Arrest rates for marijuana possession have been going down across the board since 2007. Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting; but, stupid.

I saw a blurb on the news about Colorado and Washington needing more security firms to protect all the pot money. Maybe something for the mercenaries to do, other that security for despots. :litebulb:

Some of these are just ridiculous. Fallout Boy for KY, for example, or Wiz Khalifa for AR for crying out loud.:eyebrow:

from this YahooMusic article

Attachment 46889

I've only heard of a handful of these, and heard even less.

That's funny. The only real concert I ever saw in Maine was REM. We just didn't get many bands coming up there, but REM was one of them.

California likes Bonobo! Time to move there.

Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros? Sounds like a Dave Barry band name.

And Matchbox Twenty. Really? I live in two states and these are the Distinctive Artists. I am not impressed. :eyebrow:

I like the song "home" by Edward sharp et al. Matchbox twenty is like twenty years ago

http://musicmachinery.com/2014/02/27...ists-by-state/

That clears things up.

That's just terrible. It'd make me leave the States but its prolly worse elsewhere...

The good thing is I don't have to listen to what everyone else is listening to.

JayZ? I couldn't even tell you a single song by the guy. Is he a rapper?

I think he's one of the guys who is famous for being famous.

Guys, he's a rapper and one of the best-selling artists of all time.

Has 17 Grammys, 3 albums in Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time list, is worth $500 million dollars and is married to Beyoncé, who is the top female singer in the world. (It's like if Billy Joel had married Madonna in 1988, and instead of children they made records.)

You will have heard "Empire State of Mind", featuring Alicia Keys singing the verse that starts out "In New Yorrrrrk..."

Also, notably, he is NOT Kanye West.

Get off my lawn.

Ok, so maybe I'm a bit out of touch.


I realized about a month ago that while I knew exactly who Justin Beiber is, I couldn't name a single song that he did either. My son often mocks him by singing "baby, baby, baby, oh" in a silly way, so I knew those lyrics, but really didn't know the song. I asked about it and the kids pulled up the video, and I can honestly say I had never heard it before.

I know Beyonce. And could hum a couple of her songs to you. She's fun.

:rotflol:
Glatt pulls out the dry humor for the win!

Doesn't he produce, too?

I call the smelliest kind of bullshit on all three of these maps.

I will personally guarantee that JayZ is NOT KY's favorite, or most popular, artist.

If he is, I'll move.

I haven't been able to find much information on just where this data is coming from. Reading between the lines, it appears to come from music streaming services that have registration requirements.

I only saw one map with any kind of info and it said:

I wonder if this is related to that piece on NPR the other morning about the scientist who was trying to prove that luck and not talent leads to fame and popularity.

He's Robinson Cano's agent and little else.

zackly.

I'd like more info on the compilation as well. I'd guess he's widely played on bland pop and hip hop stations so his music would essentially be filler like the unimaginative dragons etc... I wouldn't know Alice Keyes from Bouncy if they were on my lawn. Didn't know there was a new version of New York State of mind... why bother?

Wull I din't know anything about the gent until 2008 when I worked at that radio monitoring company. Because I din't listen to radio.

Still he did come up with an interesting style for Empire State where he rapped just behind the beat:



Except the signature piano riff was taken from:

The footnote for both favorite artist maps at UT's link said "most played artist". I guess that's radio air time, so probably Clear Channel manipulating the market... also why I gave up radio except for a very few stations where I only listen to half what they're playing.

Firstly, in all honesty, I am a douche when it comes to music. I heard a sample of the Keyes bit somewhere, but the song is essentially new to me. Initially I thought he was doing a funny send-up of self-absorbed rap artists but... I think I'm with Bruce the map is prolly an effect of Clearchannel corp.

.

And I bet a significant portion of that science budget is for military purposes. :right:

But then a shitload of science is financed through DARPA and I'm not sure where that money would show up... if at all.

.

Labor force participation rate for teens. Where does the idea come from, that our young people are lazy and entitled? Get off my lawn -- and get to earning your way at fast food, like we did in the olden days!

http://cellar.org/2014/teenlabormarket.gif

Remarkable. I can think of only two stores in Arlington that hire teens.

I would assume that under-employed adults take a lot of those low-skill jobs now. I see a lot of kids doing basically nothing (Insert pet video game rant here) and other kids are focused on school, sports, and what they perceive as resume builders. I'm not sure what I'd have done if I weren't driving tractors all Summer. Please ignore the previous as that is now an illegal activity.

Yeah, I think it's more because adults are taking those crappy jobs right now. Even in 1996-1998, when I was a teen working in food service, my best friend and I were the only teens working in either of the locations we worked in. The other employees were all adults, most with families. One or two were earning extra income at night while they got a late-life degree, but the majority knew they'd be working crap jobs like this for their whole lives, and wanted nothing more than to eventually get to be a manager.

It's a disturbing trend.

I want my kids to get jobs when they are in high school. Starting around junior year or so. But I'm not sure they will be able to. Having a crappy minimum wage job is an extremely important learning experience. Where else will they learn what it's like to have a boss who won't take shit from you? "I don't care if you want to go home now. Scrape that gum off the bottom of those chairs, or don't bother coming back."

I think the best possible job for teens is in agriculture. There's nothing like shoveling shit for months on end, starting daily at 0430, to take the entitled starch out of kids. In addition to shoveling the shit, they get to see the cycle of life from start to end, and how we depend on it. They get to decide if they want to support agribusiness or not; they get to decide what they think about a lot of important issues.

Whether it's beef, chickens, sheep, or horses, I say ship the kids to the country and let them experience where food/life comes from. They'll come back with a new perspective.

oh, wait... there's a detail that makes this entire graph and/or chart much less interesting

http://cellar.org/2014/labortwenties2.jpg

These charts are fascinating. I was about to post that teen one on facebook, but then thought better of it. If I want my kids to get jobs locally, the last thing I need is to raise a discussion with parents of other teens in my neighborhood about how teen jobs are worthwhile, but scarce. Don't need to fuel competition.

Philadelphia and Toledo win the misery index for snowfall this season. (But shhh there's another storm on the way next week)

http://cellar.org/2014/snowtotals.jpg

Interesting chart. I would have preferred to see the increase as a percentage instead of as a real number of inches.

The +36 inches in Caribou sounds like a lot more than the +15 inches in DC,
But Caribou was only 38% more than usual and DC was 98% more than usual.

Of course Philly is still misery center because it's like 216% more than usual.

I'm not sure teens would make the best ag workers, we'd all starve in about two growing seasons.

:p:

Plus, how many of today's teenagers would willingly shovel shit?

I don't think anyone ever willingly shoveled shit, I know I sure as hell didn't. It was just something that had to be done, came will the territory.

But I think you're underestimating todays teens. Spoiled? Who spoiled them? I think if they had to do unpleasant things they would rise to the occasion, it's not their fault they were raised in an environment where they didn't have to.

They're not spoiled, lots of kids smell like that.

:D

To me, that's doing it willingly. And I did it, too.

:turd:

Willingly suggests there's a choice. When you have livestock indoors, there's no choice. :haha:

Shipping urban teens to the country probably wouldn't go well, I admit. (although I've known a few who benefited greatly). Maybe get them working when they're young? Part of educational requirements, maybe ... spend time on a family farm learning where food comes from.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes...

Hmm.

Instead of a snapshot in time, if I look at my life as a whole, I'm 46, and I spent 21 years living with my parents, and my kids have spent 15 years so far living with me, so that's 36 years in a household with two parents and kids. I spent 1 year as a man living alone, and 5 years in non-family households, and 5 years as a married couple without kids.

I predict that by the time I die at age 80, it will be about 47 years married with children, 1 year living alone (I hope), 5 years non-family household, and 27 years married with no kids.

YMMV.

YMMV for sure, "There are eight million stories in the naked city..."
All of them, would fit nicely into that chart, but explaining the trends would be a challenge.

I can think of a number of reasons for "Married with children" to be cut in half over 40 years. Kids grow up, death/divorce, ageing population, etc. But which reason is primary, has the biggest effect, would be much tougher.

The 120% increase in "Men living alone", is obviously due to an increase in intelligence. :p:

Heh... men living alone has gone up faster than women living alone, because the woman usually gets custody.

What I find most interesting is the threefold increase in "non-family" households. It makes sense that "other family" households go up alongside the rise in divorce and blended stepfamilies. But "non-family" means roommates, which most adults only do if they can't afford to live alone. Then again, it was going up even in the boom years, so maybe the economy doesn't have much to do with it after all.

I think non family is also unmarried couples.

Unmarried with children, too.

I think if there are children, then you become a "family" so the household would be "other family households" if the parents are unmarried.

The graph is somewhat interesting, a bunch of squiggles. But the conclusions drawn by the study are really something else.

In a nutshell, two decades ago, welfare payments were switched from checks to debit cards. No checks meant that there were no checks to cash, so there were fewer people walking around with wads of cash, so robberies went down. This study says that a whopping 10% reduction in crime nationally is directly attributable to the switch from welfare checks to welfare debit cards.

Previous explanations thrown out there for the crime reduction were the elimination of lead from gasoline and paint, and an increase in police and prison spending. But those things didn't correspond anywhere near as closely to the reductions in crime as the timing of this welfare payment switch does.

The only one that jumps out to me as being questionable is Larceny. It also went down, but it had been going down steeply already and its rate of decent seemed to be thwarted by the welfare payment switch.
Attachment 47144

What boom years?

The cultural switch in the ghetto, changing from crack to weed. I talked about this with a guy who was in cop school, and he said it was actually in the book-learning he was doing.

Not as many things wrong with this one as the last one, but:

http://a5.img.talkingpointsmemo.com/...fkeytbwnz0.jpg

1) Again, the misleading Y-axis

2) No mention that the goal had been adjusted to 6 million months ago, after the failed launch.

Both technically correct, but greatly misleading.

They later corrected the first one.

Any chance of an explanation for furriners, please?

The numbers are the numbers of people enrolling in healthcare through the exchanges, (but not moving onto Medicare). The expectation before launch was to have 7 million by now. When the launch was so bad, they revised the expectation down to 6 million.

(As an aside, there were more procrastinators than expected, and the number may reach 7 million after all, but that information came in after this chart was produced.)

The Y-axis issue is putting up a bar graph with an unlabeled vertical axis, and making the difference in size between the bars an arbitrary amount. Someone looking at the graph will get the impression that the axis starts at zero, and (in the example above) the actual enrollees are about a third of the goal, since the one bar is about a third of the size of the other. If you look at the numbers, and do some calculation, you can figure out the actual relationship between the numbers, but you could have done that without the graph. A graph is supposed to communicate an idea visually, and provide the data as reference, not communicate an incorrect impression that can be corrected by interpreting the numbers yourself.