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And it's even more nuanced than that. Someone might be very interested, on an absolute scale, in some subject. But as long as he's even more interested in social reassurance, gossip, networking, status, and so on, he will prefer conversations that revolve around those instead. It's a matter of priority. Yeah, there's a latent physics geek in his brain, but when he asks you about next week's weather, his goal is imprecise small talk, not a discussion of turbulence models.

"I want to say true things, but apparently other people want to hear lies," I thought to myself. But I now know that it's more nuanced than that. Typical people ("non-geeks") do care about truth when it directly relates to what they're interested in: usually social status and mating, and if they're unfortunate, survival. Generally, they're not interested in more abstract subjects.

I interpreted people way too literally. If they talked or asked about X, I assumed they were curious about X. I didn't grasp that small talk is about entertainment and insecurity: the speakers reassure each other of their companionship; gauge each other's abilities, motivations, and desires; signal tribal affiliation; share gossip; and determine their places in the pecking order. It has nothing to do with X. X is just a pretence.

Even as I became conscious of this, I often acted the same way out of principle. Alas.

For example, something that bugged me about the re-imagined "Battlestar Galatica" series was that a group of only 38,000 survivors, apparently with no more automation technology than the real world, and under constant military threat, have a humming specialized economy. It includes arms manufacturing, ore processing, and even illegal niche industries like child prostitution. It can do these things in addition to maintaining and operating a fleet of sophisticated spacecraft, running intensive military operations, and feeding, clothing, and sheltering everyone. It usually feels more like a population of half a million than 38,000.

But some of the episodes feature shortages of labor or resources, and I like it when this happens. It seems more real. It's easier to empathize with the characters because I can better feel the bleakness of their situation and their challenges seem less contrived.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612033

I was worried that someone might read that Texas's per-capita spending is higher than California's and draw the conclusion that this is a big reason for why California's schools suck. I've heard a lot of people make arguments like that. "Small Country X spends so much more per capita on Y! (Implied: That must be why Y sucks for us, and our lives would be better if our country would spend more on it.)"

So I gave one reason why the returns California and Texas get from their respective textbook purchases are probably not proportional to their per-capita budgets.

Higher-population states can better take advantage of economies of scale. Overhead costs can be spread across a larger number of taxpayers, and for this reason alone, higher-population states will often have lower per-capita costs.

Maybe they will stop caring, but I don't think that's what Weber was saying. (I'm not even sure it was a subtext.) I understood Weber's line in a totally literal sense.

What are "career management skills"? Two interpretations come to my mind.

The author could mean a tendency to constantly worry about how one's resume will look to big companies. If this is the case, why does Microsoft care? A person who, whenever considering a new project, worries about how it will affect his resume is more likely to get stolen by a competing big company, since big companies generally prefer conservative resumes. However, a person who isn't scared to have a resume with many jobs at failed startups is more likely to get stolen by a startup, since they generally don't care if a person has such a resume (they may even prefer it), and also because the person probably has lots of contacts in the startup world. In the American technology industry today, headhunting is a danger regardless of how conservative the employee's resume is.

Another interpretation is that by "career management skills" the author means a willingness to take a steady, well-paying job when one has a family to support. This makes sense: what would you think of someone who insists on working for startups, even at the cost of having trouble feeding his three children and being forced to live in a dangerous neighborhood? But perhaps he doesn't have a family. Or perhaps the spouse has a steady job to support the kids. Or perhaps he has a trust fund or a bunch of money from a previous startup. There are so many exceptions that a resume full of failed startups is not a reliable signal of this kind of irresponsibility.

Neither of these interpretations makes much sense. But there's a less charitable interpretation: "I love people who take risks and follow their passions, but not too much, because then they'd balk at the crap we'd make them do."

The author observes the habits of modern-day college students and assigns a deep meaning to them. Whenever he notices some superficial similarity between two activities (hey, having lots of low-commitment sexual partners is just like moving quickly from one webpage to another!) he points it out. Whenever he can quote some literary figure saying something roughly similar to what he's been writing about, he does. It reads like deliberate Stuff White People Like bait.

If any of your ancestors are from Europe, you may be able to claim citizenship in their country of origin. This is the legal principle of jus sanguinis. The Wikipedia article on jus sanguinis has a list of countries that have that style of citizenship law (not all are European).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis

This is cool, because -- as I understand it -- if you're a citizen of a European Union member country, you can legally work anywhere else in the EU. For example, if you can claim Spanish citizenship through your grandfather, you can go work at a startup in London. (Starting your own company might be a different matter, though.)

If you're descended from Jews, you may be able to claim Israeli citizenship. I don't know much about this, but Israel does have a startup scene.

Now that's a dangerous heuristic. Never purchase a house, car, education, or medical treatment, except with cash?

I'm sure that's true, but it doesn't answer the real question. For most parents, the question is: given my child's particular environment, what is the greatest threat to him?

Doctorow is saying: given that your child was attacked (and no additional information), the attacker is more likely than not to be a relative. That seems backwards.

The investment metaphor is interesting. I often meet people who are clearly trying very hard to like obscure bands. Perhaps they do this (consciously or not) so that if the group becomes famous, they can retroactively claim coolness; they can point to their early investment as evidence that were (and supposedly still are) in tune with artistic trends.

But this theory predicts that people who make a point of liking obscure bands will be happy as the band gains popularity. And that doesn't always match my observations. These people often seem genuinely upset as their favorite obscure bands become popular.

At least for this example, the investment metaphor doesn't seem to work. These kinds of people appear to be after social exclusivity, not growth.

There may be other preference-related explanations. Perhaps men are more likely than women to opt out of heterosexual relationships (e.g. by being gay or happily single).

Then there are demographic explanations. Our species is not perfectly gender-balanced; there are (slightly) more women than men.