On hiatus

I'm taking a leave of absence until late May so updates will be sporadic for the next few weeks.

If you'd like to receive an e-mail notification when there's a new post, e-mail me; you'll get an "out of office" reply but I'll get the message. Or, you can track new posts via Buzzworthy's RSS feeds (versions 0.91 and 1.0 available.)

Getting unstuck

"You're going nowhere fast in your job. But it doesn't have to be that way." That's the intro to an interesting story in today's Wall Street Journal about How to Get Unstuck, career-wise, against the backdrop of a jobless recovery.

The first pecking order

Sure, Mom and Dad may say they love all the kids equally but the foundations for inequality in later life begin at home, says sociologist Dalton Conley.

Because, says Conley, families develop pecking orders that are shaped by larger social forces and their own changing circumstances. Economic ups and downs, wars, tax policies, access to health care -- even the timing of a divorce -- create ripples that may carry a family's children in different directions.

That's especially true in lower-income families, he says in his new book, "The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why" (Pantheon, 309 pages, $24), because parents often invest the bulk of their limited resources in one promising child.

Which leads to Conley's most startling claim -- that 75 percent of the income inequality in the United States is within families, not between them. Learning how siblings diverge, he says, could shed light on why some of us are poor, others rich.

Read more of P-I reporter Cecelia Goodnow's exploration of Conley's book. Other sociologists tell Goodnow that they're skeptical of his thesis -- but admit they haven't read his book.

Recovering from clutter

Being a packrat isn't just a sign of poor housekeeping; it could be "a very real problem," writes the Sacramento Bee's Alison apRoberts, recounting her visit to a self-help group for clutterers.

(From Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store and reading Room.)

Games to fine art

Are video games art? Or, rather, should they be exhibited in museums and studied by academics like Degas sculptures? The Los Angeles Times ponders the question.