Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-glut

Following Tyler Cowen's suggestion, I bought Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-glut at Amazon. When it arrived, I sadly realized that it had no tables, graphs or equation and it was full of references to Foucault.
To my own suprise, I loved the book. It is an amazing guide to serious qualitative research in the social sciences and Kristin Luker is a terrific writer. Strongly recommended.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Do not complain when you are stuck on an airport

In 1850:
- The cost of a coast to coast trip in the USA was around US$200 (about US$ 5000 in 2008 dollars), around half of the income of an unskilled worker. The trip took between 4 and 6 months. (On the other hand, a ticket from Sweden to New York was around US$ 17-25 and took less than a couple of months.)
Source: Clay, Karen e Jones, Randall Jones. Migration to Riches from the California Gold Rush. The Journal of Economic History, v.68, n.4, Dec 2008, p. 997-1027