Katherine Boyle wrote a nice breakdown about artists in the United States last week for the Washington Post:

Instagram and Etsy have made everyone seem like artistic geniuses, but according to the National Endowment for the Arts, artists make up only 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force.

Congratulations, California. You’re still an artist haven, with Los Angeles and San Francisco boasting the highest percentages of artists in their workforces, according to the NEA’s city-to-city comparison. Artists make up 4.86 percent of the Los Angeles workforce and 4.3 percent of San Francisco’s. 

New York City is home to more artists than any other U.S. city, with 140,915 people engaged in artistic professions, but with a workforce of 4.1 million people, that’s only 3.4 percent of its total workforce. 

Design is the most common artistic profession in the United States, with a whopping 39 percent of artists in the workforce classifying themselves as designers. 

The NEA also published a state-by-state comparison of artists’ salaries. Washington, D.C. was included in the comparison and has the highest-paid artists in the country, with one in 10 making more than $125,000 a year.

1)      Raspberries- Low sugar content, 8 grams of fiber in one cup.

2)      Collard Greens- Calcium, Vitamins A + C, and other important nutrients.

3)      Peaches- Great source of potassium.

4)      Red Bell Peppers- High levels of Vitamin C and beta-carotine.

5)      Heirloom Tomatoes- Phytonutrient lycopene levels may help prevent prostate cancer.

Jump to Margaret Wertheim’s breakdown……

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
~Dalai Lama

David Eagleman writes a good 60 Second Read for Big Think:

Let’s say you’re on a very boring airplane ride over to Europe. During the event it might seem like it’s taking a long time.  But in retrospect, once you’ve gotten off the plane, it’s like there was no time there at all. 

The reason is you didn’t lay down any new footage during the flight.  There was nothing new happening.  There were no events and so when you look back on it you can’t remember it at all. 

And that’s of course what happens during a typical workweek or when you drive to work.  You’re doing something that you do all the time. Time shrinks retrospectively.  But if you go off for the weekend to some novel vacation, a place you’ve never been before, then you look back and you think, “Wow, that was very long weekend!”

“Eventually, everything goes away.”

Impermanence.

Description from Amazon:

We all know that underdogs can win-that’s what the David versus Goliath legend tells us, and we’ve seen it with our own eyes. Or have we? In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, with his unparalleled ability to grasp connections others miss, uncovers the hidden rules that shape the balance between the weak and the mighty, the powerful and the dispossessed. Gladwell examines the battlefields of Northern Ireland and Vietnam, takes us into the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, and digs into the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms-all in an attempt to demonstrate how fundamentally we misunderstand the true meaning of advantages and disadvantages. When is a traumatic childhood a good thing? When does a disability leave someone better off? Do you really want your child to go to the best school he or she can get into? Why are the childhoods of people at the top of one profession after another marked by deprivation and struggle?

Drawing upon psychology, history, science, business, and politics, David and Goliath is a beautifully written book about the mighty leverage of the unconventional. Millions of readers have been waiting for the next Malcolm Gladwell book. That wait is over.

We at Lucid Practice are fans of Malcolm Gladwell. Between the two of us, we’ve read all of his books so far — excited to read David and Goliath.

Are you a fan of Gladwell? What books have you enjoyed and learned from the most?