Tons of Tuesday Links

* “The Great Stratification” at CHE essentially argues that academia turn into the skid and establish an official multiple-tier levels of instruction, like the hierarchy of care that exists in medicine. I think this misunderstands the nature of medicine; it’s not that medicine has somehow escaped the logic of deprofessionalization so much as it’s simply the last “good career” to do so. Medicine is only starting to see the flexiblization that has already destroyed everybody else.

* Most History Ph.D.’s Have Jobs, in Academe and Other Solid Occupations. Lots of hand-waving and dedifferentiation here.

* Meritocracy! Well-Off Children Are Six Times More Likely To Attend Elite Colleges.

* CFP: Feats of Clay: Disability and Graphic Narrative.

* Attacks on Obama over the rough rollout of the ACA hit the president where it hurts: his attempt to replace politics with expert management.

* Los Angeles public schools has a billion dollars for iPads but not teachers, custodians, or librarians.

* Fast Food Strikes Will Hit 100 Cities On Thursday.

* On teaching outside your field: The Courage to be Ignorant.

* More Kotsko! The solution to unemployment isn’t better-trained workers: Or, Systemic problems have systemic solutions

* Dare to get the federal government off weed.

* Exploited laborers of the liberal media.

* All that compiles is not gold.

* A Graduate Student Left to ‘Die on the Vine’ Finally Gets Her Day in Court.

* Shimizu, a Japanese architectural and engineering firm, has a solution for the climate crisis: Simply build a band of solar panels 400 kilometers (249 miles) wide (pdf) running all the way around the Moon’s 11,000-kilometer (6,835 mile) equator and beam the carbon-free energy back to Earth in the form of microwaves, which are converted into electricity at ground stations.

* Now Jeff Bezos wants his own robot army. But don’t believe the hype!

Bezos’ neat trick has knocked several real stories about Amazon out of the way. Last week’s Panorama investigation into Amazon’s working and hiring practices, suggesting that the site’s employees had an increased risk of mental illness, is the latest in a long line of pieces about the company’s working conditions – zero-hour contracts, short breaks, and employees’ every move tracked by internal systems. Amazon’s drone debacle also moved discussion of its tax bill – another long-running controversy, sparked by the Guardian’s revelation last year that the company had UK sales of £7bn but paid no UK corporation tax – to the margins. The technology giants – Amazon, Google, Microsoft et al – have have huge direct reach to audiences and customers, the money to hire swarms of PR and communications staff, and a technology press overwhelmingly happy to incredulously print almost every word, rather than to engage in the much harder task of actually holding them to account.

Missed delivery notes of the future. My week as an Amazon insider. A Cyber Monday paean to the unsung hero of consumer capitalism: The Shipping Container.

* Harlan Ellison releases his never-produced 1966 Batman episode pitch.

* A Map of the United States’ Mythical Lake Monsters.

* The bonfire of papers at the end of Empire.

* Dozens of commuters missed connections Sunday night when Delta Airlines kicked them off their Gainesville-to-Atlanta flight to accommodate the University of Florida men’s hoops team.

* How (one guy at) Gawker manipulates you.

* The stalker economy.

* Scott Walker’s War on Christmas.

* Writers hate the very idea of symbolism.

* What Steven Moffat Doesn’t Understand About Grief, and Why It’s Killing Doctor Who.

* Colleges are teaching economics backwards.

* Hunting witches at UNC.

* How to be a feminist (according to stock photography).

* To boost concern for the environment, emphasize a long future, not impending doom. Meanwhile, impending doom: Shocking report reveals that 21,286 animal species are under threat of extinction.

* And paging Margaret Atwood: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?