US interactive guide
November 10, 2010
AMERICA as a whole has just endured its sharpest recession since the 1930s, and the recovery is still fragile. But as our interactive map reveals, the pain has been spread very unevenly. The hardest-hit state, Nevada, has an unemployment rate more than three times as bad as that of North Dakota, the state that has done best on that measure. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, there is a close inverse correlation between growth rates and unemployment.
But what of politics? On the whole, the states with the worst unemployment levels tend to vote Democratic, and those with the best are in the Republican camp. Politicians will argue furiously about which way round the arrow of causation ought to run.
Interestingly, America’s ethnic composition seems to have little consistent economic impact. States with large numbers of Hispanics (by far the fastest-growing ethnic group in America) include low-growth/high unemployment states like California and Nevada, as well as good performers like Texas and New Mexico.
Iceman
November 5, 2010
Here is a pic from a pre-iceman warmup ride thanks to Jamie Dinkins. Looks like it going to be fun! 
Human Development
November 4, 2010
An interesting article taken from the economist.
Some countries are making great strides in human development, others less so
SINCE 1980 the country that has made the greatest strides in improving human development is Nepal, according to the UN’s annual Human Development Index (HDI). The index is a combination of three sub-indices covering wealth, health and education. The countries whose HDI has improved the most since 1980 are mainly in Asia. China and India have been helped by rapid GDP growth, but even slower-growing countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh have fostered human development by making progress in health and education. The countries where HDI has improved the least are mainly in Africa, with Zimbabwe at the bottom of the pile.
For the first time this year the UN’s report also considers the unevenness in the distribution of wealth, health and education among a country’s people to produce a new inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) which penalises countries according to the inequality of their development. This reduces countries’ 2010 HDI scores by 22% on average. China’s HDI is reduced by 23% and India’s by 30%, which suggests that the former’s rapid development has been the more equitable.
