These links thought they could slink away, but we caught them.

The statistical results were striking. The things you prefer – tastes that you like to think of as personal, unique, justified only by sensibility – correspond tightly to defining measures of social class: your profession, your highest degree and your father’s profession.  

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Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit. Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts for social dominance through culture are exactly what drive the dynamics within communities whose members are regarded as hipsters. – The New York Times

• TSA Sexual Assault – The TSA has gone too far, too damn far. Sign the petition to stop it.
• The Sociology of Hipsterism – A French philosopher in 1979 explained the essential sociology behind post-modern hipsterism in the 2000s. What, you’re surprised this is from The New York Times?
• Growth: Why Is America So Rich – In a short blog post, the Economist reminds us that America is still the land of opportunity and wealth. And in another, reminds us how Social Security helps keep it that way.
• A Cop’s Advice On Dealing With The Police – We have a lot more rights than we think, but police do everything they can to make sure we don’t know that when they deal with us.
• Space-time cloak to conceal events – A freaking cloaking device. For events and information, not just stuff. Damn.
• Got Science? – Take a quiz on global warming, get a sticker.
• Want the good life? Your neighbors need it too. – How inequality is bad for public health. No, seriously.