Random links
- 52 Percent of Americans Flunk Climate 101
- I was a little disturbed by this quote:
As the report’s authors found, 42 percent of those surveyed “incorrectly believe that since scientists can’t predict the weather more than a few days in advance, they can’t possibl[y] predict the climate of the future."
It's one think to claim that you can't make predictions; it's another thing to claim that your predictions are accurate. This seems to come very close to confusing those two categories.
- Alain Ducasse's Weapon Against Poverty: Cooking Classes
- It does seem like a complete ripoff of a previous project by Jamie Oliver (which lives on) right down to the prominence of the number fifteen in the names of both resulting restaurants. The main difference appears to be snootier cuisine. Might work to get people employed, although wages in the sector aren't great, even for those with training.
- What Is Going on With Marriage?
- The Freakonomics blog tackles the question of whether or not the economy has a significant impact on marriage rates as people are unable to afford weddings, and concludes that the answer is no. My thoughts: (a) as previously argued, I'd say that marriage as a legal institution is relatively meaningless. (b) You need to distinguish between a "wedding" (i.e. a party), and a wedding (the act of getting married)... one is expensive whereas the other need not be.
- Latvian man shortage leaves women lost for love
- This seems like a typical example of the tendency to focus on the wrong aspects of the situation. Here the focus being how women in Latvia can't find well-educated, employed husbands rather than investigating factors like the country having the highest disparity in male-female life expectancy in the EU, a high early male mortality rate (3x the mortality rate of women), and a 50% higher female enrollment in university./dd>
Comments
Sarennah
Fri, 2010-10-15 02:23
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Do I detect a lack of a
Do I detect a lack of a romantic sense in your comments? :) Part of getting married is celebrating with friends - it's not a dry ritual-- it has emotions. Of course you can go too far with spending on weddings!
David
Fri, 2010-10-15 03:26
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Perhaps I missed the word
Perhaps I missed the word "expensive" in party... average wedding-related costs at the moment costs about $20,000. That's what I'm hitting at.
Or, say CNN's report of an average wedding cost of $26,327 (bumped up by some particularly expensive celebrations)... broken down into a few different categories.