Perhaps, perhaps not. But when and where is even more important.

Hailed as a maths prodigy at school, Shields accepted a junior position at Merrill Lynch after studying engineering, economics and management at Oxford University because the trading room floor offered him a thrilling, dynamic environment. He was not alone: of 120 engineers in his year group at university, Shields added, only five went into engineering.

I think we should be much more cautious in attempting to direct young people’s choices beyond providing them with an education. We should feel proud of their independence of mind, remembering that supply side factors will likely win out over central planning. It is the supply side that we need to deal with, not least Putts Law. The same applies to medicine.

This personal story is worth a read for other lessons, too.

‘The men who plundered Europe’: bankers on trial for siphoning €60bn | Business | The Guardian

What do you want?

The government has instructed Health Education England to consult patients and the public on what they need from “21st century” medical graduates

Patients to be asked what they need from doctors | The BMJ

It won’t end well.

The productivity abyss…and how to escape its gravitational pull. Here is an article extolling time-wasting.

To which she has two responses — first, most people overestimate the amount of time they actually work and second, she proposes accepting that your to-do-list will never get done.

Let’s rebrand a bit of time-wasting as healthy living | Financial Times

The fist I agree with. Awhile back I tried time tracking using the Timery app and Toggl. It’s scary. And that is even when you include meetings as work. But the second point, entailing an amnesty on all the things you thought or think you are going to do, conflicts with my sense of original sin. The sun has to rise, just like guilt.

One-third of everyone employed in London, 1.6 million people, work at night.

In 2018, at least 8,855 people slept rough on the streets of London, a 140% increase over the past decade, with similar trends globally.

We need a science of the night

No, not Pasi Salberg, but cognate.

But idealists now have another international beacon of social mobility: long live the Finnish dream, in which a 34-year-old woman who once worked in a shop can become prime minister.

“I am extremely proud of Finland. Here a poor family’s child can educate themselves and achieve their goals in life. A cashier can become even a prime minister,” tweeted Sanna Marin

Meanwhile back in the UK as the FT rightly comments:

..egregious examples of rigging the game endure: on being rejected by the voters, Zac Goldsmith is to be elevated to the House of Lords, from where he will carry on as a minister in the government of Boris Johnson, also an Etonian from a high-profile family.

Looking in envy at Finland’s social mobility pin-up PM | Financial Times

“If biology is difficult, it is because of the bewildering number and variety of things one must hold in one’s head”.
John Maynard Smith (1977).

Leo Szilard recalled, that when he did physics he could lounge in the bath for hours and hours, just thinking. Once he moved into biology things were never the same: he was always having to get out to check some annoying fact. Dermatology is worse, trust me.

Mark Blyth on Goldman

Goldman [Sachs) are smart: they can rip your grandmother’s face off and make her feel good about it.

The Crash of 2008: 10 years on

An article fit for this deceitful day by Nick Laird in the NYRB. UK education doesn’t escape from it either, but the context is Ireland or that British problem.

“I thought, if these bastards are voting Remain, I’m voting Leave.”

As for ‘identity’

An old friend of mine, a Catholic and a fellow poet from Belfast, was in New York City last week and described being told once to “check her privilege.” She had replied that the privilege her identity had given her was a mild form of PTSD. The phrase “identity politics” has a darker resonance in Northern Ireland.

Every evil act I’ve ever seen committed was done in the name of identity

Blood and Brexit | by Nick Laird | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

 Breakfast reading

The Lancet as breakfast reading. Not a medical meeting, just a nice hotel in the Middle East.

Even the human world is queerer than I can imagine

The world is indeed very strange and common sense not much of a guide. Facts, my dear boy, facts…

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