Coyote Blog

I don't really do news roundup posts, because losts of other folks do them better.  But there were a few things I wanted to blog on today and just don't have time, and rather than lose them, here they are briefly:

1. Twitter seems to be the data mining tool of the future.  I have seen a number of dynamic maps and graphs of late using Twitter data.  The NY Times has as good of an example as any with this dynamic map showing twitter content by city and time during the Superbowl.  Flowing Data has a bunch more.   Just remember the rules before you data mine:   Cool, trendy application run by hip Internet guys  -- data mining OK.  Bad evil credit card company trying to make billion dollar credit decisions -- data mining not OK.
2. This is one of the first times I have seen an Internet contest like this go on for so long without a  winner.  Twelve structures, you just need to say which is a church and which is not.
3. There has always been a certain cognitive dissonance between a) media portrayals of employment at Wal-Mart as equivilent to a new ring in Dant's inferno and b) the reality of lines hundreds of persons long for just a few job openings at Wal-Mart.  Charles Platt was curious about this too, and so set out to work at Wal-Mart to see what it was like.

HT:  Maggie's Farm for the second two.

Doogie Horner creates a classification system for heavy metal band names that pretty awesome (click to enlarge).

I saw it first at FlowingData, a website and blog about the graphical representation of data that I can't believe I have never visited before.  Other cool graphics include the Walmart growth video.  Lots of ways to waste time on this site, if you are a geek like me.

Collectivists, Progressives, and anti-capitalists have apparently moved on from Halliburton and targeted Walmart as the Satan of the moment.  Walmart is charge with everything from destroying communities to mistreating employees.

What most of these attacks overlook is that no one shops or works at Walmart except by their own free will - that shopping there or working there are better than their other choices.  Cafe Hayek points out this rather obvious but consistently overlooked point.  However, it is a hallmark of "progressives" that they distrust individual decision-making, so I guess it is not so surprising.  You can't compare jobs to some mythical ideal and claim that they don't measure up - jobs measure up or not only in comparison to other available opportunities.