(Roughly) Daily

Your correspondent is headed several time zones away, so (Roughly) Daily will be on hiatus until February the 10th or so.  Meantime…

In 2000, the OECD asked 15-year-olds what they wanted to be when they grew up. Some 47% of boys and 53% of girls picked 10 careers, including doctors, teachers, lawyers and business managers.

In 2018, the OECD asked again. Though the nature of work has changed dramatically since the turn of the century, kids’ answers have not: An even larger share of both boys and girls say they want to go into the same 10 professions…

See the breakdown at “The world of work is changing, but the career aspirations of teenagers are not.”

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* Russell Baker

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As we reassess our aspirations, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers premiered at the Old Vic in London.  A satire of academic philosophy– likening it to a less-than-skillful competitive display of gymnastics and juggling– the play is set in an alternative future in which British astronauts have landed on the moon… leading to fears that the landing  would ruin the moon as a poetic trope and result in a collapse of moral values.

Egad!

Michael Hordern as philosopher George Moore (from the playtext cover). Moore is about to loose the arrow and disprove Zeno’s arrow paradox.

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Happy Groundhog Day!

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