Pre-Thanksgiving Weekend Links

Some stories for your reading pleasure:

Living an Upright Life, as a Nun and a Coach - New York Times.  This nun is an assistant coach at the College of St. Scholastica.  They will meet St. John's University in the first round of the Division III playoffs tomorrow.  Good luck to both teams.

Baseball's $325 Million Man is Underpaid - The Atlantic.  Sports owners do make way too much money for doing nothing but being rich.

Happy Valley Could Be Anywhere, And That's The Scariest Part - Deadspin

This Tiny Engine Could Make Leaf Blowers Sound Less Like Jets - Wired.  Cool new rotary engine.

Better Barley Let People Settle Tibetan Plateau - Scientific American.  Beer at altitude will really mess you up.

Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change - New York Times

Inside Apple's Broken Sapphire Factory - Wall Street Journal.  Apple is a whale in the 80/20 world.  I'm not an 80/20 guy.

With Drought the New Normal, Calif. Farmers Find They Have to Change - The Salt

Map of the Agriculture-Dependent Counties In the United States & Future of  Rural Area Economies - Big Picture Agriculture

The Hummingbird Effect: How Galileo Invented Time and Gave Rise to the Modern Tyranny of the Clock - Brain Pickings

How Do You Memorialize a Mob? - Texas Observer.  The Great Hanging of Gainesville, Texas.

The Curious Case of Jesus's Wife - The Atlantic

For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S. - Longreads

Why Weren't Alarm Bells Ringing - NY Review of Books.  I'd go with hubris and a lack of common sense and connection with common people.

Five Ugly Decades of Middle Class Wages - Doug Short

GOP Governors' Meeting Showcases Potential Presidential Candidates - Morning Edition.  It is really a crowd of asshats, but I found this interesting:

In an apparent nod to 2016, the event was billed as the road ahead. It also featured Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, another presidential contender. Jindal talked about his opposition to Obama's immigration order, to Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Common Core educational standards.
The governors on stage mostly shared his views except for one. Ohio governor John Kasich won re-election by a huge 30-point-plus margin. On immigration, Kasich said, he'd consider a path to citizenship. On Common Core, he said, it's working for Ohio and he defended his record of expanding Medicaid coverage.
GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH: I'm running a billion-and-a-half surplus in Ohio. Our credit rating is up. We've created a quarter-of-a-million jobs and we're helping a lot of people. Now, to me that's a pretty good formula for my state.

Kasich is also an asshat, but it is interesting that he's positioning himself against the Republican base.  An interesting strategy.  One that won't work, but interesting nonetheless.

Shale Boom Helps North Dakota Bank Earn Returns Goldman Would Envy - Wall Street Journal. 

Set up in 1919 under a socialist-oriented government that represented farmers frustrated with out-of-state commodity and railroad owners, the bank treads a fine line between the private and public sectors in what today is a solidly Republican state. It traditionally extends credit, or invests directly, in areas other lenders shun, such as rural housing loans.

It is amazing that today's average North Dakotan is as conservative as JP Morgan was back at the turn of the twentieth century.  They are nothing like their progressive great-grandparents who fought the monied interests tooth-and-nail.