"The 13 Careers Where You’re Most Likely To Commit Suicide."

Are these jobs making people more suicidal or do more suicidal people take these jobs? Another possibility: These people aren't more suicidal, they're just more likely to follow through, perhaps because they have lower moral/religious inhibition about the deed — e.g., scientists (#11) — or because they're more adept with the tools of self-murder — e.g., skilled manual laborers (#12). — or both — e.g., doctors (#9).

"We Built Way Too Many Cultural Institutions During the Good Years."

Did we? And who are "we"? "We" are all those cities across America who think we can be Bilbao, that if we build it, they will come.

Per capita, the biggest total spenders on cultural projects during this period were Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont region of California, Appleton and Madison, Wisconsin, and Lawrence, Kansas....

We seemed to buy into that Richard Florida/"Rise of the Creative Class" theory "that if we have cultural amenities, we’ll have better, more creative populations."

The biggest arts building boom in fact occurred in the South, a potential sign of cities there trying to catch up with the rest of the country. 

Look! We're not as backward as you think!

"These projects are very much emotional, they’re projects that have a lot of passion in them.... A lot of the rationality that goes into running a business sometimes doesn’t go into these projects."

Hey! That's a nice summary of the problem of letting government do anything.

Feeling no pain.

A dangerous problem.

At the Night Owl Café...

... night thoughts are different.

"Once upon a time there was a Democratic president who, despite his faults, championed the power of markets, technology, and the global economy."

"He spoke about building 'a bridge to the 21st century.' He ratified major trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO. He supported balanced budgets and signed into law a tough welfare reform. He cut the capital gains tax. He boasted that government spending as a share of the economy fell on his watch. He went so far as to call himself (privately) an Eisenhower Republican."

Bill!

Revolution Gothic.

Obama's new font.

Aren't we cute?

With our abbreves.

"Rob Portman had flowing locks. Rand Paul dissects a cat."

Pictures of politicians, when they were in high school. Don't miss Scott Walker "the Desperado."

My favorite is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano:

Hands and heads, positioned by Drudge.

Let's analyze this. (Click to enlarge.)



In the first column, we see Barack Obama holding his head, as if he's got a headache.

The middle column shows 2 politicians, both governors, gesturing outward, not holding anything.

The third column shows a bear holding a slice of watermelon and George Bush holding a little African orphan, grasping his/her head.

That is to say, the outer columns feature hands (or paws) holding something, and in 2 of the 3 pictures, what is held is a black person's head, and in the other what is held is watermelon.

Analyze the Drudgetaposition.
	Drudge was intentionally joking about race, though of course it's deniable.
	Drudge should have noticed this accidental allusion and avoided it.
	Althouse is seeing something that isn't there and should have refrained from talking about race.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED:

.@annalthouse You forgot to mention that the governors are pointing up, which is code for "uppity." althouse.blogspot.com/2012/07/hands-…
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) July 7, 2012

"Listen, we’re just politicians. I wasn’t elected to play God."

Said John Boehner:

The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney. I’ll tell you this: 95 percent of the people that show up to vote in November are going to show up in that voting booth, and they are going to vote for or against Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney has some friends, relatives and fellow Mormons ... some people that are going to vote for him. But that’s not what this election is about. This election is going to be a referendum on the president’s failed economic policies.

Mitt Romney believes, just like we do, that if we’re going to get the economy back, if we’re going to put the American people back to work, we need to fix the tax code, we need to stop the regulatory juggernaut that’s going on in Washington and we need to fix our economy. Solid guy, he’s going to do a great job, even if you don’t fall in love with him.

I think we've had enough love for a while. Let's not idolize politicians.

The Madness of Madison.

State Street, today:



ME (reading aloud, to my companion): Walker is not above the law and will go to prison.

CHALKING MAN (to me): It's true! John Doe!

ME (to the chalking man): Live the fantasy. (To my companion:) The madness of Madison.

One hour earlier — about a block from there — we walked past a man who was lying supine on a low concrete wall. Eyes closed, he intoned repeatedly:

I am a good slave
Free to a good owner
I will obey my master

At the Fake-Hand Café...

... it looks pretty real.

"The survey found that 74 percent of black women and 70 percent of black men said that 'living a religious life' is very important."

"On that same question, the number falls to 57 percent of white women and 43 percent of white men."

So not only is there less religion among the white people, there's a much larger gender gap.

The linked article — in the Washington Post — concentrates on how religious black women are, but I'm noticing how religious black men are. Casual observation of life in the United States has made us think women are much more religious than men. I'm surprised to see how close the percentages are for black people. The 57%/43% gap — which the poll shows among white people — comes much closer to what I would expect.

ADDED: I'm looking at the poll details, and it's interesting to see the differences in how satisfied people are with their lives.  The most satisfied people are the white women. 90% say they are very or somewhat satisfied. Next come the white men, with 86%, and the black women with 85%. Last, but not far behind, are the black men at 83%. I'm surprised so many people are satisfied!

"Stack ranking" — the management technique that ruined Microsoft.

Stack ranking "forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor."

"Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

ADDED: Stack ranking seems designed to overcome the standard problem in group projects, that people take advantage of each other. If we're all going to get the same credit, what do you do? Work really hard or let others do the work? What can you do to prevent that dysfunction? Apparently, the answer is to create a different dysfunction.

"Why drive? Why own a car? Why ‘go’ anywhere?"

Generation Y doesn't see why.

The grossly underenforced zoning law that preserves loft space in SoHo for artists.

The effort to get the law changed involves revealing how many property owners are in violation of the law.

At issue is a 1971 zoning change that allowed artists to legally live in lofts they had converted from industrial space in SoHo. Technically, much of the neighborhood is still zoned to permit manufacturing, and a condition has been placed on the old industrial buildings: Each loft must have at least one artist or successor, and the use of retail spaces must be wholesale without a special permit.

Technically....

Thaddeus McCotter — after "nightmarish month and a half" — resigns from Congress.

He says:

The recent event’s totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family. Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth of home amongst the ruins of their U.S. House office, for the sake of my loved ones I must ‘strike another match, go start anew’ by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen.”

The quote about the match is from Bob Dylan.

And what will he do now? He says he faces "diminishing prospects" and is "both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby," but I think it's pretty obvious he's got a cool personal style and a way with words. And he's made a TV pilot:

"Bumper Sticker: Made On Motown" starred McCotter hosting a crude variety show cast with characters bearing the nicknames of his congressional staffers, his brother and a drunk, perverted "Black Santa." They take pot shots about McCotter's ill-fated bid for the White House while spewing banter about drinking, sex, race, flatulence, puking and women's anatomy....

Bestsellers.

Here'sa list of the bestselling books at Amazon. I know women are reading "Fifty Shades of Grey," but I'm amazed to see that the top 4 bestselling books are "Fifty Shades of Grey." It's a trilogy, so that makes 3. The 4th one is a boxed set of the 3.

There's an incredible amount of junk in the top 100 books, but for some reason #17 is "The Great Gatsby." Oh, I know the reason. It's a new movie. Here's the trailer. It looks awful, with horrible acting. But then I think it's like "Moulin Rouge," which can seem bad if you look at it the wrong way, and this new "Gatsby" is in fact directed by the same person, Baz Luhrmann. And now I see that Leonardo DiCaprio plays the role of Gatsby. So the book is moving. Googling, I turn up this article in The Daily News:

Now, we haven't read "The Great Gatsby" around here (hadn't even heard of it, in fact, until we learned of the movie). But from these stills, and the trailer, we've deduced that it is the story of some dapper hipsters with a serious retro aesthetic who open an artisanal distillery somewhere on Long Island. Also, they seem to inexplicably like disco.

Anyway, what are you reading today... in book form?

ADDED: "Even the opening line of her novel—'I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror'—has at least two too many words." Yeah, you criticize, but you just wrote "two too."

"Sometimes when people ask what do you do for your fun time, he says I just learn, and people just don't understand that."

Tanishq Abraham, the brilliant 9 year old.



His mom: "Home schooling is much better than normal, regular school." (Because there's no way for regular school not to be boring.)

Tanishq: "It's never boring, talking to any college student... With my friends from kid classes, you get to play with them, and that kind of stuff... I kind of miss having friends, I guess."

In the end of the video, we hear him say he'd like to be a scientist or a President of the United States. As President, he'd "make the United States more healthy for us and more efficient."

"We are against tourism. They foster debauchery."

And soon the ancient buildings will be gone, razed by fanatics who imagine themselves saving the local people from the sin of worshipping idols.

In Timbuktu.

They destroyed the wooden door of the old mosque:

“I asked them why they were doing it... They said, ‘People believe that if that door is opened, the world will end’ ”— an un-Islamic superstition, the men explained, that had to be disproved....