March 2012
pterodactyls replied to your post: sure
Do you mean American Fact Finder? The Census’ other web applications are pretty great!
i do mean american fact finder! and yes, i do love the census. the underlying data is like gold, if only i could get to it. and this worker analysis stuff is pretty damn snazzy.
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sure
i’ll go ahead and do you a demographic analysis of that area even though the new census interface is a fucking nightmare but let me tell you exactly what it’s going to show: people there are white and rich. i can tell you this because i’ve been there and it’s where the whole foods is.
February 2012
0 posts
Sauce for the gander →
Illinois State Representative Kelly Cassidy has introduced a proposal requiring men who ask their doctors for Viagra to sit through a film showing treatment of its most common side effects, including that mythical four-hour erection. Apparently it’s not a pretty sight. Her proposed amendment to the Ultrasound Opportunity Act(obviously named by Eric Blair) parallels the Act’s requirement that...
“Is today the day they’re going to shoot us?” →
Today Japanese American educators and researchers say that the community’s third generation – the Sansei, most of them born after the war to parents who had been imprisoned – has inherited a complicated generational legacy that has played out in the Japanese American culture ever since the days of camp.
“A lot of what people experience in adulthood can be traced back to the trauma their parents...
Seven Charged in Texas Medicare and Medicaid Fraud... →
The federal authorities in Dallas arrested a Texas doctor and six others Tuesday in a home health care scheme that the authorities said cheated the government out of nearly $375 million in Medicare and Medicaid fees. It was so brazen, they said, that it involved registering homeless people for home health care services they never received.
this kind of government benefits fraud is infinitely...
The Internet is a Major Driver of the Growth of... →
Moral of the story: the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter. If you don’t know how to use it, or don’t have the background to ask the right questions, you’ll end up with a head full of nonsense. But if you do know how to use it, it’s an endless wealth of information. Just as globalization and de-unionization have been major drivers of the growth of...
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i feel lucky that the only discussion of liu/sherlock on my dash is people ranting about how annoying it is that people are complaining about it. that way i get to be aware of the controversy without actually having to experience it - BEST OUTCOME.
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LAPD Chief Supports Driver’s Licenses for... →
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday that California should issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich agrees with Beck and calls the issue “a matter of public safety.”
“My personal belief is that they should be able to” have licenses, Beck said in an interview with the LA Times. “The reality is that all the things that we’ve done —...
Immigration fact of the day →
The typical foreign-born adult resident of the United States today is more likely to participate in the work force than the typical native-born American. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (2011), the labor-force participation rate of the foreign-born in 2010 was 67.9 percent, compared to the native-born rate of 64.1 percent. The gap was especially high among men. The labor-force...
Do you speak in future tense? If so, you save... →
Languages differ widely in the ways they partition time. In this paper I test the hypothesis that languages which grammatically distinguish between present and future events (what linguists call strong-FTR languages) lead their speakers to take fewer future-oriented actions.
First, I show how this prediction arises naturally when well-documented effects of language on cognition are merged with...
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Sleigh Bells - Demons
demons. come on.
A precinct built for two in Larimer County | The... →
Thanks to the uncertain science of redrawing political boundaries, Larimer County is home to what may be the smallest precinct in the state, if not the country. The precinct contains one house and two registered voters. It’s the home of Butch Hartson and Ann Grant off County Road 48 east of Fort Collins. He’s a registered Republican; she’s a Democrat. The family dog, Pippy, is...
The Unconquered World →
A thought struck me the other day: China is the only place in the world that has never been controlled by a European power, whether as a colony, protectorate, territory, mandate, etc. Thinking about it a bit more I realized this is not quite true, but it’s not far off. As far as I can tell (thanks Wikipedia) the following countries were never officially under European control. I’m...
Triage in the Drug War - Mark A.R. Kleiman →
There’s really nothing wrong with existing U.S. drug policy, except that all but one of its underlying ideas is false.
The one true idea is that drug use can be a dangerous activity for drug-takers and others, both because people under the spell of intoxication partially lose control of their behavior and because people under the spell of addiction partially lose control of their drug-taking....
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Why Don't Americans Riot Anymore? →
He tackles this question in a new book, Why Don’t American Cities Burn?, which he discussed Friday in Washington at a forum hosted by the New America Foundation. What’s so striking about his answer is that many of the trends implicated in our quiet streets are not necessarily good ones. It’s true, American cities aren’t burning. But we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the...
Angela Davis on violence
when she was in the California State Prison - 1972
Interviewer: a year ago the black panthers were much more active. We heard much more about that type of struggle. Is the time of the black panthers past?
Angela davis: the black panthers still exist, and the black panthers are still extremely active in the Oakland community and communities all over the country. I’m not sure whether or not you are aware of what is now happening in the black panther party and the kinds of things that the members of that party are doing now.
Interviewer: no but tell me.
Angela davis: first of all, if you’re gonna talk about a revolutionary situation, you have to have people who are physically able to wage revolution, who are physically able to organize and physically able to do all that is done.
Interviewer: but the question is more, how do you get there? Do you get there by confrontation, violence?
Angela davis: oh, is that the question you were asking? yeah see, that’s another thing. When you talk about a revolution, most people think violence, without realizing that the real content of any revolutionary thrust lies in the principles and the goals that you’re striving for, not in the way you reach them. On the other hand, because of the way this society’s organized, because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere, you have to expect that there are going to be such explosions. You have to expect things like that as reactions. If you are a black person and live in the black community all your life and walk out on the street everyday seeing white policemen surrounding you… when I was living in Los Angeles, for instance, long before the situation in L.A ever occurred, I was constantly stopped. No, the police didn’t know who I was. But I was a black women and I had a natural and they, I suppose thought I might be “militant.” And when you live under a situation like that constantly, and then you ask me, you know, whether I approve of violence. I mean, that just doesn’t make any sense at all. Whether I approve of guns. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very, very good friends of mine were killed by bombs, bombs that were planted by racists. I remember, form the time I was very small, I remember the sounds of bombs exploding across the street. Our house shaking. I remember my father having to have guns at his disposal at all times, because of the fact that, at any moment, we might expect to be attacked. The man who was, at that time, in complete control of the city government, his name was Bull Connor, would often get on the radio and make statements like, “niggers have moved into a white neighborhood. We better expect some bloodshed tonight.” And sure enough, there would be bloodshed. After the four young girls who lived, one of them lived next door to me…I was very good friends with the sister of another one. My sister was very good friends with all three of them. My mother taught one of them in her class. My mother—in fact, when the bombing occurred, one of the mothers of one of the young girls called my mother and said, “can you take me down to the church to pick up Carol? We heard about the bombing and I don’t have my car.” And they went down and what did they find? They found limbs and heads strewn all over the place. And then, after that, in my neighborhood, all the men organized themselves into an armed patrol. They had to take their guns and patrol our community every night because they did not want that to happen again. That’s why, when someone asks me about violence, I just, I just find it incredible. Because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.
in summary
thetart:
We the not signed at all except when we get a little clumsy with the reblogs would like you all to know that we are very important and established and words and buzzwords. Our mommies told us that we were very special, and every time you disagree there are rifts and call-outs and mean and y’all rifts again because they’re really bad! I mean I said WE said that really was crappy that...
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the oscars
current aircraft count: 1 blimp and between 4-6 helicopters
current police presence: i counted about 20 police cars and upwards of 60 motorcycle cops in about 3 blocks
current annoyance at hollywood blvd having been closed for the past week despite being a street that some people need to drive on to like go to work and stuff: indescribably high
current prediction for best picture winner: adele
...
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today's functioning is brought to you and made...
sleigh bells, “demons”
killer mike f bun b, TI, trouble, “big beast”
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my kingdom
for a reliable estimate of the number of MSMs in los angeles county broken down by race and ethnicity (and preferably by primary language spoken but i know that’s a little greedy). i will even let you define MSM however you want. i don’t even care anymore.
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oh wait i forgot the other thing i say out loud to...
“oh, fuck it.”
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you guys totally feel me on this unsalted chip...
solidarity!
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my list of petty grievances grows ever longer
chipped nails
cat puked on carpet
phone seemingly broken
have to do homework on software that only works on PCs
fucking oscars traffic
bought unsalted tortilla chips by mistake
things i say out loud to myself like 70 times a...
“wait, what the fuck am i talking about?”
“what am i doing?”
“why did i think that was a good idea?”
“BLAH BLAH BLAH”
Fear Heightens Appreciation of Abstract Art →
A newly published study finds people are more likely to be moved and intrigued by abstract paintings if they have just experienced a good scare. This suggests the allure of art may be “a byproduct of one’s tendency to be alarmed by such environmental features as novelty, ambiguity, and the fantastic,” argues lead author Kendall Eskine, a research psychologist at Loyola University New Orleans....
Unintended consequences of anti-corruption... →
We provide experimental evidence that information about copious corruption not only decreases incumbent support in local elections in Mexico, but also decreases voter turnout, challengers’ votes, and erodes voters’ identification with the party of the corrupt incumbent. Our results suggest that while flows of information are necessary, they may be insufficient to improve political...
things i don't care about:
1. sacha baren cohen.
2. the academy awards.
3. interactions thereof. (see)
Rejected From School and Blaming Minorities →
Abigal Fisher, a white student, says she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her race. Texas, like several other states, grants automatic admission to its public universities for students who place in the top ten percent of their class. For students outside of that group, UT is permitted to consider race (along with other factors) in determining admission. Fisher failed to...
lunchtime poll: what's your desktop background
here’s mine:
i like calendars. and colors. i change it once a month.
what is yours (photo link or description or whatever)? why?
Comparing Social Science Job Markets →
A new research paper from the American Sociological Association compares the job markets (primarily but not exclusively in academe) in social science disciplines. Looking at the most recent jobs data (based on postings with disciplinary associations), the association found that sociology appears to be experiencing the most robust recovery in job listings (up 28 percent), followed by political...
Bloomberg’s New Homeless Shelter Policy Is Blocked... →
In November, the city’s Department of Homeless Services announced plans for the new rules, which would include investigation of claims by single adults that they had nowhere else to go. In public statements at the time, Seth Diamond, the department’s commissioner, said the new policy would most likely reduce the shelter population by about 10 percent and save the city $4 million a year. In the...
Goats 'can develop their own accents' →
Researchers found the animals develop their own speaking voice when they move away from their siblings and mingle with others. They found that a goats’ “accent’ changed as they grew older and moved in different groups, disproving claims that their voices were entirely genetic. The team, from Queen Mary University of London, said their findings are the first to suggest that most...
Rhetoric Vs Reality on Entitlements →
Over 90% of the benefits of entitlement spending goes to people who are either elderly, disabled, or in working households. That’s right, folks: according to the data, this encroaching menace—entitlement spending that goes to lazy, healthy, adults—accounts for 9% of total entitlement spending.*
As the figure shows, 53% of benefits went to elderly persons (65+), 20% to disabled, non-elderly,...
g: so do you know what you're doing after school?
a: ooh yeah - i think i finally came up with it. i read this thing about a candidate who wants to give free ponies to everyone and there's only like 200,000 ponies in the US.
g: so ... you want to do data analysis for that candidate?
a: NO. i need to help close the pony gap! america must have sufficient ponies for all its children! so i should, like, pony farm. or pony ranch. or whatever. grow ponies.
g: have you ever -
a: - ranched? raised animals? ridden a horse?
g: - masturbated a horse?
a: no. but i was in an elevator with ron jeremy once.