John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Financially dysfunctional

Given that U.S. authorities are reluctant to call a recession what it is, I find a new post on the Freakonomics blog - about the prevalence of financial illiteracy - pretty sobering. Stephen J. Dubner cites how three easy-peasy-looking questions on finance have proven difficult for a great many people, and writes on how he has some sympathy for them:

But here’s my point: I’m not exactly undereducated. I had 13 years of public schooling, 4 years of college, and another 2 years of graduate school — and after all that schooling, I don’t know if I learned enough to answer all three of [researcher Annamaria] Lusardi’s questions correctly. The subjects simply didn’t come up. Just as they apparently didn’t for the two-thirds of the older respondents to Lusardi’s questions.

The rest is here.

Baby Face and other G-Man tales

That's Baby Face Nelson, one of the better known criminals of the 20th century. You may know the name, but do you know the case? The FBI's site has a peculiar archival section: some of the best-known cases it's worked on, from Al Capone and Bonnie and Clyde up to modern-day spy Robert Philip Hanssen.

Weekend reading

Modfather alert: A curious run of numbers about Paul Weller's next album. It's coming out June 24. It's called 22 Dreams. It has, um, 21 songs. My calendar is marked.

Fraud alert: I'm planning to see the new Artistic Fraud show in St. John's, Fear of Flight. Check out the Chris Brookes-narrated promo spot on YouTube right here. (I'd embed it, but that's been disabled, for some reason.)

Turn that :( upside down ... or better yet, just spell it out. Wow: kids who use emoticons, texting, etc., have problems turning it off for formal writing assighnments. Not ROTFL!!!

Dolly has the Gift: A mashup - how 2004! Here's a combination, though, that's finger-tappin' fun: a mash of Dolly Parton's cover of She Drives Me Crazy, with the Fine Young Cannibals original. It's Driver Me Crazier, from Apollo Zero. Follow the links for the free download.

Oryx & grate: David Pogue of the NYT thumbs back to Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crate, in light of PETA's grow-your-own-meat appeal this week.

My headline of the day: Ctrl-Alt-Ouch ... which was used to hook interest in a how-to article on Wired, on resetting a dislocated shoulder, but not on the piece itself. Pity.

A is for arson, F is for foreclosure

You meet the most interesting people in Disney World. On vacation there last month, a few parents (yours truly included) were chatting on one of the shuttles between our hotel and one of the parks. Two of the couples were from the same part of Minnesota. One was a volunteer firefighter, and I was struck by how busy he said things were getting. The key ingredient for change: foreclosures. This article in the Los Angeles Times from earlier this week jumped out at me.

Plastic bags and marine pollution

An interesting piece in The Times of London today has a detail about plastic bags and pollution, with a Newfoundland-related element I had not known about:

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.

The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”

Full article is here.

The rise of the supercities

The image above comes from 19:20:21, a site about the rise of supercities in the years ahead. The title refers to the 19 cities that will have at least 20 million people in the 21st century. Check it out.

Their big break, or broken

A piece appeared in Forbes a couple of weeks ago on proverbial "big breaks" - those moments that make a career. For David Letterman, failure helped pave the way. Here's a link to a photo gallery that goes with the package.

Where Wallace & Gromit might like to vacation

An article in the new Christian Science Monitor includes a reference to both a very fine writer (Wendel Berry) and a phrase that leapt out at me ("cheesemaking lifestyle"). Anyway, it sounds like a very world, artisanal cheese.

Restrictions and sex offenders

A recurring story for many journalists involves sex offenders and residents' concerns on their release. It's a powerful issue, and one that was raised recently in Grand Falls-Windsor when the regional school board advised parents that a released offender was living in the proximity of four schools. This recent piece in the Boston Globe magazine - although it deals with U.S. jurisdictional issues - looks at the problems of residency restrictions, and may be helpful reading on a complicated subject.

On the campaign trail, every angle will be recorded

I haven't seen the June issue of Vanity Fair yet, but I found James Wolcott's column (available online here) on how YouTube and online video are changing politics - and vice versa - relevant to things well beyond the U.S. presidential race, which is his focus. This graf seems apropos:

More creative involvement in the democratic process—how can this not be healthy? "Citizen journalists" and "citizen ad-makers," united in idealistic purpose—what's not to like? Yet inwardly I groan. Speaking for Me-self, the last thing I need is more crap to watch, no matter how ingenious or buzz-worthy it may be. I spend enough zombie time staring at screens without access to a supplemental pair of eyeballs. Between cable-news chat shows, regular news shows, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent reruns, I already clock so many hours watching TV on my TV that watching even more TV on my laptop is like giving myself extra homework. We're reaching the saturation point of what the social critic Paul Goodman called "spectatoritis."

I have no doubt the next federal election - and probably the upcoming provincial election here in Newfoundland and Labrador - will see online video used in plenty of ways. But the point is valid: how long will it take for novelty to seep into overload?