Of the 22 million Americans with master’s degrees or higher in 2010, about 360,000 were receiving some kind of public assistance, according to the latest Current Population Survey released by the U.S. Census Bureau in March 2011. In 2010, a total of 44 million people nationally received food stamps or some other form of public aid, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

People who don’t finish college are more likely to receive food stamps than are those who go to graduate school. The rolls of people on public assistance are dominated by people with less education. Nevertheless, the percentage of graduate-degree holders who receive food stamps or some other aid more than doubled between 2007 and 2010.

During that three-year period, the number of people with master’s degrees who received food stamps and other aid climbed from 101,682 to 293,029, and the number of people with Ph.D.’s who received assistance rose from 9,776 to 33,655, according to tabulations of microdata done by Austin Nichols, a senior researcher with the Urban Institute. He drew on figures from the 2008 and 2011 Current Population Surveys done by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

Read More | “The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps” | Stacey Patton | ᔥThe Chronicle of Higher Ed

The baseball team from Mesa Preparatory Academy made it all the way to the finals of the Arizona Charter Athletic Association’s tournament, where the Monsoons — and how cool is that, by the way? — were scheduled to meet Our Lady of Sorrows, a Catholic charter school from Phoenix that is run by the Society of St. Pius X, about which much, much more anon. As it happens, the Monsoons have a freshperson second baseperson named Paige Sultzbach, who is slick with the glove around the bag and who is also a female person. (Just for the record, Mesa’s archery team is coed as well.) Paige was a softball player in junior high, but, because Mesa doesn’t offer a girls’ softball team, she tried out, and made, the boys’ varsity baseball team, which is a formidable accomplishment for a 15-year-old. Her coaches and male teammates supported her, and good on them for doing that, too. This is the kind of story that makes celebrating the anniversary of Title IX worthwhile. Except that her opponents in the title game disagree, and they’ve dragged Jesus in as an accessory before the fact.

Despite the fact — or, the cynical heart would murmur, because of the fact — that Mesa and Ms. Sultzbach whacked them around twice this season, including an 11-3 pasting back on April 26, in their own ballpark, Our Lady of Sorrows forfeited the championship game rather than play against Paige Sultzbach, ace keystone-sacker and female person.

Read More | “And a Girl Shall Terrify Them” | Charles P. Pierce | ᔥGrantland

A storm of a girl, to borrow the Courtney Love phrase, she seldom pauses for breath as she spits out the words: “When people are naturally sexy or sexy in a beautiful way like Marilyn Monroe or Angelina Jolie that’s fine. I love those women. But I hate the idea of women being objectified and playing along.

“I hate those magazine covers where the woman is just trying too hard. It looks so vulgar and trashy. I don’t know why – and it’s not because I’m jealous – but it makes me so mad. And here comes the girlie voice: ‘Look at me: I’ma housewife slash little girl slash submissive slut.’ It makes me crazy. I just want to grab them by the hair and hit their heads off the wall. I want to punch them.” She laughs – an infectious, conspiratorial laugh that would reduce even the dumbest such sexy hyphenate en giggling hysterics.

Plus ça change. This is the same Julie Delpy, who, during a 1990 screen test for The Double Life of Veronique was asked by Krzysztof Kieslowski to do something sexy on camera. So she pulled her ears and stuck out her tongue.

Read More | “‘I hate the idea of sexiness’” | ᔥThe Irish Times

But in a country where ethnic identity, linguistic nationalism and patriotic fervor have grown stronger since ethnic violence in 2010, the question of relocation is easily politicized, and Kyrgyz-language media coverage of the diaspora in Afghanistan is emotionally charged.

Kyrgyz Butagy’s own promotional video appeals to such heightened sentiments, bringing attention to the poor command of the Kyrgyz language among some children in Little Pamir, where a single school teaches students in Dari. “If a people lose their language, they will lose their nation,” the video cautions.

While life for the Afghan Kyrgyz remains harsh, arguments for relocating the two groups – with or without a plan for their integration – will continue to be compelling. The authors of Kyrgyz Butagy’s promotional brochure quote a tearful plea to the Kyrgyz people from Urkiya, a Little Pamir Kyrgyz woman: “We are dying out here, swallowing dust and seeing nothing but our yaks. Please take us from here,” she said.

Read More | “Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyz Community in Afghanistan Looking for a Way Out” | ᔥEurasianet |  ↬@bintbattuta

Kinkade’s art also went beyond galleries through the “Thomas Kinkade lifestyle brand”. This wasn’t just the usual art gallery giftshop schlock: Kinkade sealed a tie-in with La-Z-Boy furniture (home of the big butt recliner) for a Kinkade-inspired range of furniture. But arguably his only great artwork was “The Village, a Thomas Kinkade Community”, unveiled in 2001. A 101-home development in Vallejo, outside San Francisco, operating under the slogan: “Calm, not chaos. Peace, not pressure,” the village offers four house designs, each named after one of Kinkade’s daughters. Plans for further housing developments, alas, fell foul of the housing crisis.

In the years before his death, Kinkade’s business and his life took a battering. There were allegations of malpractice, and his company declared bankruptcy, unable to pay its creditors following a series of court judgments ordering him to pay $860,000 for defrauding the owners of two failed franchises.

Following his separation from his wife and spiralling alcoholism, Kinkade’s behaviour became erratic: he allegedly caused a scene at a Siegfried & Roy show in Las Vegas by repeatedly shouting “Codpiece!” at the ageing illusionists. He also engaged in what he termed “ritual territory marking” at a California Disneyland hotel, urinating on a Winnie the Pooh figure.

Read More | “Thomas Kinkade: the secret life and strange death of art’s king of twee” | Dan Glaister | ᔥThe Guardian