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Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Leti. Today’s show is a fundraising show, so, with apologies, we can’t take on-air phone calls,

Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

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For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike, just before the show. (Dec. 7, 2015)

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: 

“This too shall pass” ~ (Persian: این نیز بگذرد‎, translit. īn nīz bogzarad, Hebrew: גַּם זֶה יַעֲבֹר‏‎, translit. gam zeh yaʻavor, Turkish: bu da geçer ya hu) is an adage reflecting on the temporary nature, or ephemerality, of the human condition. The general sentiment is often expressed in wisdom literature throughout history and across cultures, although the specific phrase seems to have originated in the writings of the medieval Persian Sufi poets. It is known in the Western world primarily due to a 19th century retelling of Persian fable by the English poet Edward FitzGerald. It was also notably employed in a speech by Abraham Lincoln before he became the sixteenth President of the United States. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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_________________________________________________________________

Make sure you are registered to vote!

1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965) Dr. Diane Trautman, Harris County Clerk
   1. In Texas, but outside Harris County? VoteTexas.gov
      1. You may vote early by-mail if
      2. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
      3. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
      4. Sick or disabled;
      5. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
      6. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
      7. Make sure you are registered:
   2. Sample Ballots are now available!
   3. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. (a) A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
   4. Outside Texas? Try Vote.org.
   5. Make it a point to listen to my Interview with Harris County Clerk Dr. Dianne Trautman
2. Ahead Of 2020, Microsoft Unveils Tool To Allow Voters To Track Their Ballots, by Miles Parks |NPR.org | May 6, 201911:30 AM ET
   1. From checking in at a polling place on a tablet, to registering to vote by smartphone, to using an electronic voting machine to cast a ballot, computers have become an increasingly common part of voting in America.
   2. But the underlying technology behind some of those processes is often a black box. Private companies, not state or local governments develop and maintain most of the software and hardware that keeps democracy chugging along. That’s kept journalists, academics, and even lawmakers from speaking with certainty about election security.
   3. In an effort to improve confidence in elections, Microsoft announced Monday that it is releasing an open-source software development kit called ElectionGuard that will use encryption techniques to let voters know when their vote is counted. It will also allow election officials and third-parties verify election results to make sure there was no interference with the results.
   4. “It’s very much like the cybersecurity version of a tamper-proof bottle,” said Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of customer security and trust, in an interview with NPR. “Tamper-proof bottles don’t prevent any hack of the contents of the bottle but it makes it makes it harder, and it definitely reveals when the tampering has occurred.” …
3. Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime, By Isaac Stanley-Becker | The Washington Post | May 6, 2019
   1. … Donald Trump on Sunday seemed to warm to the idea of reparations – for himself, and in the form of an unconstitutional, two-year addition to his first term in the White House.
   2. He retweeted a proposal offered by Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, that he be granted another two years in office as recompense for time lost to the Russia investigation. Half of his first term, Trump wrote in a Twitter dispatch of his own, had been “stolen.”
   3. The argument was perhaps tongue-in-cheek, leading some legal experts to dismiss the comments as bravado. Others, however, saw the president’s apparent longing to overstay his four-year term in office as an assault on the rule of law. That it was raised playfully, they said, was small comfort, especially given Trump’s playful refusal, in the fall of 2016, to say that he would accept the outcome of an election that polling suggested he was destined to lose.
   4. “I will keep you in suspense,” he said at the time.
4. US deploying carrier and bomber task force in response to ‘troubling’ Iran actions, By Kate Sullivan and Barbara Starr, | CNN | Updated 10:33 PM ET, Sun May 5, 2019
   1. The US is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the US Central Command region in the Middle East in response to “troubling” warnings from Iran, the White House announced Sunday.
   2. A US official with direct knowledge of the situation tells CNN the threats were against both US maritime and land-based forces in the Middle East. The deployments are aimed specifically at deterring any Iranian military actions, the official added.
   3. LAST WEEK: Two U.S. Navy warships sail through strategic Taiwan Strait as Trump sends message to China amid trade war and regional tensions, By Reuters | CO.UK | Published: 20:27 EDT, 28 April 2019 | Updated: 23:51 EDT, 28 April 2019
      1. U.S. military says two Navy warships were sent through Taiwan Strait on Sunday 
      2. William P. Lawrence and Stethem are the two destroyers sent by the Navy
      3. Taiwan Strait separates mainland China from U.S.-backed Taiwan 
      4. Pentagon has been increasing frequency of movement through key waterway 
      5. Move comes amid growing tensions between China and Taiwan 
      6. China views Taiwan as renegade province while Taiwan’s status is uncertain 
5. Lords will have to reveal links to Russian and Chinese firms in crackdown on tide of ‘red money’ swirling through Parliament and City, By Rory Tingle For Mailonline | co.uk | Published: 04:18 EDT, 28 April 2019 | Updated: 28 April 2019
   1. [Security Minister] Ben Wallace said lack of complete transparency was ‘weak point’ at Westminster 
   2. Peers do not have to declare how much money they earn from foreign activities 
   3. Mr Wallace said strong media helped protect the UK but more work was needed 
6. Trump now says parents must vaccinate children in face of measles outbreak, By Maegan Vazquez, | CNN | Updated 11:42 AM ET, Fri April 26, 2019
   1. “President Donald Trump weighed in on the recent measles outbreak in the United States, appearing to do an about-face on his previous claims linking child vaccinations to autism.
   2. [Trump told CNN’s Joe Johns on Friday when asked what his message is for parents:]. “They have to get the shots. The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now. They have to get their shots,” …
   3. “Trump first weighed in on the issue on Twitter in 2012.
   4. “Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism,” he claimed.
   5. He made a similar argument in 2014, tweeting, “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!”
   6. Vaccination skeptics have been associated with Trump’s presidential campaign and his administration. …
   7. … During the presidential transition in 2017, Trump met with Robert Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic. Kennedy told reporters that Trump asked him to lead a commission on “vaccination safety and scientific integrity.” However, Trump’s team denied that they appointed Kennedy to lead the charge. By February 2017, Kennedy told press that talks had dissipated.
7. Measles in Alabama: Most adults born after 1957 don’t need vaccine booster, health officials say, By Leada Gore, lgore@al.com | AL.com | Updated May 4, 8:39 AM; Posted May 4, 8:13 AM
   1. Adults born on or after 1957 are likely protected from the measles even if they only received one dose of the vaccine, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.
   2. ADPH provided clarification Friday from the Centers for Disease Control related to adult vaccinations. According to the CDC, one dose of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is “sufficient” protection for most U.S. adults born on or after 1957. Adults are also considered safe from the highly contagious virus if they were born before 1957 or have laboratory confirmation of immunity or the disease.
   3. The clarification comes as Alabama has its first case of measles: … There are currently more than 30 open measles investigations in the state, according to the ADPH.
   4. Who needs a booster? Only adults who are considered at high risk need two doses of MMR, each dose separated by at least 28 days. People at high risk are those who are students at post-high school educational institutions; are healthcare personnel; or are international travelers.
   5. Current CDC recommendations, issued in 1989, call for two doses of the MMR vaccine – the first given when a child is between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years. Two doses of the vaccine provides protection against the disease 97 percent of the time, the CDC said. If the remaining 3 percent contract measles, they are likely to have a milder illness and are less likely to spread the disease to other people.
   6. Prior to the double-dose method, a single-dose of the vaccine was considered adequate and that’s what was given to those born between 1963 and 1989. Those born prior to 1963 didn’t receive a vaccine but health officials said they likely were exposed or had the measles at some point and have natural immunity. One dose of vaccine is about 93 percent effective against the highly contagious virus.
   7. Before the measles vaccination program started in 1963, an estimated 3 to 4 million people got measles each year in the U.S. Of these, approximately 500,000 cases were reported each year to CDC; of these, 400 to 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 1,000 developed encephalitis, or brain swelling, from measles.
8. Measles quarantine of Scientology ship started with one infected crew member, doctor says – Only those on the Freewinds ship who already have been vaccinated or have previously had measles will be free to leave the vessel in Curacao, officials said. By Associated Press and Reuters | May 4, 2019, 1:14 PM CDT / Updated May 4, 2019, 4:46 PM CDT
   1. WILLEMSTAD, Curacao — Authorities in Curacao on Saturday boarded a ship that arrived under quarantine to start vaccinating people to prevent a measles outbreak.
   2. “We’re not that afraid about the disease itself,” said Curacao epidemiologist Dr. Izzy Gerstenbluth. “It’s about doing what we can do to try to contain the spread of disease, that’s all.”
   3. Health officials said only those who already have been vaccinated or have previously had measles will be free to leave the 440-foot ship Freewinds, which belongs to the Church of Scientology.
   4. Gerstenbluth told The Associated Press that a small team is assessing more than 300 people aboard the ship, and that the process might take more than a day.
   5. “We will go on board and do our job,” he said, adding that authorities have an international obligation to avoid spreading the disease. “If we allow that to happen, measles spreads in places where the risk of severe complications is much bigger, especially when we’re talking about poor countries where people have a lower level of resistance.” …
9. Large Asteroid on Near Miss Course for Earth on a Friday the 13th in 2029, Impact Exercise Conducted – Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day in Western superstition. By Gadgets 360 Staff | Updated: 4 May 2019 17:31 IST
   2. NASA this week revealed that scientists are planning a flyby study of the large 340-metre wide 99942 Apophis asteroid that will cruise past Earth in 2029, narrowly missing impact. Initial calculations had predicted a 2.97percent chance of impact, the space agency said, clarifying that later observations had ruled out the possibility. …
   3. … It will pass within 31,000km (~19,300 miles) of the Earth’s surface, which is less distance than some of our satellites. NASA in its press release notes that it’s “rare for an asteroid of this size to pass by the Earth so close.” As we mentioned, it created a bit of stir when initial calculations after its first observation in 2004 had indicated a chance of impact. A 2036 impact was then projected, but over the years this too has been effectively ruled out.
   4. NASA says Apophis will first become visible to the naked eye … . Its closest approach, will be just before 6pm EDT (3:30am IST), over the Atlantic Ocean. At that point, it will be moving at speed that will see it cross the Atlantic ocean in an hour.
10. An Unexpected Current That’s Remaking American Politics – New forms of electricity storage are making the grid more renewable and more reliable —and may change the politics of climate change. By MICHAEL GRUNWALD | COM | April 29, 2019
    1. … [Trump lied] that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer, but his warning that home values instantly plunge 75 percent when a windmill is built nearby was equally false. He also claimed wind power is inordinately expensive, when in fact in much of America it is now the cheapest source of electricity. …
    2. … [What is] actually … a serious challenge for the clean energy revolution: the “intermittency” of wind and solar electricity. As more renewable power replaces Trump’s preferred coal plants, and more states aim to eliminate fossil fuels from their electric grids, utilities are grappling with how to make sure they can ensure uninterrupted service when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
    3. … another technology revolution is underway that could help solve that problem: an electricity storage boom. The cost of lithium-ion batteries has plunged 85 percent in a decade, and 30 percent in just the past year, so utilities across the U.S. have started attaching containers full of them to the grid—and they’re planning to install far more of them in the coming years. Electricity has always been the toughest commodity to manage, because unlike water, grain, fuel or steel, it has been largely impossible to store for later use. But that is changing fast, and even though the dramatic growth of batteries on the grid will be invisible to most Americans, it has the potential to transform how we produce and consume power, creating more flexible and resilient electricity systems with less waste, lower costs and fewer emissions.
    4. “This will be like the change from analog to digital, or landlines to cell phones,” says Advanced Microgrid Systems CEO Susan Kennedy, whose firm’s software helps utilities optimize their power choices every instant of every day. “The energy industry will never be the same.”
    5. Electricity storage will reshape the grid in many ways, but the most important is its potential to accelerate the already explosive growth of renewable energy—and that will have political implications.
    6. … Now grid storage is poised to grow at a faster pace than the electric cars that made it cost-effective, and even faster than the renewables it will help to accommodate on the grid. Last year, Florida Power & Light completed a 10-megawatt grid battery hailed as the largest of its kind in the world; last month, FPL announced a battery project more than 40 times larger. Republican regulators in Arizona recently approved more than twice as much power storage in their state as the entire country installed last year; Hawaii is building more than three times as much, and California nearly five times as much. …
    7. Now grid storage is poised to grow at a faster pace than the electric cars that made it cost-effective, and even faster than the renewables it will help to accommodate on the grid. Last year, Florida Power & Light completed a 10-megawatt grid battery hailed as the largest of its kind in the world; last month, FPL announced a battery project more than 40 times larger. Republican regulators in Arizona recently approved more than twice as much power storage in their state as the entire country installed last year; Hawaii is building more than three times as much, and California nearly five times as much. …
11. The Racial Bias Built Into Photography – Sarah Lewis explores the relationship between racism and the camera. By Sarah Lewis | com | April 25, 2019
    1. “Can a photographic lens condition racial behavior? …”
    2. “[Sarah Lewis’s] work looks at how the right to be recognized justly in a democracy as been tied to the impact of images and representation in the public realm. It examines how the construction of public pictures limits and enlarges our notion of who counts in American society. …”
    3. “… It can be hard to technically light brown skin against light colors. Yet, instead of seeking a solution, the technician had decided that [Sarah’s] body was somehow unsuitable for the stage.
    4. “… By categorizing light skin as the norm and other skin tones as needing special corrective care, photography has altered how we interact with each other without us realizing it.”
    5. “Photography is not just a system of calibrating light, but a technology of subjective decisions. Light skin became the chemical baseline for film technology, fulfilling the needs of its target dominant market. For example, developing color-film technology initially required what was called a Shirley card. When you sent off your film to get developed, lab technicians would use the image of a white woman with brown hair named Shirley as the measuring stick against which they calibrated the colors. Quality control meant ensuring that Shirley’s face looked good. It has translated into the color-balancing of digital technology. In the mid-1990s, Kodak created a multiracial Shirley Card with three women, one black, one white, and one Asian, and later included a Latina model, in an attempt intended to help camera operators calibrate skin tones. These were not adopted by everyone since they coincided with the rise of digital photography. The result was film emulsion technology that still carried over the social bias of earlier photographic conventions.”
    6. “It took complaints from corporate furniture and chocolate manufacturers in the 1960s and 1970s for Kodak to start to fix color photography’s bias. Earl Kage, Kodak’s former manager of research and the head of Color Photo Studios, received complaints during this time from chocolate companies saying that they “weren’t getting the right brown tones on the chocolates” in the photographs. Furniture companies also were not getting enough variation between the different color woods in their advertisements. Concordia University professor Lorna Roth’s research shows that Kage had also received complaints before from parents about the quality of graduation photographs — the color contrast made it nearly impossible to capture a diverse group — but it was the chocolate and furniture companies that forced Kodak’s hand. Kage admitted, “It was never black flesh that was addressed as a serious problem at the time.””
12. An Unexpected Current That’s Remaking American Politics – New forms of electricity storage are making the grid more renewable and more reliable—and may change the politics of climate change. By MICHAEL GRUNWALD | POLITICO.COM | April 29, 2019
    1. … another technology revolution is underway that could help solve that problem: an electricity storage boom. The cost of lithium-ion batteries has plunged 85 percent in a decade, and 30 percent in just the past year, so utilities across the U.S. have started attaching containers full of them to the grid—and they’re planning to install far more of them in the coming years. Electricity has always been the toughest commodity to manage, because unlike water, grain, fuel or steel, it has been largely impossible to store for later use. But that is changing fast, and even though the dramatic growth of batteries on the grid will be invisible to most Americans, it has the potential to transform how we produce and consume power, creating more flexible and resilient electricity systems with less waste, lower costs and fewer emissions.
    2. “This will be like the change from analog to digital, or landlines to cell phones,” says Advanced Microgrid Systems CEO Susan Kennedy, whose firm’s software helps utilities optimize their power choices every instant of every day. “The energy industry will never be the same.”
    3. Electricity storage will reshape the grid in many ways, but the most important is its potential to accelerate the already explosive growth of renewable energy—and that will have political implications. …
    4. … Now grid storage is poised to grow at a faster pace than the electric cars that made it cost-effective, and even faster than the renewables it will help to accommodate on the grid. Last year, Florida Power & Light completed a 10-megawatt grid battery hailed as the largest of its kind in the world; last month, FPL announced a battery project more than 40 times larger. Republican regulators in Arizona recently approved more than twice as much power storage in their state as the entire country installed last year; Hawaii is building more than three times as much, and California nearly five times as much. …
13. Commentary: The 45th president of the U.S. is poisoning his nation, By Michael Orton | Special to The [SALT LAKE CITY] Tribune | APR-14-2019
14. Why ‘worthless’ humanities degrees may set you up for life, By Amanda Ruggeri | @BBC_Capital | 2 April 2019
    1. … Today, a degree is all but a necessity for the job market, one that more than halves your chances of being unemployed. Still, that alone is no guarantee of a job – and yet we’re paying more and more for one. In the US, room, board and tuition at a private university costs an average of $48,510 a year …
    2. … in the US, for example, a bachelor’s degree holder earns $461 more each week than someone who never attended a university. …
    3. … our assumptions about the market value of certain degrees – and the “worthlessness” of others – might be off. At best, that could be making some students unnecessarily stressed. At worst? Pushing people onto paths that set them up for less fulfilling lives. It also perpetuates the stereotype of liberal arts graduates, in particular, as an elite caste – something that can discourage underprivileged students, and anyone else who needs an immediate return on their university investment …
    4. … When [George Anders] was a technology reporter for Forbes from 2012 to 2016, he says Silicon Valley “was consumed with this idea that there was no education but Stem education”.
    5. But when he talked to hiring managers at the biggest tech companies, he found a different reality. “Uber was picking up psychology majors to deal with unhappy riders and drivers. Opentable was hiring English majors to bring data to restauranteurs to get them excited about what data could do for their restaurants,” he says.
    6. “I realised that the ability to communicate and get along with people, and understand what’s on other people’s minds, and do full-strength critical thinking – all of these things were valued and appreciated by everyone as important job skills, except the media.” This realisation led him to write his appropriately-titled book You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a “Useless” Liberal Arts Education.
    7. … LinkedIn’s research on the most sought-after job skills by employers for 2019 found that the three most-wanted “soft skills” were creativity, persuasion and collaboration, while one of the five top “hard skills” was people management. A full 56% of UK employers surveyed said their staff lacked essential teamwork skills and 46% thought it was a problem that their employees struggled with handling feelings, whether theirs or others’. It’s not just UK employers: one 2017 study found that the fastest-growing jobs in the US in the last 30 years have almost all specifically required a high level of social skills.
    8. …it goes without saying that you can be an excellent communicator and critical thinker without a liberal arts degree. And any good university education, not just one in English or psychology, should sharpen these abilities further. “Any degree will give you very important generic skills like being able to write, being able to present an argument, research, problem-solve, teamwork, becoming familiar with technology,” says Dublin-based educational consultant and career coach Anne Mangan.
    9. But few courses of study are quite as heavy on reading, writing, speaking and critical thinking as the liberal arts, in particular the humanities – whether that’s by debating other students in a seminar, writing a thesis paper or analysing poetry.
    10. “Empathy is usually the biggest skill. That doesn’t just mean feeling sorry for people with problems. It means an ability to understand the needs and wants of a diverse group of people” – [George Anders]
    11. … humanities graduates go on to a variety of fields. The biggest group of US humanities graduates, 15%, go on to management positions. That’s followed by 14% who are in in office and administrative positions, 13% who are in sales and another 12% who are in education, mostly teaching. Another 10% are in business and finance. …
    12. … Glassdoor’s 2019 research found that eight of the top 10 best jobs in the UK were managerial positions – people-oriented roles that require communication skills and emotional intelligence. (It defined “best” by combining earning potential, overall job satisfaction rating and number of job openings.) And many of them were outside Stem-based industries. The third best job was marketing manager; fourth, product manager; fifth, sales manager. An engineering role doesn’t appear on the list until the 18th slot – below positions in communications, HR and project management.
    13. One recent study of 1,700 people from 30 countries, meanwhile, found that the majority of those in leadership positions had either a social sciences or humanities degree. That was especially true of leaders under 45 years of age; leaders over 45 were more likely to have studied Stem. …
    14. … This isn’t to say that a liberal arts degree is the easy road. “A lot of the people I talked to were five or 10 years into their career, and there was a sense that the first year was bumpy, and it took a while to find their footing,” Anders says. “But as things played out, it did tend to work.”
    15. For some graduates, the initial challenge was not knowing what they wanted to do with their lives. For others, it was not having acquired as many technical skills with their degree as, say, their IT trainee peers and having to play catch-up after.  …
    16. Do what you love: This is a big part of why there is one major takeaway, says Mangan. Whatever a student pursues in university, it must be something that they aren’t just good at, but they really enjoy.
    17. “In most areas that I can see, the employer just wants to know that you’ve been to college and you’ve done well. That’s why I think doing something that really interests you is essential – because that’s when you’re going to do well,” she says.
    18. No matter what, making a degree or career path decision based on average salaries isn’t a good move. “Financial success is not a good reason. It tends to be a very poor reason,” Mangan says. “Be successful at something and money will follow, as opposed to the other way around. Focus on doing the stuff that you love that you’ll be so enthusiastic about, people will want to give you a job. Then go and develop within that job.” …
15. The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News – The current system for delivering news online is broken. Readers and journalists will need to work together to find a new one. By Michael Luo | NEWYORKER.COM | April 10, 2019
16. Commentary: The 45th president of the U.S. is poisoning his nation, By Michael Orton | Special to The [SALT LAKE CITY] Tribune | APR-14-2019
17. Why ‘worthless’ humanities degrees may set you up for life, By Amanda Ruggeri | @BBC_Capital | 2 April 2019
    1. … Today, a degree is all but a necessity for the job market, one that more than halves your chances of being unemployed. Still, that alone is no guarantee of a job – and yet we’re paying more and more for one. In the US, room, board and tuition at a private university costs an average of $48,510 a year …
    2. … in the US, for example, a bachelor’s degree holder earns $461 more each week than someone who never attended a university. …
    3. … our assumptions about the market value of certain degrees – and the “worthlessness” of others – might be off. At best, that could be making some students unnecessarily stressed. At worst? Pushing people onto paths that set them up for less fulfilling lives. It also perpetuates the stereotype of liberal arts graduates, in particular, as an elite caste – something that can discourage underprivileged students, and anyone else who needs an immediate return on their university investment …
    4. … When [George Anders] was a technology reporter for Forbes from 2012 to 2016, he says Silicon Valley “was consumed with this idea that there was no education but Stem education”.
    5. But when he talked to hiring managers at the biggest tech companies, he found a different reality. “Uber was picking up psychology majors to deal with unhappy riders and drivers. Opentable was hiring English majors to bring data to restauranteurs to get them excited about what data could do for their restaurants,” he says.
    6. “I realised that the ability to communicate and get along with people, and understand what’s on other people’s minds, and do full-strength critical thinking – all of these things were valued and appreciated by everyone as important job skills, except the media.” This realisation led him to write his appropriately-titled book You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a “Useless” Liberal Arts Education.
    7. … LinkedIn’s research on the most sought-after job skills by employers for 2019 found that the three most-wanted “soft skills” were creativity, persuasion and collaboration, while one of the five top “hard skills” was people management. A full 56% of UK employers surveyed said their staff lacked essential teamwork skills and 46% thought it was a problem that their employees struggled with handling feelings, whether theirs or others’. It’s not just UK employers: one 2017 study found that the fastest-growing jobs in the US in the last 30 years have almost all specifically required a high level of social skills.
    8. …it goes without saying that you can be an excellent communicator and critical thinker without a liberal arts degree. And any good university education, not just one in English or psychology, should sharpen these abilities further. “Any degree will give you very important generic skills like being able to write, being able to present an argument, research, problem-solve, teamwork, becoming familiar with technology,” says Dublin-based educational consultant and career coach Anne Mangan.
    9. But few courses of study are quite as heavy on reading, writing, speaking and critical thinking as the liberal arts, in particular the humanities – whether that’s by debating other students in a seminar, writing a thesis paper or analysing poetry.
    10. “Empathy is usually the biggest skill. That doesn’t just mean feeling sorry for people with problems. It means an ability to understand the needs and wants of a diverse group of people” – [George Anders]
    11. … humanities graduates go on to a variety of fields. The biggest group of US humanities graduates, 15%, go on to management positions. That’s followed by 14% who are in in office and administrative positions, 13% who are in sales and another 12% who are in education, mostly teaching. Another 10% are in business and finance. …
    12. … Glassdoor’s 2019 research found that eight of the top 10 best jobs in the UK were managerial positions – people-oriented roles that require communication skills and emotional intelligence. (It defined “best” by combining earning potential, overall job satisfaction rating and number of job openings.) And many of them were outside Stem-based industries. The third best job was marketing manager; fourth, product manager; fifth, sales manager. An engineering role doesn’t appear on the list until the 18th slot – below positions in communications, HR and project management.
    13. One recent study of 1,700 people from 30 countries, meanwhile, found that the majority of those in leadership positions had either a social sciences or humanities degree. That was especially true of leaders under 45 years of age; leaders over 45 were more likely to have studied Stem. …
    14. … This isn’t to say that a liberal arts degree is the easy road. “A lot of the people I talked to were five or 10 years into their career, and there was a sense that the first year was bumpy, and it took a while to find their footing,” Anders says. “But as things played out, it did tend to work.”
    15. For some graduates, the initial challenge was not knowing what they wanted to do with their lives. For others, it was not having acquired as many technical skills with their degree as, say, their IT trainee peers and having to play catch-up after.  …
    16. Do what you love: This is a big part of why there is one major takeaway, says Mangan. Whatever a student pursues in university, it must be something that they aren’t just good at, but they really enjoy.
    17. “In most areas that I can see, the employer just wants to know that you’ve been to college and you’ve done well. That’s why I think doing something that really interests you is essential – because that’s when you’re going to do well,” she says.
    18. No matter what, making a degree or career path decision based on average salaries isn’t a good move. “Financial success is not a good reason. It tends to be a very poor reason,” Mangan says. “Be successful at something and money will follow, as opposed to the other way around. Focus on doing the stuff that you love that you’ll be so enthusiastic about, people will want to give you a job. Then go and develop within that job.” …

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