Isiah 1:17- Learn to do well. Seek justice, Relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
Very interesting to read this post there. Conclusion by Eric Kaufman of the Manhattan Institute is that a young Black male is more likely to die in a car accident than by police bullets. However, if you want to portray an America that treats people of color so badly that's not helping the narrative. You have to show "systemic racism" to prove how America is so bad.
h/t Newsalert
I studied political science so this is of interest surely in that field and certainly if you're a student of history.
Researchers found societies with governments that were reasonably responsive to their people -- governments that met the definition of good governance -- tended to last a bit longer than autocratic governments.
However, researchers found that when good governments turned rotten, the breakup was often uglier than the collapse of autocratic governments.
According to the study, good governments fail more dramatically because the bureaucracy is more intimately integrated with society at large.
"Social networks and institutions become highly connected, economically, socially, and politically," Feinman said. "Whereas if an autocratic regime collapses, you might see a different leader or you might see a different capital, but it doesn't permeate all the way down into people's lives, as such rulers generally monopolize resources and fund their regimes in ways less dependent on local production or broad-based taxation."
Researchers also looked at why exactly good governments fail. They found the collapse of good governments was often triggered by the rise to power of amoral leaders -- leaders who ignored the social contract and abandoned their society's ideals.
Such betrayals often precipitated or accompanied rising inequality, concentration of political power, tax evasion, crumbling infrastructure and the decline of bureaucratic institutions -- a pattern researchers suggest can be observed in modern societies.
What societies did they study you might want to know:
To better understand the role of government on the success and longevity of ancient societies, researchers took an in-depth look at principles that guided the governments of four societies: the Roman Empire, China's Ming Dynasty, India's Mughal Empire and the Venetian Republic.
While I hope not in my lifetime, however, the fall of the American Republic if it ever happens will be very ugly!
h/t Instapundit
Illinois
I wonder if this figure includes Chicago. What would be the income required before taxes to live in Chicago? I'll bet this would be a much higher number and perhaps equivalent to the income required to break even in California or New York which means you have to make at least $30K/year.
- Total required income before taxes: $26,566
- Estimated housing costs: $9,151
- Estimated food costs: $3,058
Georgia
And does this figure include Atlanta? I'll be ATL compared to the rest of the state has a slightly higher income to break even.
- Total required income before taxes: $25,921
- Estimated housing costs: $8,937
- Estimated food costs: $2,994
That's according to updated data from MIT's living wage calculator, which determines the minimum amount necessary to meet basic needs without dipping into poverty or relying on outside help. The model takes into account factors such as food, housing and health insurance, in addition to other regular costs, and don't include conveniences or luxuries such as restaurant meals, vacations or money left over for investments.
The single biggest driver behind the absence of many black men is mass incarceration. A few academics have held up ratios of black men to women as a proxy for incarceration. Despite recent declines in prison populations, disparities remain massive. African-American males are imprisoned in state and federal facilities at six times the rate of white men, and about 25 times that of black women, according to figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.Another subject I'd like to tackle more are subjects that are important to Black men.
Black men, underrepresented in the overwhelming majority of neighborhoods, are instead heavily concentrated in relatively few places, and those tend to be home to prisons. We identified 79 such Census tracts with more than twice as many black men as women.
Black men are further subject to high mortality. Homicides drive up rates, along with higher risks of dying from diabetes, kidney disease and sepsis than other men. In all, the latest average life expectancy at birth for black men, 71.5 years as measured by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, trails the expectancy for white men by nearly five years and for black women by more than six years.
But mortality and incarceration rates alone don’t explain why so many black men seem to be missing in communities. Alford Young, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, notes that they frequently lack permanent addresses. Women, particularly those with children, are likely to obtain support services, and thus to get counted, while black men are not and may become homeless. Young also says a subset prefers to be mobile and undocumented, mostly stemming from fears of law enforcement. “It’s really a challenge with official counts to make sense of where black men are,” he says.
The ramifications of all this are far-reaching. Partners and families of the “missing men” face a host of negative social and economic consequences, such as a shortage of income and assets. Huge numbers of women have ties to incarcerated family members: One in every 2.5 black women has a family member in prison, more than three times the number for white women, according to a Scholars Strategy Network report. For children, research suggests growing up with an incarcerated parent increases the likelihood of learning disabilities, behavioral problems and other challenges.
But the consequences of all this extend beyond families. The absence of adult males means fewer constructive relationships for local children and fewer resources for communities in general. “It’s not simply large numbers of men not being present around their children or their partners,” Young says, “but what it means in a community context to be invisible.”
The study, co-authored by Marta Murray-Close and Misty Heggeness, found that husbands who earn less than their wives reported their income to be 2.9% higher than what was on their tax returns. However, researchers found that wives inflated their husband's earnings even more than the husband did.We live in times where women want to go to school and go to work. Indeed it seems - if I believe the media - women look down on other women who want to be stay-at-home wives and mothers. Regardless men are still expected to be the breadwinners whether or not they're wives work a better job. Some norms in our society hasn't changed yet.
When it comes to reporting the wife's income, the opposite was true. While both spouses downplayed the wife's salary in census surveys -- reporting her income to be 1.5% lower than what she actually earned -- they found husbands tended to underestimate their wife's income more than she did.
Of the couples the authors analyzed, almost 1 in 4 were in marriages where the wife was the primary breadwinner.
“Jews, when they get successful, they will help their people,” Sterling said. “Some of the African-Americans, they don’t want to help anyone.”I found that article recently on Facebook and it asks an important question. Then I found this even older article from The Grio:
Black people are far more inclined to give back to the community compared with their white counterparts, according to new research by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF).Sterling may be talking about wealth more than charity. Both are important and it's important to help people to get where you are. It's still very important to also remember there are those in need and they need some form of help to.
The report, “Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Colors,” shows a growing trend for communities of color to give at increasing rates and levels.
African-Americans, for instance, give away 25 percent more of their income per year than whites and 63 percent of Latino households now make charitable donations. People of color are also growing in size and their assets are increasing as well.
A recent Pew study complicates this picture a little bit. It found that, yes, a third of college graduates who majored in social science, liberal arts or education regretted their decision. (In comparison, 24 percent of people with science and engineering degrees wish they'd studied something else.) But overall, when asked what they wish they'd done differently in college, "choosing a different major" wasn't the top answer. The most popular answer, given by half of all respondents, was "gaining more work experience." Choosing a different major was the fourth most popular response, after "studying harder" and "looking for work sooner."I majored in political science, there certainly was a way to use my degree in that particular field surely. Only really used it once having worked polls doing exit polling during a research project. I wrote about it here.
A possible lesson here: Picking a major with a real-world application might be overrated, at least as college graduates themselves see it. What students really need is experience putting their knowledge to practical use while they're still in school.
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Have you been infected with Facebook?When you think about it, we went from having personal webpages (think GeoCities remember them?) to MySpace to FB to Twitter to Instagram in no time. Even worse than that still, there are always new ways to pass the time on the internet. Well times change I suppose.
Don't worry, like a viral outbreak, Facebook use will explode before plummeting down to Myspace levels of obscurity, says a new study from Princeton University.
Using epidemiological models used to study the rapid spread of disease, the researchers found that Facebook has "already reached the peak of its popularity and has entered a decline phase."
How bad will it get? Facebook will lose "80 percent of its peak user base between 2015 and 2017," according to the researcers. To explain why social networks are like infectious diseases, the study pointed to similar research done with ideas.
This study hasn't been peer-reviewed and Facebook, which currently boasts 874 million users worldwide, would certainly object to being compared to a viral epidemic. But the company itself admitted in October to losing teen users. Later, a study by digital consultancy iStrategy Labs claimed that Facebook had 25 percent fewer teenage users in 2013 than it did in 2011. (Apparently, American teens are susceptible to a new virus called Snapchat).
Even though Illinois has done more for freedom than any state -- one of our presidents freed the slaves, and one of our generals made that stick -- we’re ranked #45 overall for freedom, and dead last for personal freedoms. We’ve been at the bottom of that list since 2007. The reasons? It’s hard to get high and/or carry a gun around here. Illinois also has harsh asset forfeiture laws, which put the burden of proof on property owners and grant 90 percent of proceeds from seized property to law enforcement.From the study:In the personal freedom dimension, Illinois has the sixth harshest gun control laws in the country, though these were improved by the McDonald v. Chicago decision striking down local gun bans. The state’s victimless crimes arrest rates are very high. In 2010, arrests for victimless crimes (excluding minors) made up over 1.5 percent of the state’s population; the vast majority of these were for drugs.However, that figure is actually an improvement on 2008. Illinois’s marijuana laws are more restrictive than Georgia’s, which is surprising for a left-leaning state. Its asset forfeiture laws are also among the worst in the nation. On the plus side, Illinois’s home school regulations were effectively as minimal as Idaho’s—a case of benign neglect, it seems. The state’s marriage freedom score will improve in the next version of the index since civil unions were legalized in 2011.
Rule-bound Massachusetts inspired the line, "everything's illegal in Massachusetts" in the Mel Gibson flick, Edge of Darkness. And, if that line isn't technically true, as a former resident of the Bay State I can testify that it's close enough to capture the feel of a place so ensnared in laws and taxes that you can safely assume that whatever the hell you're doing can get you in hot water if the wrong person takes notice. So it's no surpise that the state ranks poorly in the Mercatus Center's new report, Freedom in the 50 States, published today. If anything, Massachusetts's ranking of 30 seems generous, but the place has a lot of competition in the race to the bottom. And, the Bay State offsets hideous gun laws and land-use restrictions by recognizing same-sex marriage, and keeping arrests for victimless crimes, including marijuana use, rather restrained. The state also has a modestly sized government workforce and average tax rates, which let it shine relative to states like last-place New York.I just looked over at the CapFax again and I see that there may be legislation although very strict could allow for medicinal marihuana. As far as personal freedom goes in Chicago at least police are authorized to issue tickets instead of making arrests at least when it comes to possession of marihuana.
But Massachusetts, like many less-free states, is losing population to states that rank more strongly overall in their respect for freedom. Not incidentally, freer states also tend to have higher growth in personal income than less-free states. And, there's a direct link between that prosperity and certain types of freedom. Specifically, note authors William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens, "[o]ur study has found that a positive relationship exists between a state's fiscal freedom and its net migration rate and income growth."
But the top-ranked states are red states, with the exception of New Hampshire, and the usual assumption is that red states favor economic liberty and blue states favor social freedom. Does that mean that Americans looking for economic opportunity have to trade off some leeway in their personal lives? Surprisingly, not really — or maybe a little, but in return for leeway in other areas.
Even without modern-day temptations like fast food or cigarettes, people had clogged arteries some 4,000 years ago, according to the biggest-ever hunt for the condition in mummies.Still with this finding, it's advisable to continue living a healthy lifestyle. That is don't smoke and eat healthy!
Researchers say that suggests heart disease may be more a natural part of human aging rather than being directly tied to contemporary risk factors like smoking, eating fatty foods and not exercising.
CT scans of 137 mummies showed evidence of atherosclerosis, or hardened arteries, in one third of those examined, including those from ancient people believed to have healthy lifestyles. Atherosclerosis causes heart attacks and strokes. More than half of the mummies were from Egypt while the rest were from Peru, southwest America and the Aleutian islands in Alaska. The mummies were from about 3800 B.C. to 1900 A.D.
"Heart disease has been stalking mankind for over 4,000 years all over the globe," said Dr. Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City and the paper's lead author.
As if the pressure of graduating from a top-tier college isn’t enough to find success in today’s weak economy, more recent college graduates than ever are defaulting on their loans after graduation.Via Instapundit!
A new report by FICO Labs, a unit of Fair Isaac Corp., found that the student loan delinquency rate has risen to 15 percent over the past three years - a 22 percent increase from its previous high in 2005-2007. Fair Issac Corp. publishes consumer credit scores and helps banks decide if an individual is qualified for a loan and what level interest rate they may be qualified for.
Discussing the report, FICO Labs Head Andrew Jennings commented that,“This situation is simply unsustainable and we’re already suffering the consequences. When wage growth is slow and jobs are not as plentiful as they once were, it is impossible for people to continue taking out ever-larger student loans without greatly increasing the risk of default. There is no way around that harsh reality.”
Part of the problem is that college students today are applying for larger loans than ever before. In 2011, the average student left college with nearly $27,000 in debt, an increase of $10,000 over the past eight years.
“As more people default on their student loans, their credit ratings will drop, making it harder for them to access new credit and help grow the economy,” Jennings continued. “Even people who stay current on their student loans are dealing with very large debts, which reduces the money they have available to spend elsewhere.”
Boys in the United States are beginning to see the first signs of puberty from six months to two years earlier than previously observed, according to a new study published Saturday in Pediatrics. The study is the first to look at the onset of puberty for U.S. boys in 25 years and seems to mirror similar findings that have already been well documented in girls, points out the Wall Street Journal. The difference appears most pronounced in African-American boys, who are starting to see the first signs of puberty at 9.1 years. The average for Hispanic boys is 10 and 10.1 years for white boys, compared with the average age of 11.5 in previous studies.Hat-tip Instapundit!
The study has been a long time coming and is widely considered to be the most comprehensive attempt to measure puberty in U.S. boys. Still, experts cautioned that since previous studies were smaller or approached the issue through a different light, it might not be so easy to pinpoint how much earlier boys are developing, points out the New York Times.
It turns out that Illinois, the state that produced the first two Republican presidents, is now one of the least Republican in the union. In only six states do fewer voters identify as Republicans. Illinois is the least Republican state that is not on the East or the West coast, and the second-largest in the Top 10, after California. Thanks to the influence of Chicago, it votes like a coastal, cosmopolitan state despite its interior location. This explains why the Republican Party has had zero influence in state politics in the last 10 years, has won only two Senate elections in the last 34 years, and couldn’t even beat an unelected Democratic governor with an 28 percent approval rating. The Democrats have become the natural governing party in Illinois. The Republicans can only make a case for themselves when the Democrats really screw up.A few states are noted as least Republican, most of the northeastern states such as Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and even Massachussettes (the state of the current GOP nominee for President). Then there's California who elected future President Ronald Reagan as their Governor for two terms. Still the question is what's the deal with those states that are solidly "blue" if you will?
A new national report from Sallie Mae, one of the nation’s top student loan providers, shows more students and families are choosing colleges related to how much they cost.Sadly I didn't learn half of this years ago. I would say if we expect our young people to go to university financing their education is one thing that they should be briefed on. This will separate the ones who are serious from the ones who aren't.
In fact, a record 69 percent of American families say they rule out schools that are too expensive. That’s up from 64 percent in 2011, according to the report.
...
Other key findings from the Sallie Mae report:
- Students are footing more of the bill for college—about 30 percent, up from 24 percent four years ago.
- Parents are covering less of the cost of college—about 37 percent, down from 45 percent four years ago.
- 13 percent of parents borrowed funds to pay for their child’s post-secondary education.
- Fewer parents “strongly agree” that college is an investment in their child’s future—77 percent this year, compared with 83 percent in 2011.
- More than half of all students live at home while going to school, about a 9 percent increase from 2011.
- Fewer parents say they would send their child to college for the experience—just 19 percent, down from 24 percent last year and 33 percent in 2010.
The 77-cents-on-the-dollars statistic is calculated in a way that is biased against men. For example, while among all physicians, men earn more than women, men are more likely to be in specialties requiring longer training, high-stress, and irregular hours, for example, surgery and cardiology. In contrast, women are more likely to be pediatricians. Despite that bias, across all careers, surveys report that childless women under 30 make more than men. More than 90 percent of workplace deaths, military deaths, and severe workplace injuries (e.g., amputations, black lung disease) occur to men. Such dangerous work justify higher pay for men.Hmmm, I wish I had an excuse to move to Alabama and that's not the only place I would like to go. There are other places in the south or even in the west I would like to live.
Visit American workplaces, especially major corporations, and you'll find that anti-men practices are not only tolerated but routinely imposed by employers. Women but not men are encouraged to form committees and caucuses to advance their sex's causes in the workplace, often at men's expense. Examples:
• Mentor programs for women only
• Special training for women only
• Fast-track-to-executive position for women only
In honest conversation, most people will agree that, on average, men are more often willing to do the things it takes to get promoted, for example, to make time to take advanced technical courses by forgoing recreation such as sports or shopping. Men are more likely to be willing to move to a God-forsaken place (Montgomery, Alabama, anyone?) for a promotion, and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to work longer hours.
To the great delight of the vast majority of men, it appears the days of women setting their sights on marrying ‘above themselves’ are over.I do wonder if these ladies have such a problem finding that ideal male that they would finally break down and settle for a man who is "beneath" them. I wonder how many women wait until they reach menopause before they finally settle down with someone "beneath" them.
The attractions of the Mr Darcys of this world are waning as women become better educated and better paid, research has found.
Indeed modern women could hardly be further from the likes of Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet and her scheming to net Mr Darcy – not just the man she loved but, crucially, a wealthy aristocrat.
Analysing how female aspirations have changed over the past 50 years the researchers found women in their late twenties and early thirties are increasingly marrying ‘beneath themselves’ by opting for men of lower social classes.
The study by the Institute for Public Policy Research adds weight to the idea that today’s economically independent women are freer to marry for love rather than to further themselves.
The think-tank says the proportion of those ‘marrying down’ – such as the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips who is now wed to former England rugby player Mike Tindall – has exceeded those ‘marrying up’ for the first time. The study found 28 per cent of women born between 1976 and 1981 married men who were less educated and worse paid than them. In 1958, the figure was 23 per cent.
Of the women born between 1976 and 1981, only 16 per cent married up and more than half (56 per cent) married someone of the same class, defined by the IPPR as someone in a similar occupation.
We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.
It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.
Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.
In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.
His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.
Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
“Some have less than a high school education. We have people who have medical degrees,” she said. “We have people at 80 who are going to the gym five days a week and leading exercise classes and people who still smoke a pack a day and have for 30 years.”I hope that they will publish their research. Although surely it will be highly academic, I hope that I will be able to understand their findings!
“There is no one path to SuperAging,” she said, adding that researchers believe that all participants provide clues into the way the aging brain functions.
Publication of the research from Rogalski’s group, which has studied the SuperAging phenomenon for more than four years, is pending. But the early data is giving intriguing clues into the mystery of aging.
Those qualified for the study undergo extensive tests of memory, IQ and executive function. There are DNA blood tests and MRIs of their brains. Eighteen months after the initial three-day screen, they are asked to report back to the lab for another two days of testing. They will be part of the study as long as they are alive and willing to participate.
Some of the MRIs revealed the possibility that their brains shared characteristics with younger brains atypical of an average brain in an 80-year-old. The SuperAgers’ brains weren’t shrinking in the same way most brains shrink as people age. The reason for this isn’t clear but as the study grows, researchers hope to learn about possible connections to lifestyle or genetics.
The SuperAgers are asked to donate their brains for further study after they die.
In the nation's 51 major metropolitan areas (more than 1,000,000 population), 76.3% of lower income employees use cars to get to work, three times that of all other modes combined (Figure 1).Why doesn't transit rank that high amongst low income commuters:
Admittedly, this is less than the 83.3% of all employees who use cars for the work trip, but a lot more than would be expected, especially among those who believe that transit is the principal means of mobility for low income citizens. Overall, 8 times as many lower income citizens commuted by car as by transit. In this analysis, lower income citizens are defined as employees who earn less than $15,000 per year, which is approximately one-half of the median earnings per employee of $29,701. .
Perhaps most surprising is the fact that only 9.6% of lower income citizens used transit to get to work. This is not very much higher than the 7.9% of all workers in the metropolitan areas who use transit. (Table 1).
Transit's small market share has to do with its inherent impracticality as a means of getting to most employment. According to ground-breaking research by the Brookings Institution, low-income citizens could reach only 35 percent of jobs in the major metropolitan areas by transit in 90 minutes. In other words, you cannot get from here to there, at least for most trips. It is no more reasonable for lower income citizens to spend three hours per day commuting than it is for anyone else. A theoretical 90 minute one-way standard is no indicator of usable mobility. It is likely that only about 8 percent of jobs are accessible by lower income citizens in 45 minutes (Note 2) and 4 percent in 30 minutes.For many, I'm sure public transportation is a lot more inconvenient than driving to where you need to go. It's probably inconvenient if you have to walk a block or more to get to where you need to go than to drive there. Although when it comes to driving you have to consider parking, how far away do you have to park from your destination.
