random links

Cleaning out the “to blog” emails in my inbox:
“The next explanation for American superiority is a healthy indifference to first sons. Bloom and Van Reenen report that the practice of handing a family firm down from father to oldest son is five times more common in France and Britain than in the United States. Not surprisingly, this anti-meritocratic practice does not always produce good managers. So even though the best European companies are managed roughly as well as the best American ones, there’s a fat tail of second-rate firms in Europe that’s absent in the United States.”
The various versions of the gay-pride rainbow flag. Kinda sad the “hot pink” stripe went away because of fabric-shortage issues.
Poor, stupid Ron Wayne.
Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury: An Examination of Masculinity and Stardom in Contemporary Society.
Video of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. I’d always known Django was the first great guitarist of the 20th century; I had no idea that he had basically two fingers to work with. (He doesn’t really get going until the second half of the video.)
Also, remember that King Chango is not the same as King Django.