News – Page 239 – Quixotic Pedagogue

Just How Smart Are You?

We try and try again to convince ourselves and others around us that we’re clearly different from the rest. The aptly named “better-than-average effect” describes the tendency of most people to judge themselves to be harder workers, smarter investors, better lovers, cleverer storytellers, kinder friends, and more competent parents. A wide variety of studies have shown that across the board, no matter what the ability in question, only the most minute fraction of people are willing to describe themselves as “below average.” Ninety percent of us believe ourselves to be in the top 10 percent in terms of overall intelligence and ability. At the very least, we have to congratulate ourselves on our creative statistics. This phenomenon is also sometimes known as the “Lake Wobegon effect,” after the fictional town described by radio show host Garrison Keillor as a place where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” In our minds, it seems, we are all proud citizens of Lake Wobegon.

—The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

May 26, 2010/by dpogreba

Lack of Health Care and Death

Fact of the Day

Later in this book, we’ll take a detailed look at Nikki White’s tragic encounter with America’s health care system. But the larger tragedy is that Ms. White is not alone. Government and academic studies report that more than twenty thousand Americans die in the prime of life each year from medical problems that could be treated, because they can’t afford to see a doctor. On September 11, 2001, some three thousand Americans were killed by terrorists; our country has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But that same year, and every year since then, some twenty thousand Americans died because they couldn’t get health care. That doesn’t happen in any other developed country. Hundreds of thousands of Americans go bankrupt every year because of medical bills. That doesn’t happen in any other developed country either.

—The Healing of America by T.R. Reid

May 25, 2010/by dpogreba

Wasteland Detroit

Fact of the Day

Like many of Detroit’s abandoned buildings, though, it’s anything but deserted. Rather, it’s a hive of activity, buzzing with scavengers, vandals, late-night revelers, arsonists, photographers and urban explorers who brave the crumbling buildings’ many hazards and create a good number of their own. The complex remains unguarded.

“Mayhem. That’s what they should call the place,” says John, a 36-year-old telephone-line repairman who spends his spare time exploring Detroit’s legendary industrial ruins. “If you decide you want to push a dump truck out of a window, this is the place to do it.”

Detroit has 80,000 abandoned lots and buildings, according to the city’s planning department. Old housing projects, homes, strip malls and even high-rise buildings sit empty across much of the city. Motown has more vacant office, retail and industrial space than nearly every other big city in the country.
Like many of Detroit’s abandoned buildings, though, it’s anything but deserted. Rather, it’s a hive of activity, buzzing with scavengers, vandals, late-night revelers, arsonists, photographers and urban explorers who brave the crumbling buildings’ many hazards and create a good number of their own. The complex remains unguarded.
“Mayhem. That’s what they should call the place,” says John, a 36-year-old telephone-line repairman who spends his spare time exploring Detroit’s legendary industrial ruins. “If you decide you want to push a dump truck out of a window, this is the place to do it.”

Images of Detroit

May 24, 2010/by dpogreba

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Images of Detroit