Important Note: The podcast I begged you to listen to is NOT on the media player at the top of the page - many of you made that mistake. Craig might not cry if his sister died can be heard here. I thought I made that quite clear to you mammals, but anyway, no hard feelings. And now, your featured blog post...
The first book I read after reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Blink was Freakonomics; I knocked all three of them out in something like ten days. And as impressed as I was with the outside-the-box thinking of Freakonomics, I wasn't in love with it the way seemingly everybody else was. Oh, it was interesting, but it wasn't nearly as well written as Gladwell's joints. Who knows - maybe I just picked the wrong time to read the thing...
Anyway, my favorite chapters in Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt's bestseller were (of course) the mind-blowing abortion chapter, but also the one that looks into the importance of a first name, and how it plays a role in career success.
A recent blog posting by Levitt asks the question How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You "Sound Black?":
"blacks who "sound black" earn salaries that are 10 percent lower than blacks who do not "sound black," even after controlling for measures of intelligence, experience in the work force, and other factors that influence how much people earn. (For what it is worth, whites who "sound black" earn 6 percent lower than other whites.)"
Imagine if Eminem spoke like me...
-Brad Spieser (Brad@TwinKilling.com)
7/8/08
