capitalism is alive and well, at least in this particular market.
Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry announced it will kick out any foreigner who is not observing a daytime fast for the holy month of Ramadan. Any expatriot caught eating or smoking in public from sunrise to sunset will be fired from their job and deported. As you can probably gather, "separation of church and state" has a much different meaning in the Arab world than it does in the United States. Then again, the bible belt has pretty strong feelings about many social issues, so maybe we aren't so different from the Saudis as we might think. Saudi Arabia is home to some 8 million foreign workers, mostly from Asian countries. In the past, foreigners were asked to refrain from eating in public during Ramadan, but they were not threatened with punishment. Saudis are jailed or lashed if they are caught breaking the fast. You can sort of see where these guys are coming from. Let's say you are a Saudi sweating away in the midday sun and, to make matters worse, you haven't had anything to eat since before sunrise. Meanwhile your foreign co-workers is slammin' down a vanilla milkshake. He doesn't like the guilty feeling he starting to get, so he offers to share with you, figuring that you'll get busted and taken off for a flogging in the public square, thereby allowing him to enjoy the rest of his milkshake in peace. Dude, that just ain't cool.
Potpourri
- Jobs - The U.S. economy is expected to generated 55 million jobs by 2020, and 65% of those jobs will require more than a high school education. If current graduation rates hold steady, the U.S. will wind up 5 million college-educated workers short. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 is near 25%. I'm all for job creation, but maybe some thought should be given to creating jobs that a greater percentage of the population can perform. Let's be real, college is not for everyone, but that doesn't mean this segment of the population cannot contribute to the economy.
- Royalties - A musician whose song gets played 1 million times on Pandora earns just $16.89 in royalties. Pandora pays artists as little as a thousandth of a cent each time it plays their songs. One wonders how content aggregators like Pandora can get away with stuff like this. I remember when Napster was called out for basically given away musical content for free. This doesn't appear to be much of an improvement for the artists whose content is responsible for these sites to be in business in the first place. I did the math to see how much my blog would have made me if a page view was paid at the same rate as a song. I started tracking my blog in July, 2007 and have had just shy of 5600 page views in that item (pretty pathetic, right?), which means I would have earned less than one cent a year.
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