January 2011
39 posts
Consumer Confidence Rises With Income Level →
If you make more than $50,000 — in other words, if you inhabit the top household income quartile in the Conference Board’s monthly studies — you are likely to be really, truly, deeply optimistic. You’ve seen the stock market claw back, and dividends and corporate profits are up. The confidence number for that quartile stands at 74.0.
But if household income is stuck in the $35,000 to $49,000...
“The biggest design decision I’ve made is more of a continuous philosophy: do as...”
– Rands In Repose: Interview: Marco Arment (via Instapaper)
The counter argument here is that you end up hill climbing to local maxima*. Disruptive improvements oftentimes require major changes. Netflix from physical DVDs -> Streaming. Amazon with Kindle. Facebook with Newsfeed.
*This is also a...
“In a remarkable display of protest and challenge by oppressed people against...”
– Haitian Farmers Burn Monsanto ‘Aid’ Seeds (via thetart)
Rafer sez: Go humanity, go.
(via rafer)
Le Nouvelliste en Haiti - Le parti au pouvoir... →
Le parti du pouvoir en Haïti, Inité, a annoncé mercredi avoir officiellement décidé de retirer la candidature de son candidat Jude Célestin à la présidence du pays, indique-t-il dans un communiqué. “Même si nous sommes certains que Jude Célestin a recueilli le nombre de voix nécessaires et qu’il est ainsi admis pour aller au deuxième tour, Inité est d’accord pour le retirer...
“Sometimes I feel like America is just in a holding pattern. We’re basically...”
– That general winding down feeling you’re getting is not an illusion
Disturbing Evidence Of Race Bias In STD Screenings →
According to EurekAlert, researchers found that among sexually active girls and women ages 14-25, black women were 2.5 times more likely to be tested for chlamydia than white women, while Hispanic women were 9.7 times more likely. Women with public health insurance were also significantly more likely to be screened, as were women who had been diagnosed with an STD or been pregnant before...
Gap Between Rich And Poor Named 8th Wonder Of The... →
At a press conference Tuesday, the World Heritage Committee officially recognized the Gap Between Rich and Poor as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” describing the global wealth divide as the “most colossal and enduring of mankind’s creations.” “Of all the epic structures the human race has devised, none is more staggering or imposing than the Gap Between Rich and Poor,” committee chairman Henri...
'Tiger Mother' Amy Chau: What She Got Right →
Many have inferred from her much discussed new memoir that disproportionate Asian academic success can be attributed to a regimen of no sleepovers, no playdates, no quitting, no coddling, no praising mediocrity and lots of drills. The ancient Chinese secret is, in short, demand perfection and accept nothing less. Children are not so fragile that they will break under these expectations. This is...
The Slanted Playing Field
squashed:
Monopoly is a good game for libertarians. Everybody starts out in the same spot. The rules are clear and understandable. There’s a lot of luck—but enough skill that you can feel good about winning. And it’s just a game. We don’t need to shed any tears for the losers.
To succinctly demonstrate my problems with the libertarian view, let’s change one rule. The player with the wealthiest...
“Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To...”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Purpose of Education,” an article written by King as an undergraduate in the Morehouse campus newspaper (1948)
vruz: perfect response to that ode to mindless speciaisation that azspot posted the other day.
(via vruz)
Rafer sez: I find it interesting that...
Parse.ly Closes $800K Financing Round →
parsely:
Parse.ly (http://parsely.com), the intelligent personalization and optimization engine for content providers, raised $800,000 from Blumberg Capital, ff Asset Management, Scott Becker (formely co-founder and CTO of Invite Media), Don Hutchison (formerly principal at Netcom, Work.com), Jeffrey Greenblatt (senior principal at Ankyra Capital) and Jon Axelrod (formerly founder/CEO at...
“Stock market participation is monotonically related to IQ, controlling for...”
– IQ and Stock Market Participation - Mark Grinblatt, Matti Keloharju and Juhani Linnainmaa in the Journal of Finance.
I’m sure this will just confirm the beliefs wall street denizens already had about their own abilities.
(via llimllib)
“Watching black folks on Twitter tells no more about African American culture...”
– http://ht.ly/3G9Xl
GOP and Whiteness →
It should be unnecessary to point out that, in 2011, a governor of a state with around 1.3 million African American residents who appoints a cabinet that looks like this [100% white] is doing so for a specific political purpose. That purpose is (of course) to illustrate that, like Stephen Colbert, John Kasich doesn’t “see” race. Are all 20 members of his cabinet white? Black? Purple? Green?...
Watchentertainizethis:
Wesleyan Professor Alex Dupuy: Haiti Transformed into the “Republic of the NGOs”
One year after the massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti, reconstruction efforts have barely begun. We speak with Alex Dupuy, a professor of sociology at Wesleyan University. “There is a dramatic power imbalance between the international community—under U.S. leadership—and...
Boston Review — Stephen Steinberg: Poor Reason... →
Notwithstanding the election of Barack Obama, the last 40 years have been a period of racial backlash. The three pillars of anti-racist public policy—affirmative action, school integration, and racial districting (to prevent the dilution of the black vote)—have all been eviscerated, thanks in large part to rulings of a Supreme Court packed with Republican appointees. Indeed, the comeback of the...
“However, within the racial context, it’s designed to simultaneously play into...”
– Black Monsters/White Corpses: Kanye’s Racialized Gender Politics | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture
“the conversation around dead women in Kanye’s video reminds me of the...”
– Black Monsters/White Corpses: Kanye’s Racialized Gender Politics | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture
“The phrase “inner city” is typically used as a convenient way to talk about...”
– State of the Nation - William Rankin (via llimllib)
Jay-Z Speaks Financial Truth in New Song With... →
On the track, released on Kanye’s Facebook page early Tuesday morning, Jay-Z complains that his competitors merely fantasize about what he does on a daily basis — including, but not limited to, schmoozing with Warren Buffet and Steve Forbes. He also cites this writer’s $450 million valuationof his personal net worth, rounding up slightly to “half a billie,” before taking a shot at a...
“The report, delivered Thursday to Mr. Préval and prepared by a multinational...”
– Exiled Haitian Dictator, ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, Returns Home - NYTimes.com (via dixiecupua)
“L’ancien président Jean-Claude Duvalier est de retour en Haïti après 25 ans...”
– Duvalier fils de retour d’exil : Je suis venu pour aider, dit Duvalier à son retour | International | Radio-Canada.ca
Whoa
(via dixiecupua)
Mining of Massive Datasets →
Scaling Jaccard Distance for Document... →
“My Papa, like thousands of others who sought to build better lives for their...”
– Marjorie Valbrun - Haitian Americans’ task to rebuild their homeland (via dixiecupua)
“Exactly how Obama does it is unclear to me. I know that his timing is very...”
– Hullabaloo (via dixiecupua)
“First generation immigrants want the best for their children, as do all parents,...”
– Why Chinese Mothers are Not Superior « Jean Hsu
Just checked with Auburn that the SEC is still the...
I love being right.
“What most excites the always-enthusiastic Mayer is something called “contextual...”
– Marissa Mayer and Google’s Local Search Strategy - The Daily Beast
Rafer sez: For my next startup, I need to make sure that I compete with Google. ‘Discovery’ only scales when the user gets an emotional bang at the moment of success. Google’s culture won’t allow them to parse that sentence.
(via...
The Rise of the New Global Elite - Magazine - The... →
The real threat facing the super-elite, at home and abroad, isn’t modestly higher taxes, but rather the possibility that inchoate public rage could cohere into a more concrete populist agenda—that, for instance, middle-class Americans could conclude that the world economy isn’t working for them and decide that protectionism or truly punitive taxation is preferable to incremental measures such...
“according to the Central Intelligence Agency (whose patriotism I hesitate to...”
– Why we can’t ignore growing income inequality. (1) - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
What We Can Learn: An Excerpt from Were You Born... →
That leads to a seeming paradox: Higher labor costs can make a country more, not less, competitive. In many ways, the United States and the UK got out of manufacturing because their labor costs were too low. I have spent my life watching plants close in Milwaukee and Waukegan, where skilled labor was paid $26 an hour, only to reopen in Georgia and North Carolina, where it was paid $8 an hour....
“Where would my clients, who are not poor, who make $30,000 to $50,000 a year and...”
– What We Can Learn: An Excerpt from Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? — In These Times