Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury
From the October issue of Vanity Fair, a profile of the phenomenon that is Sarah Palin.
Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits
Interesting article from today’s New York Times. The article describes several studies which indicate that studying material in a variety of settings increases retention. Study in the dorm room a bit, then go to the coffee shop, then to the library.
I have heard of businesses requiring their employees to move desks every couple weeks for similar reasons—it seems to increase creative output when people are placed into unfamiliar surroundings.
DAY JOBS is a collection of business cards from fictional universes.
Christopher Hitchens on Stieg Larsson
Christopher Hitchens profiled Stieg Larsson last year in Vanity Fair. He speculated about how much of the Millenium trilogy is based on fact and whether Larsson’s early death might have been the result of nefarious activities by the kinds of people who might expect to show up in a Larsson book.
Remembering Katrina, five years ago.
The Big Picture posts a set of photos of Katrina—some of the initial devastation, some from now. These photos reminded me how much I liked Zeitoun (Dave Eggers). If you haven’t read it, you should.
MLS Player Salaries: Crunching The Numbers
Grant Wahl crunches the numbers on MLS player salaries.
The MLS Players Union released its updated list of salaries for every MLS player on Thursday, providing the first clear look at the earnings of newly-added stars like New York’s Thierry Henry and Rafael Márquez, who instantly became the league’s second- and third-highest-paid players. When I posted the link on my Twitter page, a lot of my non-U.S. readers were startled that so much detailed salary information was available, considering it’s unheard of in the world’s other leagues. This is sensitive information, after all, and you certainly don’t see most people (me included) publicizing their salaries for the world to see.
Why would the MLS Players Union release this information? Because the transparency helps the collective, allowing players on the lower end of the pay scale to negotiate higher salaries than they would otherwise. And in MLS the lower end of the scale, as we know, can be awfully low. Still, the minimum salary for a senior player has risen to $40,000, which is better than it used to be.
I fed the latest MLS salary numbers into my spreadsheet and came up with some useful stats. Keep in mind, the salaries below reflect a player’s guaranteed annual income over 12 months.
