Jacob Jefferson Jakes

The 39%

Thomas DiPrete takes a slightly different view of the poll I quoted the other day from David Gergen and Michael Zuckermann in a CNN article. In Is This a Great Country? Upward Mobility and the Chance for Riches in Comtemporary America, Nov 28, 2005, he thinks this an extreme interpretation …

“We are all millionaires”, or most of us anyway

I read an interesting statistic in a column by David Gergen and Michael Zuckermann at cnn.com. Regarding income brackets, it references a 2000 survey where “no less than 19% considered themselves in the top 1% — and another 20% on top of that expected they would be soon.” It’s hard …

This Family, America

I confess I haven’t gotten around to reading the book, but I was interested in one things in the wiki page review of George Lakoff’s book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. The review notes conservatives understanding of the Country is a Family metaphor. It got me to thinking, …

My Language, My Tribe

I’ve been reading Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors, by Nicholas Wade. In the section on language he talks about how most areas revert to a mosaic pattern, where there are patches each representing a tribe with its own language. Tribes use language to identify who …