Daily Data Dump - Monday

Hope the heat is treating you well (if you live in the northern hemisphere). If you are a regular reader and haven't taken the summer 2010 reader survey, click here. Cultural Diversity, Economic Development and Societal Instability. A post which addresses some of the issues emerging out of my comment about the relationship between linguistic diversity and economic growth. I'll have more to say about this later...but I want to reiterate that my assumption as to the direction of correlation and conjecture as to the nature of causation is secondary. I'm really rousing myself from avoiding with engaging a particular "discourse" because of the intellectual exhaustion which ensues. Cultural anthropology is too important to leave to the.... Where are the Libertarians at Netroots Nation?. No idea where the causation is, but my personal experience as a libertarian-leaning individual (though less so as the years go by) among liberals is that I'm classed as a "Neandertal conservative" by my intellectual and moral superiors. Of course libertarians generally have the same attitude toward social conservatives, but a modus vivendi has developed between the two subculture which allows for collaboration despite personal distaste (in fact, liberals and libertarians tend to socialize more in urban areas because of shared cultural values, which I think may explain part of the issue: they know each other too well, and the differences are magnified!) New Orleans’s Gender-Bending Rap. "Sissy bounce." Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care. Violation of O'Sullivan's Law? The Moral Naturalists. Much more over at Edge. Our moral nature does not entail the moral systems upon which agree, but, it is a starting point for any realistic discussion.