Thursday, October 31, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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By 1812 the U.S. already had more business corporations than any other country, and possibly more than all other countries put together

From Scale and Scope in Early American Business History: The "Fortune 500" of 1812 by Richard Sylla and Robert E. Wright.  From the Abstract:

Fortune magazine began publishing annual rankings of U.S. corporations by revenue in 1955. Ever since, scholars and forecasters have analyzed changes in the Fortune 500 to help inform their judgments about industry concentration and the relative importance of different sectors of the economy. Unfortunately, earlier data are scarce, especially before the Civil War. Through extensive research we have created a sort of historical "Fortune 500" going back to 1812, ranked by corporate capitalization, which we share here. Numerous insights can be drawn from this dataset, including the historical dominance of the banking and finance sectors and the early importance of manufacturing. Perhaps the larger significance of being able to come up with a Fortune 500 for 1812, though, is the fact that even with a population of only about 7.5 million, U.S. already had more business corporations than any other country, and possibly more than all other countries put together, securing its role as the world's first "corporation nation." The ease of incorporating businesses released a lot of entrepreneurial energy that helped to build an ever-expanding economy and by the end of the 19th century, the U.S. would be the world’s largest national economy with tens of thousands of corporations.


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Data Talks

 

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Morning Underground, 1922 by Weaver Hawkins (Australian, 1893-1977)

Morning Underground, 1922 by Weaver Hawkins (Australian, 1893-1977)



















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Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Herodotus against doxxing

 From Histories by Herodotus.

The Egyptians were the first to declare this doctrine too, that the human soul is immortal, and each time the body perishes it enters into another animal as it is born. When it has made a circuit of all terrestrial, marine, and winged animals, it once again enters a human body as it is born. Its circuit takes three thousand years. Some Greeks have adopted this doctrine, some earlier and some later, as if it were peculiar to them. I know their names, but do not write them.

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Zoning changes to increase urban density is an exercise in uncompensated governmental takings

From The Distaste for Housing Density by Joseph Gyourko & Sean E. McCulloch.  From the Abstract.

We characterize the distribution of suburban homeowners’ preferences for housing unit density. To measure welfare changes under counterfactual increases in density, we first construct a novel house-level measure of exposure to density and identify its price effects in a boundary discontinuity design. On the borders of municipalities with larger minimum lot sizes, lots are 3,000 ft² larger and houses are $40,000 costlier. We exploit the systematic variation in density exposure induced by these discontinuities to estimate price effects. We then connect these estimates to a structural hedonic model of housing choice to retrieve individuals’ preferences for density. Overall, we find an average welfare loss among incumbent homeowners from a 1/2 unit per acre increase in density (which is equivalent to a 0.3 standard deviation in density) of about $9,500, with significantly larger losses under counterfactual increases solely from rental units. There is other noteworthy heterogeneity in these preferences, too. Most households have only a moderate preference over density. The median welfare loss is only 55% of the average, implying a long, left tail of those with more extreme aversions to density. This tail disproportionately contains households in affluent, low density neighborhoods. In sum, our results document an important foundation of the demand for density regulation across U.S. suburbs that we hope serves as a valuable input into future research into the considerable costs of that policy.

Over the years I have come increasingly to the view that zoning changes to increase density are a form of uncompensated governmental taking.  There might be electoral support for such a change.  There might be good reasons for such a policy.  Those are separate issues.

Even if it is believed to be a good policy and even if the majority of the electorate supports the idea, it is still a taking and almost always an uncompensated taking.  This study seems to lend some credence to that view.

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Data Talks

 

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In Abundance Arrangement #2 by Robert Brackman (American, 1898-1980)

In Abundance Arrangement #2 by Robert Brackman (American, 1898-1980)































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Tuesday, October 29, 2024

So much cognitive pollution

A useful article.  From The Democrats’ Insanity Defense by Park MacDougald.  The subheading is 
Republican activists say they have to water down the reality of their opponents’ agenda in focus groups. ‘They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.‘

The core issue is that the Democrats are promulgating known untruths as the basis for their policies.  It is settled that Russia Collusion of 2016 was a hoax paid for by the Clinton campaign and amplified over three years by the party and by the legacy media.  A story thoroughly debunked at the time and now officially debunked by the Federal government.  

It is at least clear that virtually every public health initiative in the US under the auspices of Fauci was undertaken without the epidemiological evidence necessary to support it.  And indeed, most, if not virtually all the arguments made by the CDC were known to be wrong at the time and have now been proven to be wrong.  

It goes on and on.  Climate change.  Global warming and storms.  Defunding the police will lower crime.  Printing money won't cause inflation.  

Some of these are disputed at the margin, but the core knowledge is reasonably known and stable.  And denied by the activists in government.

In the September debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said something so ludicrous that many viewers must have dismissed it out of hand. “She did things that nobody would ever think of,” Trump said, while rattling off a list of some of the vice president’s most radical past positions. “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”

The idea that the vice president “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” seemed so patently absurd that The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser cited it in a column posted the next morning as an example of Trump’s lunacy: “What the hell was he talking about?” Glasser wrote of the trans operation lines. “No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’ point.”

That reaction was understandable—the idea of the operations was, as Trump himself said, a “thing nobody would ever think of.” The problem was that it is true. As CNN had reported that week, Harris, when running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, had written in an ACLU questionnaire that she supported publicly funded “gender-affirming care,” including transition surgeries, for federal prison inmates and detained illegal immigrants. Follow-up reporting from The Washington Free Beacon revealed that while serving as California attorney general, Harris had in fact implemented a statewide policy of taxpayer funding for prisoners’ sex changes, born out of a settlement in which she agreed to pay for the transition of a man convicted of kidnapping a father of three and then murdering him as he begged for his life. Harris later bragged, on camera, about this policy as evidence of her commitment to the progressive “movement”—in a clip that has since become a staple of Trump campaign ads.

Many Americans still have trouble accepting these facts, because the underlying predicate—that Barack Obama purposefully sought to ally the United States with a terror-sponsoring, America-hating theocracy—seemed too insane to credit.

The sequence of events neatly encapsulated a pattern that has played out countless times since Trump entered American political life. Trump says something seemingly insane, to many people’s outrage and disbelief, only to have his supposed “lie” revealed to be wholly or at least significantly true. Often the specific truth revealed—that the outgoing Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team in order to gather information for what later became the Russiagate hoax, to cite another example—is in fact “crazier” than Trump’s exaggerations or garbling of the details. The insanity of the policy becomes the front line of defense against potential blowback: Who would believe that anyone would actually propose or support something so obviously at odds with public opinion and basic common sense? Trump must be a raving nutjob, just like we told you he was.

The mystery to me is just how complete can be the ignorance.  I have long put heavy reliance on closed epistemic networks as an explanation for why Democrats often make bold statements with complete conviction which are completely untrue and are well documented as being untrue.

A few weeks ago a single roundtable participant on some legacy media news show alluded to the Ferguson Effect (crime rises when policing declines).  Also now known as the George Floyd Effect.  

In 2014, when the Ferguson riots occurred, there was good reason to believe that reduced policing is associated with increased crime.  Since 2014, multiple studies, including post 2020 Floyd Riots, have repeatedly found that reduced policing leads to rising crime.  

In that news roundtable, the participant alluded to the Ferguson Effect as common and well-established knowledge.  The other seven members of the discussion affirmed that they had never heard of the Ferguson Effect and denied that it could be true.  

Monumental epistemic network closure.  

Or is it simply propaganda?  They are saying what needs to be said to support their policies regardless of how loosely it may be associated with the truth?  Or completely divorced from it.

MacDougald is arguing that Democrats get away with it because the arguments put forward by Democrats are so crazy as to not be credible.  People don't believe the claim that Harris has supported taxpayer sex-change operations for imprisoned illegal aliens because that is just crazy talk.  And it is crazy talk.  And it is also really her past position.  The transcripts and videos are right there.

But I suspect there is a somewhat related dynamic.  It probably goes something like this.

The other side makes an argument about my side's position that is patently absurd and therefore I reject it (MacDougald)

The other side makes an argument that is patently absurd and I don't have the time to investigate.

I trust my team and not the other.

When I investigate, the evidence I find that supports their argument, I dismiss as edited, deep faked, or some other deus ex machina logic.

We all want to belong to our tribe.  We all want to take epistemic shortcuts.  We all emulate the embedded assumptions of our tribe.  

Ecch.

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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View of the Handelskade, 1929 by Johan Hendrik van Mastenbroek (Netherlands, 1875-1945)

View of the Handelskade, 1929 by Johan Hendrik van Mastenbroek (Netherlands, 1875-1945)






























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Monday, October 28, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Reverie, 1957 by Robert Brackman (American, 1898-1980)

Reverie, 1957 by Robert Brackman (American, 1898-1980)





















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Sunday, October 27, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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The Americans have succeeded because they have more extremes of random behavior.

From Lee Kuan Yew by Graham Allison.  Published in 2013.  An interesting perspective from a wise and accomplished outsider.

What has made the U.S. economy preeminent is its entrepreneurial culture…Entrepreneurs and investors alike see risk and failure as natural and necessary for success. When they fail, they pick themselves up and start afresh. The Europeans and the Japanese now have the task of adopting these practices to increase their efficiency and competitiveness. But many American practices go against the grain of the more comfortable and communitarian cultural systems of their own societies—the Japanese with life-long employment for their workers, the Germans with their unions having a say in management under co-determination, and the French with their government supporting the right of unions to pressure businesses from retrenching, by requiring large compensation to be paid to laid-off workers.           

The U.S. is a frontier society…There is a great urge to start new enterprises and create wealth. The U.S. has been the most dynamic society in innovating, in starting up companies to commercialize new discoveries or inventions, thus creating new wealth. American society is always on the move and changing…For every successful entrepreneur in America, many have tried and failed. Quite a few tried repeatedly until they succeeded. Quite a few who succeeded continued to create and start up new companies as serial entrepreneurs…This is the spirit that generates a dynamic economy.          

The American culture…is that we start from scratch and beat you. That is why I have confidence that the American economy will recover. They were going down against Japan and Germany in manufacturing. But they came up with the Internet, Microsoft and Bill Gates, and Dell…What kind of mindset do you need for that? It is part of their history. They went into an empty continent and made the best of it—killed the Red Indians and took over the land and the buffaloes. So this is how they ended up—you build a town here, you be the sheriff, I am the judge, you are the policeman, and you are the banker, let us start. And this culture has carried on until today. There is the belief that you can make it happen.    

The Americans have succeeded as against the Europeans and the Japanese because they have more extremes of random behavior. You have the mean, you have the bell curve, and you have two extreme ends. And the more you have of the extreme ends on the good side, the more creativity and inventiveness you have.

One fundamental difference between American and Oriental culture is the individual’s position in society. In American culture, an individual’s interest is primary. This makes American society more aggressively competitive, with a sharper edge and higher performance.        

The Americans will always have the advantage because of their all-embracive society, and the English language that makes it easy to attract foreign talent.

America has a clear advantage over China, because its use of the English language enables America to attract millions of English-speaking foreign talent from Asia and Europe. There is an off chance that the United States will lose confidence in itself, will not be so creative, so inventive, and creating breakthroughs in new technologies and not attracting new talents from abroad. I do not see the United States in the next 10, 20, 30 years losing that capability. Talent will not go to China. Talent will go to America because Americans speak English and everybody fits in. It is a country that embraces immigrants. To go and settle in China, you have to master the Chinese language. And you must get used to the Chinese culture. And that is a very difficult hurdle to clear.       

The U.S. is the only superpower because of its advances in science and technology and their contribution to its economic and military might.          

The U.S. dollar is likely to remain the leading currency, because the American economy will remain the most entrepreneurial and dynamic in the world.           

America is a great nation not just because of its power and wealth, but mainly because it is a nation moved by high ideals. Only the elevating power of her idealism can explain the benign manner in which America has exercised its enormous power since the end of World War II and the magnanimity and generosity with which it has shared its wealth to rebuild a more prosperous world.            

The United States is the most benign of all the great powers, certainly less heavy-handed than any emerging great power…As long as its economy leads the “world, and America stays ahead in innovation and technology, neither the European Union nor Japan nor China can displace the United States from its present preeminent position.  
 
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Buffalo Cloud by Jim Wodark (American, b.1958)

Buffalo Cloud by Jim Wodark (American, b.1958) 



















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Saturday, October 26, 2024

History

 

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Number seventeen

From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—70— Thanks, But No Thanks

“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone. 
It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel alone.”
—Robin Williams


A young man is walking through the woods, when he comes upon a bunch of old-timers sitting around a campfire. He says hello and they invite him to join the group. After a few moments of silence, one of the old-timers says, “Number seventeen.” They all start laughing. The next guy says, “Number sixty-four,” and again everyone starts laughing.

The young man turns to the old fellow next to him and says, “What’s everybody laughing about?”

The old guy says, “Well, we’ve all known each other for so long that we don’t need to tell our jokes anymore—we just refer to them by a number.”

So when it’s his turn, the young man stands up and says, “Number thirty-three.” Nobody laughs. Embarrassed, the young man sits down and says to the guy next to him, “I don’t get it. Isn’t number thirty-three funny?”

“Yeah,” says the old guy, “but not the way you tell it.”

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

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Offbeat Humor

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Data Talks

 

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Marshall’s House, 1932 by Edward Hopper (American, 1882 - 1967)

Marshall’s House, 1932 by Edward Hopper (American, 1882 - 1967)


















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Friday, October 25, 2024

Which one do you want, son?

From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—58— Take the Money and Run?
 
“All things come to him who waits—provided he knows what he is waiting for.”
—Woodrow Wilson


A barber is talking to one of his customers. “See that kid?” he says as he points to a twelve-year-old standing outside the barbershop. “He is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch. I’ll prove it to you.” The barber takes out a one-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill, and then calls the boy inside. He holds out both bills, and asks, “Which one do you want, son?”

The kid takes the one-dollar bill and leaves the shop.

“See?” laughs the barber. “The dumbest kid in the world.”

A few minutes after the customer leaves the barbershop, he happens to see the boy coming out of an ice cream store. He goes over and asks, “If you don’t mind my asking, son, why didn’t you take the five-dollar bill?”

The boy takes a lick of his ice cream cone and replies, “Because the day I choose the five-dollar bill, the game’s over.”

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 



























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Data Talks

 

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A Song by Robert Brackman (United States, 1898-1980)

A Song by Robert Brackman (United States, 1898-1980)































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Confidence is independent of accuracy

Well, there's a surprise.  Had you asked me what country was the largest gold producer in Africa, I would have answered with great confidence, South Africa.  It has major industrial production through large corporations and has been a major participant in the global market for more than a century.  

Sure, there are other producers.  Ghana's colonial name was, Gold Coast.  But my impression has been that in almost all other countries was that most or all the gold production was artisinal and therefore small scale.

Imagine my surprise.  From Gold is booming. So is the dirty business of digging it up in The Economist.  

Ghana, the largest gold producer on the continent, exemplifies Africa’s new gold rush. 

Ghana is the largest?  Well, so much for my confident answer.

My error was in associating artisanal and small scale with low aggregate volume.

The gold price has doubled since 2019, to a record high of more than $2,700 per troy ounce, promising higher margins for industrial miners but also encouraging more artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). Nearly half of the roughly 1,000 tonnes of gold produced in Africa every year is mined in this way. 

Ghana produces some 125 tons of gold each year and most of it is artisanal or informal production whereas the 117 tons mined in South Africa is mostly large scale, corporate, formal mining.  

A reminder to stay cognitively humble.  Confidence in an answer is independent of accuracy in an answer.  

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Thursday, October 24, 2024

Your cat died.

From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—57— Bad News

“Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.”
—Colin Powell

A woman goes on vacation and leaves her cat with her sister. A few days later she calls and asks her sister how the cat is doing.

“Bad news,” says the sister. “Your cat died.”

The woman gets furious. “That’s how you tell me my beloved cat is gone? You should have said something like, ‘The cat’s on the roof and we can’t get it down.’ And then when I called the next day you could have said, ‘The cat came down off the roof, but it’s in really bad shape and the vet doesn’t think the poor thing is going to make it.’ And when I called the next day, then you could have told me the cat died!”

“I’m really sorry,” said the sister.

“I’m sorry too,” the woman said after a long pause. “I guess I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. You know, it was just such a shock. Anyway, how’s Mom?”

“Umm . . . she’s on the roof and we can’t get her down.”

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Christmas, 1929 by Robin Tanner

Christmas, 1929 by Robin Tanner






























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Wednesday, October 23, 2024

History

 

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A pit bull on a leash

 From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—52— Get in Line

“A man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal.”
—Francis Bacon


A young woman is walking home one day when she spots an odd funeral procession on its way to the cemetery. A black hearse is being followed by a second hearse. Behind that is an older woman walking with a pit bull on a leash, followed by a hundred women walking single file behind her.

The young woman watches for a few minutes in wonder, and finally approaches the woman walking the dog.

“Excuse me,” she says, “I’m sorry to bother you in your time of grief, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Whose funeral is it?”

“My husband’s,” the older woman answers. “He’s in the first hearse. This dog found him in bed with his girlfriend and killed both of them. She’s in the second hearse.”

The young woman says, “Oh, I’m sorry” . . . but then smiles and adds, “Say, can I borrow your dog?”

“Get in line,” the woman answers.

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderfulthings

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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The polls don't ell us what voters think. They tell us what data scientists suspect voters might think. Based on data scientist's unvalidated assumptions.

From Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election. But Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine. by Nate Silver.  He's warning everyone about the closeness of the polling and that polls cannot tell us who will win because the election is 50:50.  If the electorate is in reality 50:50, then more and more accurate polling will only increase the confidence that it is indeed 50:50.  It won't give a winner.

A fair point.

But he makes a different point which I think is important.

Instead, the likely problem is what pollsters call nonresponse bias. It’s not that Trump voters are lying to pollsters; it’s that in 2016 and 2020, pollsters weren’t reaching enough of them.

Nonresponse bias can be a hard problem to solve. Response rates to even the best telephone polls are in the single digits — in some sense, the people who choose to respond to polls are unusual. Trump supporters often have lower civic engagement and social trust, so they can be less inclined to complete a survey from a news organization. Pollsters are attempting to correct for this problem with increasingly aggressive data-massaging techniques, like weighing by educational attainment (college-educated voters are more likely to respond to surveys) or even by how people say they voted in the past. There’s no guarantee any of this will work.

For polling to work, you have to have 1) a sufficiently large responding population who 2) are RANDOMLY selected.  The first requirement is rarely met and the second is never met.  You cannot compel people to respond to a poll and therefore, straight out of the gate, you are having to deal with the issue of self-selection - Are the people who choose to participate in a poll fully representative of those who choose not to do so.  Virtually never.  

Further, polls, for a variety of reasons, have historically oversampled Democrats.  The pollsters have compensated by extrapolating results from the undersampled portion of Republican respondents, dramatically exacerbating the error rate, especially when the overall sample size is insufficient in the first place.  

Over the past few election cycles, polls have become more and more expensive, respondents have become fewer and fewer (0.4%), and sampling is less and less random.  As much effort is now spent manipulating the data produced from the polling as spent on conducting the polling itself.  

The polls are no longer polls.  They do not tell us what a random selection of voters think.  They tell us what data scientists suspect voters might think.  Based on data scientist's unvalidated assumptions.  The link to reality has been completely broken.  It is all Garbage In Garbage Out.  

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Boats at Shinagawa, Night, 1950s by Tsuchiya Koitsu

Boats at Shinagawa, Night, 1950s by Tsuchiya Koitsu




































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Tuesday, October 22, 2024

History

 

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The little guy starts crying

From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—50— MYOB (Mind Your Own Business)

“Let every fox take care of its own tail.”
—Italian proverb


A little guy is sitting at a bar, just staring at his drink, when a big biker walks up to him, takes the drink, and gulps it down. 

The little guy starts crying. The biker says, “Hey, man. I was just joking. Here, I’ll buy you another drink.”

“No, it’s not that. This is the worst day of my life. First, I overslept and missed an important meeting, so my boss fired me. Then, when I left the building, I discovered that my car had been stolen and the police said there was nothing they could do about it. So I took a cab home, but accidentally left my wallet in there, and the cab driver just drove away. Then I found my wife in bed with my best friend. So I walked out and came to this bar. And just when I was thinking about putting an end to my life, you show up and drink my poison.”

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An Insight

 

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Just the facts, ma'am!

A very useful post from Crime in the USA by Inquisitive Bird.  The subheading is A short primer and collection of basic descriptive facts.

As he indicates, this is not speculation or editorializing.  It is just a recitation of the facts.  

If one wishes to understand the causes of American crime, first and foremost it is vital to get a solid foundation of the basic descriptive facts. Theorizing about underlying causes is far more likely to go astray when one begins with an inaccurate understanding of reality. Thus, the goal of this post is not to delve deeply into the etiology of crime or complicated multivariate analyses, but instead equip the reader with a collection of the most important facts.

More could have been said about the reliability of the data.  In other words, especially compared to most Western European countries, the US has much more fragmented and/or incomplete crime data.  But we have enough for most purposes as long as we keep in mind the missing data.

All the information comports with my general knowledge but it is extremely useful to have it in one place.

A couple of observations.  


Alcohol and murder

I knew that alcohol (and drugs) and violence are generally correlated, but I did not appreciate the degree of correlation.

Of the homicide victims that were tested, 36.4% of blood tests were positive for alcohol (Table S7). When tested, victims often tested positive for other drugs such as cannabis, amphetamines, opioids, and cocaine. Other research has also found that 40-50% of homicide victims test positive for alcohol (Kuhns et al., 2011; Naimi et al., 2016), and similarly for homicide offenders (Kuhns et al., 2014).

A third to half of all murders involve alcohol!  Huh.  

Of course that raises the question, how many people, at any given moment, would test positive for alcohol.  Here is old data from 2009.  It is for randomly stopped drivers, conducted by NHTSA.  

The findings come from the latest roadside survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration based on breath, saliva, blood samples and questionnaires taken from randomly selected drivers in 300 locations around the United States. In 1973, 7.5 percent of drivers had a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher. (A level of .08 is above the legal limit in all 50 states.) In the latest survey, the percentage of people driving above the legal alcohol limit had fallen to 2.2 percent.

35-50% of murders involve alcohol whereas only 2.2% of the population registers significant alcohol at any point of day or night.  


Intimate Partner Violence

A hoary stereotype of TV police procedurals involving murders is "the husband did it."  Well, pretty much.  

The fraction of murder victims that is due to intimate partner violence is predictably higher for women than men. For 41% of female murder victims it is related to intimate partner violence, and 50% of female murder victims are killed by current or former spouse or intimate partner [8% for men]. The victim being killed in their own home is also more common for women (60%, vs 37% for men).

Four times as many men are killed as women.  Homicide victimization rates in 2021:

Sex: male, 12.7 per 100k; female, 2.9 per 100k.

Women are murdered rarely (2.9 versus 12.7), mostly at home (60% versus 37%) and primarily by current or former spouses/partners (50% versus 8%).  

All of that accords with general tropes but when put together, they nudge towards an additional insight I cannot quite put my finger on.  

I guess it is to do with the basic biology.  We are accustomed to viewing women as vulnerable owing to the morphological differences between men (taller, heavier, more muscle mass, more violent) and women.  

And that is absolutely true and reflected in the "murdered at home by spouses/partners" data.

I guess the conundrum is that the data shows men as being far more vulnerable and more randomly subject to violence beyond their control.  Four times more likely to be murdered.  Mostly killed outside their homes.  92% killed by someone other than a spouse/partner.  Indeed, two and half times more likely to be killed by a stranger.  

I guess maybe it is that the numbers say women should be concerned about violent danger because they are vulnerable and it comes from intimate sources (home and spouse/partner).  But the numbers also say men should be even more concerned because they are even more exposed to violent danger everywhere and from everyone.

And that isn't quite how we usually think about it.  


Mississippi Delta Violence

In American literature (for example Faulkner) and in American History (see Rising Tide by John M. Barry) there is a repeated theme of the dark, almost mystic violence of the Mississippi Delta.  It is a hard land, hot, prone to floods and disease, riven by inter and intra-racial violence.  

This map of murders sort of smacks you in the face with that image.  




















Woof.  
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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Bayside Interior, Provincetown, 1967 by Alvin Ross

Bayside Interior, Provincetown, 1967 by Alvin Ross





























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Monday, October 21, 2024

History

 

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For a second everything goes quiet in the cab.

From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—47—Who’s Driving?

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
—William Faulkner


During a taxi ride, the passenger taps the cab driver on the shoulder to ask him a question. The driver screams, loses control of the car, nearly hits a bus, drives up onto the sidewalk, and stops just inches away from a shop window. For a second everything goes quiet in the cab. Then the driver says, “Look, buddy, don’t ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!”

The passenger, completely shaken, says, “Geez, I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize that a little tap would scare you so much.”

The driver thinks for a minute, and finally replies, “That’s okay; it’s not really your fault. Today is my first day as a cab driver. For the last twenty-five years, I’ve been driving a hearse.”

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Hallett House, Medical Lake by Vanessa Helder (1904-1968)

Hallett House, Medical Lake by Vanessa Helder (1904-1968) 

























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Sunday, October 20, 2024

History

 

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Hey, what are those things?

From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—38— Just Do It

“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience.”
—Laurence J. Peter


Two boys are walking through the woods one day when they spy some rabbit turds. One of the boys says, “Hey, what are those things?”

“They’re smart pills,” says his friend. “Eat them and they’ll make you smarter.”

So the first boy eats them and says, “Ecch . . . these taste like crap.”

“See?” the other boy replies. “You’re getting smarter already.”

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Wonderfully proud of themselves, like they just shat a cookie.

From Let's Not by Chris Brey.  

Criticizing American journalists, using Anne Applebaum as an example.

Writing at The Atlantic this week, Anne Applebaum has a stunning piece of brand-new insight, and my goodness is it a brilliantly fresh idea:




















See, Trump is JUST LIKE HITLER! Didn’t see that one coming, right? Imagine how excited she was to have that amazing new thought, living inside such a fresh and original mind.

There are writers who try to see something clearly, and then to show it to other people, and there are writers who are…Anne Applebaum. The prevailing model in American “mainstream” media is to go plow the same row again and again and again, because plowing where everybody else has already plowed is, I don’t know, safe? Consensus journalism, the 9,746th journalist ringing your doorbell to announce that Trump is a lot like Adolf Hitler. Looking wonderfully proud of themselves, like they just shat a cookie. All day, every day, all messages are the same message. Idea for a new movie: Groundhog Minute.

And I’m just done with it. David Brooks, Tom Nichols, William Kristol, and Peggy Noonan have all written the most amazingly refutable piles of nonsense in the last few days, being professionals at the task, and I kept asking out loud if David Brooks hears himself, because every paragraph clashes and refutes all the other paragraphs around it. But no. For me, barring some miraculous act of banality that just can’t be ignored, the election is over. 

Indeed, there is a dearth of insight, knowledge, and self-awareness among legacy mainstream media journalists.  All much of a muchness, and not much of that.  

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