Most-Educated Cities in the United States

More on US Census data. Kath's hometown ranks No. 5. But neither Chicago nor Ann Arbor make the top 20. The article concludes (for what its worth) that:

Education levels bode well for a city's economic success. More than half of America's 20 most educated cities also rank at the top of the list of the country's most prosperous cities.

Link.

Interestingly, a CNN survey finds an entirely different set of most-educated cities, all located on the east coast. Link to CNN survey.

US census data on poverty

Snip:

The computer has surpassed the dishwasher as a standard household appliance. The poorest Americans have posted a sharp rise in access to air conditioning. The richest Americans still own the most cars, but they are choosing to own slightly fewer of them than they used to.

With regard to computers, the percentage of households with one grew from 20% in 1992 to nearly 60% in 2002. That is impressive growth. (With regard to the 2002 level, the US is pretty much smack dab in the middle of OECD countries.) But this excerpt says it all:

"In terms of the items people have ... it amazes me the number of people who are at or near the poverty line that have color TVs, cable, washer, dryer, microwave," says Michael Cosgrove, an economist at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. That's not to ignore the hardships of poverty, he adds, "but the conveniences they have are in fact pretty good."

Go read it. Link

First Goatse

Boing Boing has a major hang-up with "Goatse." Entries on said topic are typically and frequently posted by Xani Jardin. To see examples, click here. Excluding this fascination, she is an interesting gal.

Ok, end of digression. I tend to skip over these posts b/c they are not that interesting. But this post by Mark Frauenfelder caught my eye and it is surprisingly funny.

If you are not familiar with term or concept, please I beseach you, do not investigate. Put simply, and this is all you need to know to enjoy the above link, "goatse" is the image of a person's outstretched butthole. It is so very 'outstretched' that it looks not only painful, but life threatening. Interest in the image is sort of a cult thing on the internets.

Deregulation vs. Redistribution

How can we 'cure' poverty? That is the question addressed in this article by Thomas Sowell. He seizes on the sucess of the Chinese economy to allegedly lift "a million people a month out of poverty." The success of the Chinese economy he attributes to "wealth creation," which I interpret as the promotion of free (or less regulated) markets. The other alternative is "income redistribution," which is never defined in the article but is proudly attributed to "the left."

In the article, these two alternatives - wealth creation and income redistribution - are the only means to curing poverty. Furthermore, these two solutions are treated by Sowell as mutually exclusive. The primary purpose of the article, as I read it, is to create an argument. This is too bad. Sowell's point re: deregulation is a valid one, but is diminished by too much finger pointing. Excerpt:

When it comes to lifting people out of poverty, redistribution of income and wealth has a much poorer and more spotty track record than the creation of wealth. In some places, such as Zimbabwe today, attempts at a redistribution of wealth have turned out to be a redistribution of poverty.

While the creation of wealth may be more effective for enabling millions of people to rise out of poverty, it provides no special role for the political left, no puffed up importance, no moral superiority, no power for them to wield over others. Redistribution is clearly better for the left.

Leftist emphasis on 'the poor' proceeds as if the poor were some separate group. But, in most Western countries, at least, millions of people who are 'poor' at one period of their lives are 'rich' at another period of their lives -- as these terms are conventionally defined.

How can that be? People tend to become more productive -- create more wealth -- over time, with more experience and an accumulation of skills and training.

That is reflected in incomes that are two or three times higher in later years than at the beginning of a career. But that too is of little or no interest to the political left.

Link

Information Asymmetry?

The article concludes:

While financial planners believe about half of young Americans could accumulate $1 million over a period of 30 years, fewer than 1 in 10 of Americans believe they could save that much money, the survey showed.

In other words, Americans have an overly pessimistic view on the efficacy of saving. How pessimistic, you ask?

More than one in five Americans believe the best way to get rich is to win the lottery, while 11 percent say inheriting money is the way to go, a survey showed on Monday.

Asked the most practical way to accumulate "several hundred thousand dollars," 21 percent chose winning the lottery, compared to 55 percent who thought saving something each month for many years was best, according to a survey by the Consumer Federation of America and the Financial Planning Association.

Three percent of those surveyed thought a big insurance settlement was the best way to become wealthy.

The poor were the most likely to say winning the lottery was the most practical way to gain wealth -- with 38 percent of those earning less than $25,000 a year choosing that option compared to just 9 percent of those earning $75,000 or more.

Link

Years best Mr. Fish

LA Weekly has a compilation of the previous year's most funny Mr. Fish. The following is one that made me laugh. Link

My Bionic Quest for Boléro

Michael Chorost was born with partial hearing. When he was a teen, Chorost discovered to his pleasant surprise that Ravel's Bolero was audible to him. From that moment on, he developed an emotional attachment to the song. Sadly, in 2001, Chorost suddenly lost all of what remained of his hearing.

The article describes this experience, with much greater eloquence and detail, as well as the subsequent, and successful reengineering of the firmware on his cochlear implant. This effort has allowed him to once again hear Ravel's Bolero. Having myself experienced significant hearing loss, I found the article inspiring and hopeful. Its also an interesting read, regardless of your state of hearing.

Link (Hat tip goes to Boing Boing)

Vince-sanity

Now that was one hell of a national championship! Down to a final play, Young scrambled for an 8-yard touchdown on fourth down with 19 seconds left. And this was before the announcers were hailing Young as one of the best college QBs ever. What is particularly amazing is that he doesn't look like he's trying that hard.

Final score: Texas 43, USC 38.

Rejected by the Publishers

This is an interesting 'gotcha,' as reported in the NY Times:

Submitted to 20 publishers and agents, the typed manuscripts of the opening chapters of two books were assumed to be the work of aspiring novelists. Of 21 replies, all but one were rejections. Sent by The Sunday Times of London, the manuscripts were the opening chapters of novels that won Booker Prizes in the 1970's. One was "Holiday," by Stanley Middleton; the other was "In a Free State," by Sir V. S. Naipaul, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Middleton said he wasn't surprised. "People don't seem to know what a good novel is nowadays," he said. Mr. Naipaul said: "To see something is well written and appetizingly written takes a lot of talent, and there is not a great deal of that around. With all the other forms of entertainment today, there are very few people around who would understand what a good paragraph is."

Link

What is your dangerous idea?

The following is an excerpt from an article in UK's Times Online, titled (and I love this title) "Why it can be a very smart move to start life with a Jewish momma":

LET ME take you to The Edge. Or more specifically, www.edge.org, an intriguing little website set up by John Brockman, the literary agent in New York responsible for catapulting science writers such as the neuropsychologist Steven Pinker into the big time...

An annual highlight is the Edge question, posed every January by Brockman to set the theme for the coming year. The 2006 teaser, announced yesterday, is this: what is your dangerous idea? Brockman describes it as “an idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?”

The answers have already started rolling in ... and how very provocative they are. Here is my pick of the crop...

Link to the article. Link to the Edge website.

Fizz-Boh

In 1997, Mary Murphy set up a website to advertise the home she was selling sans a real estate agent.

Nearly a decade later, that website remains. Today, Ms. Murphy's (and her business partner, Christie Miller's) "for-sale-by-owner" website (FSBO, pronounced "Fizz-boh) controls 20 percent of the residential listings in Madison, WI (Dane County).

Isn't that an impressive statistic? Plus its an interesting and inspiring article. Link