העורך Editor

There is one school of thought that holds that the reason why people with college degrees earn, on average, quite a bit more than those who don’t have them is that college does a lot to augment their “human capital,” giving them the skills and knowledge to go forth into the world and accomplish great things that the poor slobs with mere high school diplomas never could. A rival school of though holds that college really doesn’t do much at all to augment one’s human capital (with some exceptions, such as engineering degrees), but merely acts as a screening device that enables employers to figure out who’s most apt to be trainable and reliable.

The former school produces blathery studies lamenting that we aren’t graduating enough people from college and calling for more subsidies.

The latter school occasionally produces a hard-bitten expose of the college degree mania — such as this one written by Gary North and available here.

ראיתי באיזה ספר שמותר למלא פיו שחוק בפורים, ולא היא.

מ”ב סו”ס תק”ס:

אסור למלאות פיו שחוק, שהשמחה יתירה משכח המצוות. ועיין בט”ז ופרישה, דאפילו בשמחה של מצוה, כגון בחתונה ופורים, לא ימלא פיו שחוק.

ציטוט מינון מגל:

From the start printing was an enterprise monopolised by Church and state in Russia. It had its origin in the administrative measures instituted by Ivan the Terrible after the conquest of Kazan in the middle of the century, being intended as a response to the growth of the artisan and merchant classes and to the urgent need for government censorship of liturgical books. It was an instrument of the policy of centralisation and coercion.

Let alone before giving to everyone on your list.

Rabbi Avi Wiesenfeld quotes Rabbi Elyashiv who made the following ingenious argument:

Since eating on Purim is also a mitzvah, there is no special order of the mitzvos of the day. כפתור ופרח.

I suspect some people (children! I meant children!) misbehave on Purim since they haven’t had a solid meal yet…

For more, follow the references here (I haven’t).