Valdis Krebs:

As both presidential campaigns sprint toward the finish line I took one more look at the political books being bought in October 2008 and the patterns they created.

The arrows in the network map above show which books were "also bought" together. A-->B shows that customers who bought A, also bought B. Click on the map above for a larger view.

A few surprising patterns...

Complete Polarization

Caleb Crain:

If industrial capitalism is fostering loneliness, then neither science nor political philosophy is likely to save us from it.

From the archive:

Here the purpose of the personality tests administered by career coaches becomes clear. They are useless as measures of ability and experience, but they may be reliable indicators of those who are "cheerful, enthusiastic, and obedient." The dismal experiences of many middle-aged job seekers suggest that corporations would rather find conformists among younger workers who haven't been discarded by employers and aren't skeptical about their work.

The sheer amount of sewing done by gentlewomen in those days sometimes takes us moderns aback, but it would probably generally be a mistake to view it either as merely constant joyless toiling, or as young ladies turning out highly embroidered ornamental knicknacks to show off their elegant but meaningless accomplishments.

Lonely together

John Lanchester:

It seems loopy that the cure for a disaster caused by a headlong dash in the direction of ever freer capital markets should be even freer capital markets; but that is part of Robert Shiller’s point. When it comes to the free global movement of capital, there is no plan B.

From the archive:

Dive into the sea, or stay away.

"I have no Plan B," Mr. McCain said.

That the Internet and housing hyperinflations transpired within a period of ten years, each creating trillions of dollars in fake wealth, is, I believe, only the beginning. There will and must be many more such booms, for without them the economy of the United States can no longer function.

Melting into Air

David Kynaston:

Amid the bewildering complexities of the global financial crisis, one simple fact stands out: the little we have left needs to go a lot further. Fear not! We'll show you how to endure the forthcoming recession with a bit of grit, some nous and the wise advice of our post-war forebears. And you never know, you might have a laugh or two along the way ... To begin our special issue, a celebration of the true heroine of austerity Britain: the housewife.

From a month ago:

A solution requires the country to begin to spend what it earns, reduce its mountainous debt, and address massive liabilities, restructure Social Security, pension deficits, military, and Medicare. No wonder politicians would rather spend more of your money now rather than address these problems.

The Austerity Issue: don't panic

John Steele Gordon:

Fueled by easy credit, the real-estate market had been rising swiftly for some years. Members of Congress were determined to assure the continuation of that easy credit. Suddenly, the party came to a devastating halt. Defaults multiplied, banks began to fail. Soon the economic troubles spread beyond real estate. Depression stalked the land.

The year was 1836.

The nexus of excess speculation, political mischief, and financial disaster—the same tangle that led to our present economic crisis—has been long and deep. Its nature has changed over the years as Americans have endeavored, with varying success, to learn from the mistakes of the past. But it has always been there, and the commonalities from era to era are stark and stunning. Given the recurrence of these themes over the course of three centuries, there is every reason to believe that similar calamities will beset the system as long as human nature and human action play a role in the workings of markets.

Recently, and from 2004:

If at first you don't succeed, at least learn from your mistakes.

Speculators, Politicians, and Financial Disasters

Malcolm Gladwell:

Can underprivileged outsiders have an advantage?

The Uses of Adversity

George Orwell:

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.

Politics and the English Language

Bernardo A. Huberman:

We present a method for accurately predicting the long time popularity of online content from early measurements of user access. Using two content sharing portals, Youtube and Digg, we show that by modeling the accrual of views and votes on content offered by these services we can predict the long-term dynamics of individual submissions from initial data. In the case of Digg, measuring access to given stories during the first two hours allows us to forecast their popularity 30 days ahead with remarkable accuracy, while downloads of Youtube videos need to be followed for 10 days to attain the same performance. The differing time scales of the predictions are shown to be due to differences in how content is consumed on the two portals: Digg stories quickly become outdated, while Youtube videos are still found long after they are initially submitted to the portal. We show that predictions are more accurate for submissions for which attention decays quickly, whereas predictions for evergreen content will be prone to larger errors.

See also, from February:

We analyze the role that popularity and novelty play in attracting the attention of users to dynamic websites.

From 2007:

Novelty within groups decays with a stretched-exponential law, suggesting the existence of a natural time scale over which attention fades.

From 2002:

The amount of money that participants were willing to trade off against status corresponded to the power distance index of the respective culture. The power distance index of a culture has been shown to be correlated with the importance and acceptance of status symbols in that culture. Finally, the amount of status seeking observed was different among men and women, an intriguing observation that deserves further work.

Predicting the popularity of online content

Ben Casnocha:

If you want to find a smart person who has time to be your friend, try to find a bad self-promoter.

Consider, as well, this bit of Hamming, from the archive:

Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.

To Find Good, Underrated People, De-Emphasize Popular Filters

Onora O'Neill:

We say we no longer trust our public services, institutions or the people who run them. Politicians, accountants, doctors, scientists, businessmen, auditors and many others are treated with suspicion. Their word is doubted, their motives are questioned.

Trust is needed not because everything is wholly predictable, or wholly guaranteed, but on the contrary because life has to be led without guarantees.

From the archive:

Francis Fukuyama argues that the most pervasive cultural characteristic influencing a nation's prosperity and ability to compete is the level of trust or cooperative behavior based upon shared norms.

He argues that the United States has been a high-trust society historically but that this status has eroded in recent years. This well-researched book provides a fresh, new perspective on how economic prosperity is grounded in social life.

A Question Of Trust