Month: June 2006

the red in the red states? It’s blood

Emphases mine: the bottom line is that whatever was done in the 90s worked to bring down crime and the abandonment of those policies has allowed it to rise. And it has risen most sharply in the states most supportive of the Current Occupant. Talking about voting against your own self-interest: sounds like it could get you killed.

Violent crime up for 1st time in 5 years – Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON – Murders, robberies and aggravated assaults in the United States increased last year, spurring an overall rise in violent crime for the first time since 2001, according to FBI data.

Murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005. That would be the most since 1998 and the largest percentage increase in 15 years.

Murders soared from 59 to 104 in Birmingham, Ala., up 76 percent; from 59 to 85 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, N.C., a 44 percent increase; from 89 to 126 in Kansas City, Mo., a 42 percent rise; from 87 to 122 in Milwaukee, a 40 percent jump; and from 79 to 109 in Cleveland, a 38 percent increase.

Cities with 50,000 to 500,000 people recorded the largest increases in murder, on average.

Despite the national numbers, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles and New York were among several large cities that saw the number of murders drop.

The overall increase in violent crime was modest, 2.5 percent, which equates to more than 1.4 million crimes. Nevertheless, that was the largest percentage increase since 1991.

The FBI data, compiled from reports by more than 12,000 law enforcement agencies, does not contain overall crime numbers in any category nor does it offer any explanation for the changes. The FBI’s final annual crime report comes out in the fall.

Criminal justice experts said the statistics reflect the nation’s complacency in fighting crime, a product of dramatic declines in the 1990s and the abandonment of effective programs that emphasized prevention, putting more police officers on the street and controlling the spread of guns.

“We see that budgets for policing are being slashed and the federal government has gotten out of that business,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. “Funding for prevention at the federal level and many localities are down and the (National Rifle Association) has renewed strength.”

Still, Fox said, “We’re still far better off than we were during the double-digit crime inflation we saw in the 1970s.”

Robberies were up 4.5 percent and aggravated assaults 1.9 percent, according to preliminary data. Alone among violent crime categories, the number of rapes fell 1.9 percent.

Violent crimes peaked at 1.9 million in 1992 and fell steadily through the end of that decade. The number has been relatively stable for the past six years.

Crime last year increased in all regions, although the 5.7 percent rise in the Midwest was at least three times any other region’s. These states make up the Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

sometimes I wonder why I read some of these feeds

The Work Vacation:

I am toying with a new concept, namely The Work Vacation.

The narcissism of university professors is breathtaking at times.

Not all workers can turn their every waking thought into work product, nor can they convert a pleasure trip into publishable prose. Some people want to get away from their work, even if they love doing it.

Stuff like this and an earlier post — suburbs must be wonderful since so many people live in them — make me wonder what planet these feesd come from.

Now playing: Five Years by David Bowie from the album “Ziggy Stardust” | Get it

the Enlightenment: is it still relevant?

PZ Myers dissects the state of reality-based — ie, empirical, rational — education. Theocracies don’t have a strong track record as long-lasting, vibrant nation-states and if we’re headed that way, we should know what to expect.

Pharyngula: My YearlyKos talk:

A recent review in PLoS Biology summarized the state of the nation on evolution. One third of Americans reject it outright, saying it is definitely false. In another survey, 43% agreed with the statement that god created humans as they are, and we did not evolve from other forms of life. In yet another survey comparing attitudes towards evolution in America, Japan, and Europe, the US ranked 33rd out of 34—we beat Turkey. Go, USA.

Imagine being an electrical engineer and hearing that a third of the country doesn’t believe all that stuff about electricity and radio waves, but thinks there actually are little people moving about inside their televisions. That’s how biologists feel about the state of knowledge about biology here; we’ve got a lot of people with medieval attitudes about the subject. This is the pool from which we have to draw our students, and that worries us.

It gets worse.

Evolution is a lightning rod issue, attracting more attention than it should: the underlying issue is whether the scientific method, the idea of formulating and testing hypotheses, the correct approach to understanding and solving problems. I would like to see the scientific method put forward with some examples that even the people who believe in Pat Robertson prophecies can understand. Evolution is too big a leap for some.

Continue reading “the Enlightenment: is it still relevant?”

the power of leverage

Avid followers of my continued progress in domestic engineering will want to read on.

I commented on a crummy domestic appliance some months back. I replaced the defective unit with another, at considerable effort: I had to special order it with a couple of weeks wait time, after researching which ones were a. good and b. available through a local retailer in case I had to return it.

I settled on a KitchenAid unit and it has been perfectly acceptable.

Flash forward to the present day. I got a call from the nice people at Insinkerator and upon returning the call, they wanted to get the old unit back and would dispatch a new one with a local installer to replace it. In the course of the conversation, it became clear that opening a ticket with the Consumer Product Safety Commission was instrumental in getting their attention. When I let the helpful operative know that I had replaced the unit already, with another brand, she was undeterred: she is going to send me a newer model — with a stainless steel tank (the cheaper plastic tanks are what fails) — and I can install it where and when I like.

So the lesson here is, if you have a valid issue, take it as far as you can muster the energy. I figured I was putting my case on the record in case anyone was injured: I really think having 110v wiring with a switch underneath a water tank that has been know to fail is a Really Bad Idea. The replacement unit routes the wiring through the top of the housing. My new friend told me that Underwriters Labs requires them to wire their units as they do, but I am skeptical, and justifiably so. As it happens, having those complaints go on their Permanent Record can be productive.

historical revisionism

HistoryLink Essay: Seattle Neighborhoods: Wedgwood — Thumbnail History:

After the Native Americans departed for reservations, the rock became a popular picnic site for Seattle residents.

I realize that relations with the First Peoples here in the Northwest were more amicable than in other parts of the country, but this makes it sound like they offered to leave, like they felt like they were in the way or something.

I don’t think that’s accurate.

Now playing: Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maesroso by CSO-Fritz Reiner from the album “Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, Op. 125, “Choral”” | Get it

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misplaced blame

I guess we should all have waited for the music industry to present a digital music store: I’m sure it would have been more sensitive to consumer rights than big bad Apple and their eveil DRM.

Anti-iTunes DRM demonstrations across the USA tomorrow:

Tomorrow, activists in seven cities across the US will picket Apple Stores, handing out information about the dangers of the DRM hidden in Apple’s iTunes. iTunes DRM may seem pretty innocuous at first, but every time you invest in an iTunes Store song, you make it more expensive to switch to an Apple competitor’s product at any time in the future. You didn’t have to abandon your CDs to switch to MP3s (in fact, the more CDs you owned, the better your MP3 experience was, since you could rip those CDs to seed your MP3 collection), but if you want to go from Apple’s iTunes to a competing device, ever, you have to be prepared to abandon your whole investment.

Unless you burn your tracks to CD, something Apple recommends anyway (hint, hint). DRM only exists within the iTunes/iPod part of your music collection. Once it gets burned to physical media, the tracks are free of DRM.

Also this:

I love this FUD, if the music industry had not forced DRM on Apple, Apple wouldn’t be the focus. If Apple’s iTunes under new attacks in Europe Why isn’t Microsoft’s DRM mantioned? Why isn’t the music industry mentioned as the culprit in these articles?

I guess some would be happy without Apple creating a mainstream market for digital music. I don’t think they are altruistic here and I don’t impute any kind of holiness to their motives, but seriously, do the DRM==Death forces think that the power of iPod/iTunes as a way of getting this into the mainstream is helping or not?

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chronicle of progress foretold — not all of it came true

HistoryLink Essay:Century 21 Exposition — Forward Into the Past! :

This is a Cybertour of the Century 21 Exposition, better known as the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962. It was written by Alan J. Stein and designed by Chris Goodman.

Your Fantastic Journey Begins

We start our day in downtown Seattle, more than a mile from the Seattle World’s Fair. Don’t worry, the futuristic Monorail will take us there in the blink of an eye. The Monorail has been described as a preview of mass transit of the future.

At Westlake Mall, moving sidewalks, or “speed ramps,” will glide you up to the Monorail Terminal. Fares are 50 cents one-way, and 75 cents round trip. Kids ride for 35 cents one way and 50 cents round trip.

The things that came to pass — “micro-mail” (email described quite nicely) — were successful based on their military-funding roots and the fact they served an audience that was able to work through teething troubles. The other improvements — monorail to the airport? nuclear powered cars? — were not so easily finessed.

An interesting look at the kind of predictions people have made and still make. It seems we want the same things but never agree on them enough to get them done.

Now playing: Pavlov’s Bell by Aimee Mann from the album “Lost in Space”

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Orders from the General

The General has a mission for all patriotic Americans and their legally registered household staff:

WA Utilities Commission seeks public comment on NSA spying:

My inner Frenchman is forcing me to post the following letter he received from the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission. He says that it’s very important that citizens of Washington State submit comments. My inner Frenchman knows how these things work. The more comments the Commission gets, the more pressure they’ll feel to do something.

Follow the rules and submit valid comments. Pay special attention to the question about WAC 480-120-202. Make a persuasive argument that it applies.

Read on for more details. If the General — or his notorious inner Frenchman — thinks this is worth your time, it is.

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