Random links
- McDonald's opens vegetarian-only restaurant
- Not too surprisingly it's in India. Also interesting: "In India, its menu is typically 50% vegetarian."
- Warming Up to the Officeless Office
- I wonder if a productivity hit might be the actual result even if workers do report more collaboration. A lot of people seem to think that multi-tasking improves their performance, but the actual productivity implications seem grim. Still, even if there is a hit on productivity it might still be worth it. e.g., "GlaxoSmithKline says it has saved nearly $10 million annually in real-estate costs by gradually shifting 1,200 employees at its Research Triangle Park, N.C., office to unassigned seating" - that's a savings of about $8000/employee-year.
- The curious allure of child preachers
- The quote from one professor mentioned in the article seems to sum it up: "I think the appeal is frankly the novelty of it. It's a kind of a carnival side-show"
- Poverty, single mothers and mobility
- The last graph seemed to me to be the most interesting. "The Nordic countries have the lowest overall poverty rates. But in absolute terms their advantage is much bigger for single mothers. ... The US and UK have the largest difference in poverty rates between single mothers and overall poverty. That is, we have the largest poverty penalty for single motherhood. If the relative poverty rates for single mothers were lower in the US, we might spend more time and money addressing poverty and less trying to change family structures." Wouldn't the reason for the Nordic countries having lower single mother poverty rates likely be due to the existing high government expenditures there for things like childcare which seem to amount to a large subsidy to the single parent lifestyle? i.e. wouldn't there be less money - not more - available to divert to dealing with other poverty?