IO9 with some cross-national differences in math abilities across genders. Hint: it’s probably culture.
We live in a wonderful country with wonderful food, via Scalzi.
The blog that ate manhattan with a commentary on product placement for birth control in a reality show.
A great post from a gai shan life on poverty… I guess one of these Mondays I’ll post up about Moral Hazard. Also type 1 vs. type 2 error.
Want some great suggestions for sci-fi reading and also maybe a little bit of patriarchy-blaming? Look at this comment thread (the thread is dead but still a good resource).
Also, we say again that octopodes are cool.
We were in this week’s carnival of personal finance.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
December 31, 2011 at 9:20 am
We do live in a wonderful country with wonderful foods from all different cultures. But “Post Family-Size Mini Cinnamon Churros” is nothing but a sign of the power of the high-fructose corn syrup lobby to give us *all* diabetes, and not just white racist suburban shittebagges.
This, on the other hand, truly is wonderful:
http://www.tortillerianixtamal.com/
December 31, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Thanks for the link to the post @ Gai Shan Life. The part where (s)he talked about people judging made me realize that it must be a human tendency, to want to “cause and effect” everything, or make EVERYTHING seem like it’s about choices and working hard and doing the right thing. (Maybe it’s an American, or 1st world tendency, I don’t know.) It’s not just about poverty and class, but you see it with assault (“she must have done something to aggravate him”) or race (“those people don’t value xxx like we do, which explains yyy in their community”).
I mean, heck, we see it in parenting as well – the mommyjudging on all things big and small. I mean, clearly the fact that my kid didn’t walk until almost 20 months means *I* must have not “encouraged her enough”, “left her in the jumperoo/infant seat all day”, blah blah blah.
I think we as people like to think it’s all under our control, so when unfortunate things happen to others, we feel like we can keep ourselves out of that because *we* don’t do yyy like *they* were doing.
December 31, 2011 at 2:50 pm
It’s true. And we’re less physiologically stressed when we have a locus of control, or at least the illusion of one.
December 31, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Good point. I need to thank you again for linking to John Scalzi’s post – when I was reading through it, it really hit home that poverty can happen to anyone, anytime. It just may take longer because as you pointed out, middle/upper class folks have more room for error/multiple chances to try, but a series of bad/unlucky events can wipe out everything in a blink of an eye no matter how secure we think we are.
January 1, 2012 at 8:39 am
DO ITTE!!!!
January 2, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Thanks for the link! Looking forward to your follow-up commentary. I’m always impressed by the discourse over here.