Eric Fischer has a fascinating series of images that show racial segregation in our cities - different racial groups are marked with different colored dots.  The Baton Rouge map is here.

When we were moving here, everyone told us to be sure to live east of Park Blvd., and south of Government Street.  I've taken an excerpt from the map and helpfully highlighted the corner of Park and Government in black for you.

Bonus points if you can find LSU graduate student housing.

How is a fractal like inequality?

Income is very uneven at large scales and at small scales.
[...]
We are going to go from global to the US to the New York City metro area to the neighborhood of NYU in Manhattan. At each scale, there is a remarkably high level of inequality across space.

The pictures are interesting and impressive.

You can't teach "reading" by itself. Reading is always about something, and you can only teach the "something":

Reading is not an abstract transferable skill (except at the most basic levels of literacy). Hirsch and Pondiscio note that “poor readers” do well when faced with a passage whose subject matter is familiar to them, “outperforming even ‘good readers’ who lack relevant background knowledge.” The problem is that knowledge in one area usually doesn’t help you to comprehend a text covering a different area.

Which brings to mind the last two books I've read.

One, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, is about a group of robed monks who live in a clock and band together to deal with a nuclear-powered alien starship.

The second, The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is about a kid growing up in Baltimore.

And I found the first one much, much easier to read. Sad as it is, I've read enough cheezy speculative fiction to have the relevant background knowledge - I know about the different worlds such writers create, and I can pick out the things that are important in that kind of story.

On the other hand, I know nothing about black culture. What's a dashiki? What's dap? Or bop? Why does a recent haircut protect you from gang violence? None of it makes any sense.