The Most Foolish American: George W. Bush?

by Rio Flores on April 4th, 2007

[Via Crooksandliars.com]“Phoenix Fox 10 News runs a poll to see who is “the most foolish American” and the host proclaims—Britney Spears the winner! That wouldn’t be surprising except that the real winner of the poll was…..drum roll please……George Bush….”

This is surprising, given the traditional bent of fox news viewers. At first, I thought it might be a typo, but it looks legit. If you add up all totals, you’ll get 99%.

“No demographic segment, other than Republicans, was as united in supporting Bush. Conservatives, white evangelical Christians, gun owners, and supporters of the Iraq war all gave Bush fewer votes than did regular Fox News viewers.”

-University of Maryland Study, 2003

The Digg Mafia Turning Users Away? Digg Failing? Let’s digg a Little Deeper…

by Rio Flores on February 18th, 2007

A recently Dugg (and then buried) post by Ajay over at Techtities.com draws attention to a recent fall in traffic to Digg.com. He essentially, declares the sky falling on Digg. Apparently, Kevin Rose must do something “before the Digg Mafia drive away all the normal users.” Eek.

While I have my own concerns about Digg, let’s take a closer look at the data. As Ajay points out, there does appear to be a bit of a drop off.

Now, let’s dig a little deeper…

Oh Look, del.icio.us is experiencing the same trend! Oh look, craigslist.org is experiencing almost exactly the same trend line!

Digg is hardly driving away users. Whatever is going on, it’s broader than Digg.

Plausible Explanations:

• While Digg’s demographics are generally broad and continuing to diversify, I’d argue that Digg’s most active contributors are students (not just undergrads) and others in academia. November, December and January are months particularly packed with exams and vacation days.
• These are holiday months. Every year the web experiences traffic lows during these months, when people are visiting with family, doing their X-mas shopping, tending to end of year closings and attempting to honor their New Years resolutions.
• Alternatively, perhaps Alexa is re-weighting their user base to reflect changing web demographics.

One final consideration: If you look at the very tail end of the graph, at least for now, it looks like Digg and these other sites are prepping to bounce back.

Money Changes Everything - The Challenges of Economic Inequality Among Friends

by Rio Flores on May 8th, 2006

Last Sunday’s New York Times Styles section has a great article inspired by the recent film, Money Changes Everything. It dives into the awkwardness of large economic disparities among friends, of all ages, which the article suggests are largely the result of two recent phenomena. The first is the very rapid income growth of the top 1% and even 5% percent of the population when most Americans are seeing their real wages stagnate or decline. The second is the much higher numbers of college students from lower-income households (even if, as a percentage of total students enrolled, this number is shrinking).

Perhaps surprisingly to some, the pressure to blend in among peers is intense and goes in both directions. There is probably the better known story of individuals like me who attended college on scholarships and students loans. Many of my friends drove cars my parents couldn’t afford. I left college with over $70k in college debt and $7,000 in credit card debt - much of that the result trying to keep up with my better financially off international friends.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those affluent students who prefer to simply blend in – feigning an inability pay for a taxi or brining up other gripes so as to not put off their less wealthy peers.

I highly recommend reading the full article here.

Chinese vs. American Students - Scary

by Rio Flores on April 20th, 2006

Bill and Melinda Gates, Oprah and a bunch of clueless students demonstrate very clearly how our public schools are a complete wreck. The clip:

read more | digg story

Atheists are America’s Most Distrusted Minority

by Rio Flores on March 23rd, 2006

Based on a telephone survey of more than 2,000 households, University researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.”

The primary author behind the study believes that a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”