Category: Current Affairs

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.

 

Two men were found in the same Egyptian tomb – a very unusual occurance.  What I think is interesting is how we interpret what that means.  The three hypothesis:

• They were identical twins,
• They were gay,
• They were conjoined twins.

Each one is supported by it’s own interests groups.  For example, gay advocates support the gay theory.  I’m sure the conjoined twins theory is a result of all the recent news surrounding successful dejoining of twins.

As our society continues to change, I wonder what new theories we will come up with?

A Mystery, Locked in Timeless Embrace – New York Times.

I like stories about cultural differences. Here’s one from Japan from A Hand in Two Cultures – New York Times.

Or take a simple thing like bathrooms. In Japan, there is no heating system in the toilet, and it is really cold. So we’re used to heated toilet seats. Japanese tourists come to American hotels, and the bathroom is warm but the bench is cool. We really don’t like that.

Japanese toilets in homes are raised like seats like ours.  In public buildings they are in the ground and you squat over them.  I broke all my credit cards that I was carrying in my back pocket that way once …

Everybody learns differently.  However, our school system targets visual/audio learners who learn best from sitting in lectures, reading books and taking notes.  Lucky for me, that’s the way I learn best.  However this year I’ve had a chance to learn how difficult it is to learn in styles that aren’t yours.  I took Anatomiken classes at the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, BCMT, a very kinesthetic learning class, you actually make muscles out of clay and place them on a plastic skeleton.  (For all you visual learners that are interested in Anatomiken, watch the demo carefully!  Don’t bother trying to follow along.) 

BCMT recognizes that there are many different learning styles and they try hard to meet all the learning styles in every class.  I wish our elementary and high schools did the same.  This Washington Post article, Disappearing Act, talks about how many boys don’t do well in our current system.

Boys
have a lot of Huck Finn in them — they don’t, on average, learn as
well as girls by sitting still, concentrating, multitasking, listening
to words.

As the parent of a very bright 5 year old boy who has a lot of trouble sitting still and concentrating on learning how to read, I could relate to the article.