Income Inequality in the U.S.

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This is an interesting paper (abstract) by economist Edward Glaeser exploring why there’s so much income inequality in the U.S. as compared to other rich, European nations. Glaeser posits that ethic heterogeneity and different kinds of political institutions are the main drivers.

He also touches on American exceptionalism. 60% of Americans believe the poor are lazy, while only 29% of Europeans think so, even though the prospects for economic mobility are virtually the same. How we are indoctrinated – in schools, in society – makes a big difference. Why are Americans so uncomfortable with socialist ideas, and why do so many of us think the poor should just go to work, whereas Europeans view the poor as "good people beset by forces outside of their control"?

(Hat tip: David Roth)

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On Stereotyping, Racial Profiling, Pit Bulls, Arabs, and Malcolm Gladwell

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Racial profiling is really thorny and I’m the last one who’s going to have an original solution to the problem. So I enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article on stereotypes and generalizing and then Ross Douthat’s call for Steve Sailer to blast it and sure enough Steve’s blistering critique of Gladwell. I’m now more confused than I was before, but that’s a good thing.

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Thinking in Terms of Negative Space

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Artists often talk about "negative space" when analyzing or creating paintings. It struck me that negative space is a useful metaphor for anything. In basketball, negative space may mean cutting away from the ball and setting picks across the court. In business, it may mean thinking about the little things on the edges of an idea which, when tweaked, turn the idea from foolish to brilliant. (See my post about thinking 1 degree differently.) About.com Painting says:

Negative space is very useful when confronted with ‘difficult’ subjects, such as hands. Instead of thinking about fingers, nails, knuckles, start by looking at the shapes between the fingers. Then look at the shapes around the hand, for example the shape between the palm and the wrist. Laying these in will give you a good basic form on which to build.

And to wrap it up with a visual:

negative space - is it a vase or two faces?negative space - is it a vase or two faces?

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Here's What I Don't Get About Gripes on "Feed Overload"

Posted inWeb/Tech3 Comments on Here's What I Don't Get About Gripes on "Feed Overload"

I choose to subscribe to around 280 RSS feeds.

There’s been a lot of chatter about "RSS overload" and "too many feeds" as if someone is forcing loads of information upon helpless feedreader addicts. If I chose to subscribe to 10 more magazines, would it be right for me to cry out in a month that I’m suffering from magazine overload and need some solution? The sensible solution would be to cancel half the subscriptions, since the cost/benefit of spending all the time reading magazines doesn’t add up.

The interesting twist in RSS is that the bar is so low. They’re free. It takes 5 seconds to add a feed to your reader. You can scroll through uninteresting content in seconds. So for many people, even if 2 out of every 10 posts are interesting, it’s worth the subscription. The onus is on the reader to develop that ratio for him/herself and if a feed isn’t cutting mustard, to remove it.

A lot of these gripes I think stem from too much irrelevant information in the RSS reader so people want better filters. Maybe one day there will be really smart filters. Until then, people should develop a signal to noise ratio that works for them, and then stick by it. That means some RSS spring cleaning.

One other suggestion. Once you get above 200 feeds, you can do some pruning. For example, if I didn’t want to get Jeff Jarvis‘ 6-7 posts a day, but still wanted to read his best, most influential posts, I could unsubscribe and still bet that all the other folks I read will link to his important posts. (I still read all of Jeff’s, btw, because he has good thoughts on journalism that many people don’t link to.)

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Voodoo Still Winning in West African Country of Benin

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Why, how lovely:

Link: Benin | Voodoo still wins | Economist.com (subscribers only)

A WOMAN in a bright dress dances round in a tight circle, the pumping artery of a headless chicken pressed to her mouth. Nearby, another woman carries a slaughtered goat on her shoulder, sucking on its red neck as she cavorts around. Benin’s national day of voodoo, earlier this month, may not be how Hollywood would have portrayed it, but it comes close. “The women are not drinking the blood,” a voodoo expert, Martine de Souza, explains. “The animals have been sacrificed to the spirits, and the women have been possessed by the spirits, who are accepting the sacrifice.”

Since 1996, voodoo has officially been a national religion of Benin, a small west African republic, where more than 60% of the people are said to believe in it. Slaves from this corner of Africa brought the religion to the New World, most notably to Haiti. Its tenets echo those of many African religions. There is a supreme god, Mahu, and a number of smaller gods or spirits, with whom humans can negotiate.

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