Having just returned to work after maternity leave, I found this article interesting.  It’s the first study I’ve seen that added the time spent at work and the time spent working at home for both fathers and mothers and compared the total.  Turns out that they are spending relatively equal amounts of time "working."  Married and Single Parents Spending More Time With Children, Study Finds – New York Times:

The researchers found that “women still do twice as much housework and child care as men” in two-parent families. But they said that total hours of work by mothers and fathers were roughly equal, when they counted paid and unpaid work.

Using this measure, the researchers found “remarkable gender equality in total workloads,” averaging nearly 65 hours a week.

However, according to the study, working moms have much less free time than stay at home moms and one of the things they cut back on is time with their husbands!

It also said that all parents, single and married, male and female, are spending more time with their kids than parents did 40 years ago. 

Check out gas prices around the country broken down by state and county. USA National Gas Temperature Map.  Stay away from red areas (California of course.)  Those in green areas like Montana and Wyoming have it good. 

I was suprised at how state dependent gas pries are.  All of Wyoming is green while half of its neighbors are yellow.

This post on the FREAKONOMICS BLOG, pointed me to a really cool site, Zillow.com.  Type in any address or zip code and it will show you the house on a satellite picture along with the house’s estimated value.  In addition you can search for recent comparable sales – sales of recent houses with similar specifications in the same neighborhood along with their sale price!   

You have got to try this website out – find out your home’s value.  Realtors are going to have to work hard to show their value!

Two notes:

• Not all areas are covered yet.  I found my home in Colorado but I couldn’t find any data for home values  in South Dakota.
• It actually showed our home in the right spot.  Google and Yahoo maps usually think our house is half way down the block from where it really is.

What do you carry with you … to work?  to the store?  to a friend’s house?  I bet you carry more around now than you did 10 years ago. 

On any work day, I carry a briefcase with my laptop, notebook and odds and ends like business cards, vitamins, pens, etc as well as a water bottle and a plastic bag with my lunch in it.  (They don’t fit in the briefcase – I’ve been shopping for a bigger one.)  If I have class that day, I have a bookbag I also carry that has a change of clothes as well as my books … oh and don’t forget the snacks and the novel. 

This Washington Post article, Burdens of the Modern Beast, talks about how we are all carrying a lot more around with us.  It doesn’t really theorize as to why although through quotes it alludes to the fact that we are all insecure and worried and all of our stuff is our security blanket.

I think we carry lots around with us for two reasons.  One, we are too busy.  I don’t have time to come home for lunch or go out to lunch, so I carry lunch.  I certainly don’t have time to come home between work and school so the change of clothes and the bookbag have to come with me.  Two, we are consumers.  Can you imagine going 3-4 hours without a bottle of water, a soda or a Starbucks coffee??

First they tell us not to trade our investments often and then they say we don’t trade enough.   The tone of this Wharton article implied that it was bad not to actively manage your portfolio.  From everything I have studied about investing, I disagree.  You should make smart choices, leave them be and check them a couple of times a year, rebalancing if necessary.

Hands-off: Holders of 401(k) Retirement Accounts Are Not Your Typical Investors – Knowledge@Wharton.

This map of the world shows stereotypes found through Google searches.  The data was put together by Google Blogoscoped.

Link: The Prejudice Map.

Women have recently been elected to lead the governments of Liberia, Chile and Germany.  These new female leaders did not have husbands or fathers who ruled before them, a notable difference from the past.

Women’s Place, Revisited – New York Times.

This public toilet in Houston is made of entirely one way glass.  It looks like mirrors from the outside, but from the inside it looks like you are sitting in the middle of the street.  Check out the pictures.

Impact Lab – Super Cool Toilet.

Did you always want to be like Genghis Khan?  Well, there’s a pretty good chance that you might be one of his descendents.  If you are male, it’s a 1 in 200 chance!  The long march of everyman | Economist.com.

there were few males more alpha in their behaviour than Genghis Khan, a man reported to have had about 500 wives and concubines, not to mention the sexual opportunities that come with conquest. It is probably no coincidence, therefore, that one man in every 12 of those who live within the frontiers of what was once the Mongol empire (and, indeed, one in 200 of all men alive today) have a stretch of DNA on their Y-chromosomes that dates back to the time and birthplace of the great Khan.

The article also points out that we tend to elect alpha males to office and then act surprised when they act like alpha males.

Note:  This is not what the article is about.  It’s about the move of early homo sapiens and how they populated the earth.  I just found the Genghis Khan stat amazing.