• [from Dan_Soltzberg] Book review: In the Loop – Knitting Now [we make money not art] – [Another form of handheld diversion – knitting. No chargers or connections necessary. Check out Mark Newport’s wonderful superhero pix halfway down the page.] In the Loop shows the different aspects of contemporary knitting practice and transforms our understanding of knitting away from retro hobby to mainstream craft and artform.
• [from steve_portigal] An Evolution In The Data Collected By Economists [ABC News] – [Recalling the adage "You manage what you measure"] The US is deluged with economic data, yet figures cannot conclusively answer even the most fundamental questions. A handful of data-loving economists are pushing for alternative measures to provide a clearer picture of how well the economy is working. No one is talking about jettisoning the GDP, the broadest measure of the nation's economic output. By combining that information with deeper understanding of how people live, work and feel, officials hope to identify economic trouble spots more quickly and make better policy decisions. Two new sets of statistics are due to be launched next year. The Labor Department is working on an enhanced time use study to track what Americans do all day and how they feel about those activities, a project that draws on Krueger's academic research. The Commerce Department is planning a new poverty metric it hopes will provide a more up-to-date measure of which groups are struggling to meet basic needs.

As the SF Chron tells us

The cry will go out from city hall in every hamlet and metropolis in Mexico tonight — and will be re-enacted in San Francisco and several other major U.S. cities — “Mexicanos y Mexicanas, Viva la Independencia Nacional! Viva Mexico!”

It’s Mexico’s Fourth of July: A commemoration of the day, 196 years ago, when Father Miguel Hidalgo, a parish priest in the village of Dolores in the state of Guanajuato, rang the church bell to rally his congregation, then gave the grito, or yell, that sparked the war for Mexican independence from Spain.

Just as it took the American patriots eight years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to win the Revolutionary War, so Mexico’s war of independence stretched on for 11 years. But Sept. 16, 1810, is the day Mexicans declared they would be free from colonial rule.

How lame is that! A “Fourth of July” that is celebrated in September…Does the US have some sort of branded monopoly on having a day of indpendence? I would think of the holiday as Mexican Independence Day, not “the 4th of July for those people.” I don’t want to throw the racist tag around too easily, but it smacks of something uncomfortable.

Elsewhere: Cinco de mayo is not the Mexican 4th of July

P.S. Hannukah is also not the “Jewish Christmas.”

According to a study of national personalities

which found that this time-honoured perception of our oh-so-unique Canadian psyche — and other cultures’ stereotypes of themselves — are in fact just so much hooey.

‘These stereotypes are as Canadians see themselves and Americans as they see themselves,’ said Robert McCrae of the U.S. National Institute on Aging, a principal investigator of the study on national personalities around the world.

‘Canadians think they’re extremely agreeable; the Americans think they’re very disagreeable,’ he said. ‘Canadians believe that they’re very calm and not irritable, very even-tempered, whereas Americans think they’re more anxious and hostile.

‘The fact is Canadians and Americans have almost identical average personality traits.’

In a measure of five main areas of personality, covering a total of 30 traits, Canadians and their U.S. cousins fell roughly in the middle. Not only that, but they weren’t all that different from other cultures around the globe, researchers found.

The study, published in the latest issue of Science, collected data through personality questionnaires given to thousands of people living in 49 countries.