Flutterby™! : dealing crack and coding

The Boston Diaries had a link to Steven Levitt's TED talk on the economics of crack cocaine, which is the same thing you probably read in Freakonomics. Two notable things:

1. He ends with a crack about the need for the gang leader to appear strong, but I think the dismissive tone he takes is wrong: That's the purpose of leaders in organizations, and humans play the pack animal to the alpha wolf quite well.
2. It was a reminder that quite a few jobs, especially computer programming, have aspects of that feeling of deferred reward that fast food jobs and crack dealing both carry.