Random links

Foster children have grim prospects
Once they age out of the system they fair even worse than the children of single divorced mothers (Kids raised by widows do better than those raised by divorcees).
Evil Clown hired for stalking, threats and a pie in the face
The byline: "An 'evil' clown who stalks and threatens kids is being hired by parents as a birthday treat."
Markets, Risk, and Fashion: The Hindenburg’s Smoking Lounge
One interesting comment: "The Zeppelin company originally preferred the cheaper and more readily obtainable hydrogen, but after 48 of 56 passengers on a British airship were killed in a storm in 1930, Zeppelin’s engineers planned the new design for the safer, nonflammable helium. Unfortunately for Zeppelin, Congress had passed a law in 1927 banning the export of helium because it was a strategic gas with military aviation potential. There was thus no alternative to hydrogen, despite its risks."
Political Polarization: In the Eye of the Beholder?
"According to a new study, the people who most strongly believe that the political system is dividing into two extreme camps with little to say to each other themselves have relatively extreme views."
The disadvantage of an elite education
Loosely summarized as snobbery, selecting for only a particular type of intelligence, fear of failure, and an implicitly class-based division of society. (The author of this piece, BTW, apparently spent a decade as a professor at Yale).