Assorted Links

1. 180 Current trends in inequality in Britain and Worldwide
   
   
2. Forget the Placebo Effect: It’s the ‘Care Effect’ That Matters (via Patricia Morita)
   
   
3. New Head of UN Population Division
   
   
4. Dangers of artificial intelligence: Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity
   
   
5. Lectureships in Human Geography – University of Bristol
   
   
6. Top 5 city destroyers of all time - of course Godzilla couldn't be out of this list!
   
   
7. Don’t come to Britain posters (via MR)
   
   
8. Jerven on Measuring African Poverty and Progress
   
   
9. The effect of Air Pollution Control on Life Expectancy in the United States
   
   
10. Rainfall Deficit as a predictor of U.S.-Bound Migration from Rural Mexico
    
    
11. Does Human Capital Tend to Cluster in Center Cities or the Suburbs?

[Image Credit: Michelle Hopgood]

Out for vacation!

Dear readers, I will be out of office for a couple of days with restricted access to emails. I've scheduled a few posts to run in the meantime. ok?

Yes mom... I've got my jacket...

Pop-Up Economics, by Tim Harford

Tim Harford has a new radio series on the BBC called Pop-Up Economics. It's highly recommended!

The next epidose will talk about Thomas Schelling. I'm looking forward to listening to it !

Average Traffic Density of US Highways (1944)

Eric Fischer has found this awesome map showing the predicted average traffic density of US highways in 1944 (via Tim De Chant). Since they didn't have the GIS technology we have today, how do you think they did this? 

[Click on the image to enlarge it]

[Image Credit: Eric Fisher via Per Square Mile]

Related Links:

• London's Daytime Population
• Daytime Population in the United States
• Population Density Maps
• 3D Density Map
• London Urban Form 3D Map

Off-topic: A regular day of traffic in Russia

(via uhull)

Quote of the Day

"The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones"

(it's hard to find who said it first)

How Much Does a Good Boss Really Matter?

A new podcast by S. Dubner talking about this working paper: "The Value of Bosses".
If you're curious about the answer but don't have much time to read the full paper, listen to the podcast or just read the abstract !





ps. I'm not sure if their findings could be applied to universities or research institutions. But why not?

How the U.S. lost out on iPhone Work

@cduhigg and @KeithBradsher for the NYT:

"Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States. In China, it took 15 days"

 This article is  outdated by over a year now  very interesting!

Assorted Links

1. Heading for success: or how not to title your paper (via David Levinson)
   
   
2. The 10 largest African cities in 2013
   
   
3. PAA 2013 Preliminary Program (via Eddie Hunsinger)
   
   
4. The Rio favela transformed into prime real estate (via Andres Marroquin)
   
   
5. Muddy Waters in Manchester (1964)
   
   
6. A monumental burden: Should Washington DC build skyscrapers?
   
   
7. Mapping climate change (via Per Square Mile)
   
   
8. The Skyscraper Index

Replay: World Population Distribution Map

Tired with those traditional World Population Distribution Maps ?

Bill Rankin came up with this creative way to understand population distribution in our planet!

ps. it got me thinking about Global Warming and sea levels, desertification, etc.