Category: Web/Tech

Assorted links

1. Why do aphorisms and cynicism go together?

2. When did bank executives cash out?

3. In defense of managed care, with a pointer on median wage stagnation.

4. Chinese vs. Russian reforms.

5. Monkey language has syntax.

6. The final paragraph of the article: "But the big winner is the rabbi, a recent arrival from Brooklyn who is
working hard (against tough odds) to bring his Lubavitch movement to
Montana. He has been scouring the state for anyone who can speak
Hebrew, and is elated to have found a German shepherd he can talk to."

7. The encyclopedia of counterintuitive thought.

Assorted links

1. The British Roissy is in fact Speaker of the House.

2. Charles Rowley's blog.

3. A cloud shaped like a UFO.

4. How starfish eat a seal (video).

5. The Arabs, by Eugene Rogan; a superb book which somehow I had forgotten to review this year.  It's especially good for showing how their response to Western imperialism has been conditioned by their Ottoman experiences.

6. Jared Diamond on the greenness of large corporations.

Wikipedia knowledge deserts Africa fact of the day

Almost the entire continent of Africa is geographically poorly represented in Wikipedia. Remarkably, there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the 53 countries in Africa (or perhaps more amazingly, there are more Wikipedia articles written about the fictional places of Middle Earth and Discworld than about many countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas).

There are some countries that are crammed with a dense amount of floating virtual information, such as Germany (with an average of one article tagged for every 65 square km), while others remain as virtual deserts, such as Chad (with an average of one tagged article every 17,000 square km).

Sharp divides between the Global North and the Global South can likewise be seen when looking at the number of geotagged articles per person. Austria, Iceland and Switzerland all have around one geotagged article for every 1,000 people, while in China or Guinea there is just over one article for every 500,000 people.

Here is the full article, interesting throughout and with a good map.  For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.