Quick overviews of a few topics

1. Understanding why the web can be very annoying. This runs from Facebook's fan pages having trouble reaching their users to the websites that break up stories into multiple pages in order to maximize ad impressions. All of this is correlated to those providing a free service making their service worse because they want to be paid a little bit more for their services. (Hat tip: MR)

2. Understanding the unrest in the middle east: There is a positive correlation between groups with high average IQs and how cooperative they are. There is a negative correlation between countries with high IQs and how religious they are. The middle east is full of countries with large youth bulges and bad economic policy that keeps these youths unemployed and looking for trouble.  Which of these factors are most important is an exercise that determines how politically correct the reader is.

3.  QE3. This issue isn't going to be cleared up in a few links. But there are a few things to keep in mind.

a. Members of the Federal Reserve really did shift their viewpoints on the proper roll of monetary policy - this new easing program wasn't just a reaction to bad economic data and the upcoming fiscal tightening. Those who follow the markets can work out their own implication from that.

b. It will be inflationary, but not as inflationary as some people think.

Key quote for those who think hyperinflation is around the corner:

"The Fed is buying bonds in the secondary market.
In contrast, during the German hyper-inflation, government tax revenue was as low as 1% of government spending – the rest of the spending was done by printing money with no intent to collect the taxes needed to pay for it."

4. Finally, despite what you might have read or been told, "dork" did not originally mean whale penis.