• These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality — at their expense.
• Tufts University psychologist Samuel Sommers • Describing his study, published in the peer-reviewed Perspectives on Psychological Science, which shows that some white people feel that, as blacks gain ground in society, they’re falling behind. Which is to say that, due to societal changes, many whites feel they receive detrimental treatment compared to blacks. It’s a perception which, while felt by some whites, isn’t necessarily true, according to Sommers. On top of flying in the face of ample evidence to the contrary, he notes that it’s felt worst in the job market. “Economists have documented over and over again that it takes twice as many resumes to get a call back from an employer if you have a black-sounding name,” he says. This is a study we wish didn’t exist. We still have a way to go. (thanks reallyfoxnews) source

• 6% of the economy relies on tourists to visit the Asian country
• 15% of the country’s workforce works in the tourism industry source

• Oh boy, this is getting testy. YouTube and Viacom’s long-running lawsuit is still going on, and if anything, it’s heating up. On one side is Viacom, claiming the site was designed around copyright infringement. On the other is YouTube/Google, claiming that Viacom’s conduct suggests the company if full of hypocrites. Who’s right? Take a gander for yourself:

Viacom’s corner: “You’re stealing our stuff!”

• YouTube was intentionally built on infringement and there are countless internal YouTube communications demonstrating that YouTube’s founders and its employees intended to profit from that infringement.
• A statement from Viacom • Regarding what they feel is a culture of copyright infringement – a statement they released after documents from a lawsuit between the two firms became public today. Viacom first sued the Google-owned company in 2007 for $1 billion. They used old statements from the founders suggesting that they knew what they were doing – ripping off copyrighted content.

YouTube’s corner: “You guys are total hypocrites!”

• Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. … Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt ‘very strongly’ that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
• YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine • Giving his take on the lawsuit and documents on the site’s blog. He argues that YouTube is following the “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and Viacom themselves would send employees to a Kinkos for the singular purpose of uploading content to the site, going as far as “roughing up” the video to make it seem like it’s from a second-hand source. Oh, and allowing copyrighted video to just stay on the site. source

• 13% of all Web traffic to major portals comes from Facebook
• 7% of trafficcomes from Google; eBay is better, even! source

• 30.7% of 16-year-olds in 2008 had gotten their drivers’ license as soon as they possibly could
• 44.7% of 16-year-olds in 1988 did the same; modern kids say the don’t need it as much due to technology source

• Someone is all teched out. And who else isn’t? In a year where Facebook Connect became a constant companion because you just couldn’t remember another password to another site, John Mayer’s convinced that society at large needs a digital cleansing. And who’s to say he’s wrong? He has a pretty good point, guys.

• The Cleanse John Mayer wants everyone to take a week off of the social Web. “I’ll be defragmenting my mental and psychological hard drive during the first seven days of the new year, and I invite you all to participate.”
• the details He wants everyone interested to stop using social networking for one week, to only use their cell phones for calls, to only use their laptops for e-mail and to stop visiting celebrity gossip sites, because they rot the mind.
• will it work? Mayer passed the idea by people – to begin tomorrow and end January 8 – and saw some resistance. “If it is impossible, than my theory is already proven and we’re in big trouble as a society.” Good point. source

• Instead of warring with Bettelheim — or the bluenoses who have savaged ‘In the Night Kitchen’ — Sendak should curb the grouching and concede that he owes them a minor debt. There is no cheaper way to market your book than to have it banned or pilloried by the right people.
• Slate Columnist Jack Shafer • Discussing “Where the Wild Things Are” author Maurice Sendak’s propencity to brink up critics who have slighted the book in the past. Specifically, Sendak has an ax to grind with child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who said this about the book: “What’s wrong with the book is that the author was obviously captivated by an adult psychological understanding of how to deal with destructive fantasies in the child.” Shafer says that while he might have a stronger claim for the often-banned “In the Night Kitchen,” he thinks he needs to get off his high horse. • source

• Everything that I type, Everything that I do, some gossip site makes it news.
• Miley Cyrus • Discussing the nature of her leaving Twitter. It’s an unexpected departure, mainly because she did it so regularly and had so many fans. But an unintended side effect of those tweets was the way that the more direct, honest ones – about her weight, for example – turned into gossip. If some gossip site were talking about our site’s weight all the time, we’d be uncomfortable too. Instead, we have Christwire (hilariously) suggesting that our site’s founder is a criminal. • source

• Ron Jeremy as Harvey Levin. No, really. Obviously, we’re a safe for work site and we’re not linking to a porn site, but we’d be terrible at our job if we didn’t inform you of the existence of TMSlease, a parody of TMZ (and celebrity culture in general) which takes a look at gossip culture through porn. Ron Jeremy, by the way, does a great Harvey Levin parody. (The link leads to Gawker, BTW.) source