Summation

James Beldock is my new favorite data cruncher

James Beldock has a deep but fairly unnoticed trend data (age and school) from Facebook: Age *DOES* Matter: On the Demographics of Social Networks

(well worth reading)

Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S. President to hold a patent

A small useless fact ...

book: gang leader for a day [read it]

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets: Sudhir Venkatesh

This is a great book. If you read Freakonomics, you might remember Sudhir Venkatesh's collaboration with Steven Levitt on the gang leader's books. Venkatesh got the books after spending six years in the worst Chicago projects working with the Black Kings gang.

This is a story that shows the vicious circle many of our youth are trapped in. and the self-reflection of Venkatesh -- at the time a poor sociology grad student.

Marc Andreessen suggested I read this book. I bought it 100% due to his recommendation and now I heartedly endorse it to others.

How to Disagree and always shooting the messenger

I love reading Paul Graham … I've read pretty much everything he has written and while I don’t always agree, I always come away from his articles with a new thought. In fact, I think he has most insightful blog/column out there.

 
Graham writes a new one entitled How to Disagree:

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

this is well worth reading. Many people have trouble disagreeing and the most common way to discredit an argument is to go after the messenger. Graham points out this is a really a poor argument as to why the messenger's point is bad.

but most humans give too much weight to the messenger and not enough weight to the message. That makes sense from a purely evolutionary point of view. If Stephen Hawking says something about physics, you might want to listen. But if Britney Spears starts discussing string theory, you might think she's talking about bikinis and not theoretical physics. This reasoning works most of the time as usually Hawking has interesting things to say about science and Spears is known for other talents.

But in politics and business, not listening to the messenger can lead to very bad decisions. Giving a little more weight to a new opinion of someone you like over those that you dislike makes sense. But a good decision maker should only weigh the messenger a little and focus much more on dissecting the message. The boy who cries wolf might be right sometime … you shouldn't just reject the message out of hand.

 

some guy has 24 BILLION friends on MySpace

obviously this is some sort of bug or hack ... but some hacker has 24,334,098,797 (24 billion) friends on MySpace.   

Clinton and Wal-Mart

according to the Wall Street journal today, Hillary Clinton was formerly a board member of Wal-Mart.

that was the first I've heard of this.   i did some digging and, sure enough, Mrs. Clinton serves on the Wal-Mart board of directors from 1986 to 1992 (not long before she became first lady).

During those six years, Wal-Mart was one of the fastest growing companies in the world.   This experience must have been one that us useful to Senator Clinton.

DHS changes F-1 residency from 12 to 29 months

everyone who runs a tech company is cheering this news:

Government Quietly Changes Rules on Foreign Tech Workers

Evite continues to horrify me

here are two good links:

Evite Alternatives
and
Evite Sucks

crazy chess match

Many of you know that I play correspondence chess.

I annotated a recent game of mine that I should have lost but my opponent made a late-game mistake. Here is the game:

http://blog.chess.com/auren/when-you-are-down-fight-out-bue-the-ice-man

read Super Crunchers

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart

by Ian Ayres

very much enjoyed this book on how to better understand data. I recommend it.