Assorted links

1. What Bill Gates reads (short answer: lots of pop social science).

2. Someone should tell this reporter at the Seattle Times, and the mayoral candidates she writes about, that treating unconditional earnings differences between subgroups as if they mean something serves only to demonstrate ignorance of the relevant literature.

3. Literacy test for voters (not all voters, of course) in Louisiana before the civil rights era. How did the people who wrote and administered such things sleep at night? Or sit through a church service?

4. Avoiding budget hotels in China.

5. Cool space shuttle booster video.

Hat tip on #2 to Ken Troske.