Here’s a collection of tons of websites and webpages that I’ve been reading over the past couple days.
1. JournalNow.com has an interesting article about why parents and kids pick very different types of mates. Kids tend to pick smart, funny, and attractive mates. Parents tend to pick socially and economically superior mates for their kids. (Read it at http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2008/may/15/checking-mates/?living.) It also brings up the very interesting point about how marriage used to have no relationship with the concept of love. That’d put an interesting spin on the whole gay marriage controversy, wouldn’t it.
2. Traffic. Love it or hate it, it’s a major part of American culture. Read an interesting interview with Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book Traffic, at http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/hows-my-driving-a-qa-with-the-author-of-traffic/ with more links on the topic there. One great travel tip – don’t drive with divorcees. I especially liked the entry on why people never pay attention to traffic signs, no matter how they’re displayed.
3. Bill Gates’ very good speach on creative capitalism at http://www.gatesfoundation.org/MediaCenter/Speeches/Co-ChairSpeeches/BillgSpeeches/BGSpeechWEF-080124.htm.
4. Gapminder World, a free tool at http://www.gapminder.org/, enables you to manipulate all sorts of worldwide data to see all sorts of interesting and beautifully rendered data, such as what a small change in infant mortality does to the whole world. An extremely cool presentation using the tool is here.
5. Fareed Zakaria. This guy is the most brilliant foreign policy mind out there. I always want to know what he thinks – http://www.newsweek.com/id/150460?from=rss.
6. 4 Ways to Use Wikipedia Like a Pro – http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/search-wikipedia-the-pro-way/.
7. Dartmouth’s Intellectually Hostile Environment or “I’m insane, but I’m a professor” at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120995103004666569.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries.
Well, seven is my lucky number today, so I’m stopping here. I’ll put in some more promising web articles soon.
Enjoy,
-Kev
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