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☆ Meet Sonny Vaccaro, the executive credited with signing Michael Jordan in Ben Affleck's new movie 'Air' and the self-proclaimed 'savior of Nike'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-07 | by ( Matthew Kish | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Vaccaro, 83, was a key figure in Nike's push to sign Michael Jordan in 1984. No one in his family went to college, Vaccaro said in an interview over a pancake breakfast in 2021. Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro in the new "Air" movie about how Nike signed Michael Jordan. "The signing of Michael Jordan, yeah, success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan," Knight told USA Today in 2015. "A lot of people want to take credit for signing Michael Jordan, most obviously Sonny Vaccaro."

☆ This could've been an email: If MLB can speed up games, bosses can shorten meetings. Here's how.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Rebecca Knight | Josée Rose | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

If new rules can improve game speed, surely bosses can make meetings run more efficiently. If Major League Baseball can speed up games, surely bosses can make meetings more efficient, right? Try, for instance, forcing yourself to cut meetings by half: Your weekly meeting becomes an every-other-week meeting; your hourlong meetings become 30-minutes ones. Ask for adviceJust as MLB needs to consider the fan experience of being at the ballpark or watching a game on TV, bosses need to think about their workers' experiences in meetings, Rogelberg said. "Instead of putting people in hours of meetings without ever asking them about what they're accomplishing, you need to engage," he said.

☆ The 10 best US cities for job opportunities and earning potential in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

HR firm Checkr ranked the best US cities for job opportunities and earning potential. A new report from Checkr, a background check firm, looked at which cities job seekers should consider. Checkr analyzed BLS and other government labor data on the 100 largest US cities to determine which cities have the most job opportunities with the highest earning potential. The 10 best US cities for job opportunities and earning potential according to Checkr, are:1. The shift to remote work may encourage workers to move to cheaper, mid-sized cities, Korolevich said.

☆ You can run for president from prison. Here's what happened when 2 candidates campaigned from behind bars.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Chris Panella | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Two previous candidates, Eugene V. Debs in 1920, and Lyndon LaRouche in 1992, both ran from prison. If Trump is convicted, it's possible he could run for president from behind bars. Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran from behind bars over 100 years agoThe socialist party 1904 Eugene V. Debs and Ben Hanford. HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesIn 1920, Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for the Oval Office from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was known as "prisoner 9653," according to Smithsonian Magazine. Alex Brandon/File/APWhile Debs and LaRouche were both unsuccessful in their campaigns, they both were still able to run for president while behind bars.

The conservative-leaning court will issue rulings this spring in cases questioning the legality of race-conscious admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. To increase enrollment of all underrepresented groups on campus without race-conscious admissions, the study said, schools would need to overhaul the entire process. The study's authors said it was unlikely that schools would universally adopt class-conscious admissions. Those that do try class-conscious admissions might still face discrimination lawsuits if they start giving explicit preference to low-income students, Carnevale added. Schools would have to invest heavily in expanding their recruitment of high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds for a class-based alternative to produce anywhere near the level of racial diversity accomplished through race-conscious admissions, the study found.

March 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether colleges can continue to consider race as part of their admissions decisions, a practice commonly known as affirmative action. Schools also employ recruitment programs and scholarship opportunities intended to boost diversity, but the Supreme Court litigation is focused on admissions. HOW HAS THE SUPREME COURT RULED IN THE PAST? The court has largely upheld race-conscious admissions for decades, though not without limits. A decision banning affirmative action would force elite colleges to revamp their policies and search for new ways to ensure diversity.

☆ Teacher transitions from the classroom to a major accounting firm — and reminds others 'you haven't just taught'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-25 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Michael Sanders taught US history at two different charter schools around the start of the pandemic. He talked to Insider about how he transitioned out of teaching to working at a Big Four firm. In 2019, he started teaching tenth grade US history at a charter school in Barnstable, Mass., which he enjoyed. The next school year, he moved to a larger charter school network in Austin, Texas, and taught AP US history to eleventh-graders. He still talks to some of his former students and teacher colleagues too.

☆ Shoppers say secondhand stores like Goodwill are getting too expensive as Gen Z makes thrifting cool
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Mary Hanbury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

TikTokers are complaining about high prices in secondhand stores like Goodwill and Salvation Army. The US thrift market has grown substantially in recent years and thrifting has become a popular pursuit of Gen Z shoppers, who have been credited with championing a more sustainable way to shop. But Gen Z shoppers aren't only buying secondhand items for themselves. That is a dubious delineation when it comes to major secondhand clothing corporations," Jennifer Le Zotte, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington told Vox. 23-year-old Stefani Colvin, who has been thrifting since 2016, told Insider that prices have been gradually on the rise in thrift stores.

In the short-term, regulators have found a solution for Silicon Valley Bank depositors and, we hope, calmed the fears of a wider run on regional banks. The much admired U.S. system for producing innovation has just received a body blow, and the turmoil that led to the death of Silicon Valley Bank isn't over. Silicon Valley Bank, founded in 1983, was born in a time when Silicon Valley was a synonym for "tech" and "innovation." SVB was the crown jewel of banks and the venture capital industry, not just in Silicon Valley, but globally. It's easy to picture these as large firms, and a tiny handful of famous venture firms have hundreds of employees.

☆ This millennial didn't see diverse women represented in comic books, so she wrote her own—now it's her full-time job
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Ashton Jackson | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

But as she grew up, she noticed that female superheroes weren't getting the same attention, storylines or film adaptations that male superheroes were. So she created her own diverse, all-women superhero universe — and it's now her primary source of income. "I remember going to a comic store and seeing a Wonder Woman comic. So I would intern at a lot of different places," Truesdale tells CNBC Make It. "A lot of different marketing agencies, financial firms, all these different places that all had different elements of business.

☆ Elon Musk says it's 'super concerning' that smart youths aren't having as much sex as those with average IQs, referencing data from a study published 23 years ago
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk says it's "super concerning" that smart youths aren't having more sex. He was responding to a tweet about high IQ youths not having as much sex as average IQ youths. The tweet's content can be traced back to a paper published in 2000, titled: "Smart teens don't have sex." Williams referenced research that said youths with IQs over 130 are "3-5 times less likely" to have had sex than those with average IQs. Williams' tweet references a research paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2000, titled "Smart teens don't have sex (or kiss much either)."

☆ UNC’s New School Plans, Revealed
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The ferment continues around the University of North Carolina trustees’ plan to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership. A Daily Tar Heel article on Thursday reported the news that we had the story first. We’d also like to compliment the paper on its acquisition of the list of potential course offerings at the school. The article cites former UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp as noting that our reporting confirmed the presence of a vast right-wing conspiracy. So let’s have a look at the list of scandalous potential course offerings for the new school.

China’s official count 0 2.5 million 83,150 deaths Model based on Shanghai outbreak 1.6 million deaths LOW ESTIMATE HIGH ESTIMATE Estimate using travel patterns 970,000 deaths Estimate using recent testing data 1.5 million deaths Estimate based on U.S. death rates 1.1 million deaths China’s official count 0 2.5 million 83,150 deaths Model based on Shanghai outbreak 1.6 million deaths LOW EST. But China’s official Covid death toll for the entire pandemic remains strikingly low: 83,150 people as of Feb. 9. Four separate academic teams have converged on broadly similar estimates: China’s Covid wave may have killed between a million and 1.5 million people. Why official data underrepresents China’s outbreak83,150 deaths China’s official count on Feb. 9 0 2.5M 83,150 deaths China’s official count on Feb. 9 0 2.5 millionChina has a narrow definition of what counts as a Covid-19 death. But the work was unwavering in its ultimate conclusion: Ending the “zero Covid” policy was likely to overwhelm the health care system, producing an estimated 1.6 million deaths.

☆ Most Americans think college admissions should not consider race -Reuters/Ipsos poll
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Gabriella Borter | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Sixty-seven percent of white respondents said they were against considering race at all in admissions, compared with 52% of minority respondents. In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, 46% of respondents said social policies such as affirmative action discriminated unfairly against white people. That view was held by 49% of white respondents and 39% of minority respondents. While most poll respondents said they did not think college admissions offices should consider race at all, 58% of all respondents said they supported programs aimed at increasing racial diversity of students on college campuses. Respondents also were asked how significantly other factors ought to play into college admissions.

☆ The University of North Carolina Fight Escalates
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The kerfuffle we reported two weeks ago over a new school for free expression at the University of North Carolina keeps getting more complicated, and not in a good way. Opponents are now suggesting that UNC’s accreditation could be in jeopardy over the board of trustees’ plan to create the new School of Civic Life and Leadership without the blessing of the faculty. At a meeting Tuesday of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina, accreditation official Belle Wheelan declared that the UNC board would be getting a letter from her agency. Ms. Wheelan is president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS), which accredits UNC, and she referred to “a news article that came out” on the plan to create a new school.

A lawyer for Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary said in a statement that the company would seek a rehearing of the panel’s decision by the full 3rd Circuit court. Gordon’s strategy worked in bankruptcy court but set up J&J for failure when it faced the 3rd Circuit appeals panel. Gordon, at the bankruptcy conference, described the lawsuits as “completely unmanageable” and a dire threat to J&J that could go on for decades. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to hear arguments in coming months on a challenge to the 3M subsidiary’s bankruptcy. The litigation, they asserted, should be allowed to proceed against Georgia-Pacific because the parent company did not file for bankruptcy.

☆ The UNC Echo Chamber Fights Back
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Our editorial on Friday about the University of North Carolina’s effort to create a new school dedicated to free inquiry and open academic discourse has caused a fuss on campus that illustrates why the new school is needed. It seems that faculty grandees are outraged that the UNC board of trustees thought such a school is necessary and didn’t even seek the faculty’s permission. The Daily Tar Heel documents the angst in the Chapel Hill faculty lounge in a Jan. 30 story that is unintentionally hilarious in its ivory-tower indignation. The reporter quotes UNC law professor Eric Muller as saying, “I thought: how on Earth? How on Earth could The Wall Street Journal know this.”

☆ UNC Takes on the University Echo Chamber
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Progressive politics has dominated elite universities since before the term woke was coined. But one university is trying to revive the academic ideal of a campus as a haven for free inquiry and debate. On Thursday the University of North Carolina board of trustees voted 12-0 to create a new school committed to free expression in higher education. UNC will establish the School of Civic Life and Leadership and plans to hire professors from across the ideological spectrum to teach in such academic departments as history, literature, philosophy, political science and religion. Board Chair David Boliek and Vice Chair John Preyer tell us that the idea is to end “political constraints on what can be taught in university classes.”

☆ TikTok tries to sell ‘Project Texas’ as it fights for survival in the U.S.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( David Ingram | David Ingram Covers Tech For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Some of the details appeared Thursday on the security blog Lawfare, where two people provided a rundown of what they said they heard at one TikTok briefing last week. He said his center has received funding from TikTok, but that he had no view on whether TikTok’s assurances were satisfactory. “We have shifted our approach,” Erich Andersen, the general counsel of ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, told the Times. A key partner of TikTok is the U.S. computing giant Oracle, which has its headquarters in Austin, Texas, where TikTok may choose to house the data of its U.S. users. The code name “Project Texas” became public last year.

☆ Racial Preferences and the Fainthearted Supreme Court
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-14 | by ( John B. Daukas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Supreme Court is revisiting the issue of racial preferences in higher education. The last time it did so, in 2016, it upheld them by a 4-3 vote. All three dissenters are still on the court, along with three new conservative colleagues. In this term’s cases, involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Students for Fair Admissions asks the justices to hold that racial preferences violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, when practiced by public institutions, the 14th Amendment. The common expectation is that they will do so and definitively overturn 45 years of precedent permitting colleges and universities to discriminate in the interest of achieving “the educational benefits of a diverse student body.”

The U.S. teen birth rate hit a record low in 2019, the NCHS report shows, with fewer than 1.7 births per 100 teen girls ages 15 to 19. The overall fertility rate in the U.S. declined from 2015 to 2020, additional NCHS data shows, reaching a low of fewer than 6 births per 100 women ages 15 to 44. Guzzo said birth rates never fully recovered after the Great Recession, likely due to factors such as student loan debt, high housing prices and a shortage of full-time jobs. Fertility rates vary by region, though: States in the central U.S. have higher rates than in other parts of the country. "It could be that the overturning of Roe v. Wade will act against the continued decline in birth rate," he said.

Jan 10 (Reuters) - A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses six state-run medical schools in Texas of violating federal anti-discrimination laws by giving preferences to female and non-Asian minority applicants. The University of Texas and Texas Tech University, which operate the schools named in the new lawsuit, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. According to the lawsuit, Stewart in 2021 obtained enrollment data for the six schools after he was denied admission. Stewart said in the complaint that the data showed that the schools gave preferences to female and non-Asian minority applicants. Stewart accused the schools of violating federal laws prohibiting race and sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs.

☆ Allegation Against U.S. Men’s Soccer Coach Came From Mother of Benched Star
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Joshua Robinson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A 31-year-old abuse allegation against U.S. men’s national team coach Gregg Berhalter was made by Danielle Reyna, the mother of U.S. men’s soccer star Gio Reyna, after she and Gio’s father, Claudio, took issue with Berhalter’s public description of benching their son during the Qatar World Cup. Claudio and Danielle Reyna confirmed in separate statements on Wednesday that they had brought the allegation to the attention of U.S. Soccer, the sport’s national governing body. The allegations represent a confrontation between two families that had been friends for decades, dating back to the days when three of them were students at the University of North Carolina. News of the Reynas’ involvement was first reported by ESPN.

☆ How Gen Z Is Rewriting the Job Rulebook on 'Résumé Gaps', Career Breaks
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( Eve Upton-Clark | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Most people are familiar with the scourge of the résumé gap. Young entrants to the workforce are leading a new conversation about the workplace, and the long-scorned résumé gap is no exception. Instead of viewing it as a negative, many Gen Zers are arguing that career breaks are positive and forcing employers to reconsider their preconceived notions about the résumé gap. The pesky résumé gapWhile job candidates have papered over résumé gaps for years, taking a break during the long march of a career is not uncommon. For those looking at working well into their 70s, a career gap, or two, simply makes sense.

☆ The Biggest Debates and Opinions in 2022 - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +30 min

Opinion The 22 Debates That Made Us Rage, Roll Our Eyes, and Change Our Minds in 2022Debating is what we do here at Times Opinion. To many, she was an icon: She ruled for 70 years, presided over the transition from empire to commonwealth and served as a living link to the generation that won World War II. (Though Ben Bernanke, a former Fed chairman himself, wrote in The Times that that wasn’t going to happen.) The United States and its European allies poured weapons and aid into Ukraine, but how was this going to end? As 2022 draws to a close, the fighting continues and peace talks look as distant as ever — which probably means that the debates will continue.

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