I had a friend who got hit by lightening and all it did was kill him. And so far not ONE supervillain, superhero, or giant fire-breathing lizard has come out of Fukushima. Not even ONE.
The juvenile population in the U.S., like the overall population, has trended pretty steadily upward (making the decline in juvenile arrests even more impressive). For example:
In 1996 there were 269 million juveniles in the U.S. In 2000 there were 282 million juveniles in the U.S. In 2008 there were 304 million juveniles in the U.S.
If legalized abortion were the root cause, shouldn't the drop have started around 1984 (12 years or so after Roe V. Wade)? In fact, there was a significant bump before the mid-90's, which suggests to me that abortion isn't it.
The numbers have been dropping since the mid-90's (as I said, about 12-15 years after the "get tough on crime" stuff began in the early 80's), From the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP):
Here is the data from 1996 to 2000, showing a 15% drop in total juvenile arrests between 1996 and 2000.
Here is the data from 1998-2008, showing a 16% drop in total juvenile arrests between 1998 and 2008.
And, you're right, correlation is not causation. But SOMETHING is clearly changed. Juveniles born after the early 80's are much less likely to become juvenile delinquents than juveniles born before that period.
Well, I was talking about prisons, not jails (there is a big difference). Jails don't have much employment because they're generally short-term facilities. Prisoners, though almost all have some sort of "job" to do. I couldn't find any citeable numbers for the entire country, but here in Alabama about 10%-15% of prisoners work in "prison industries" (i.e. for outside contractors), another 10% work in odd state-contracted jobs (other state agencies here can "rent" prison gangs for dirt cheap), another 15% work on the prison farm system (prisoners grow and raise most of their own food here), and almost all of them are responsible for duties within the prison (i.e. cleaning bathrooms, doing odd jobs around the prison itself) in some form. So very few prisoners (especially at the lower security levels) just lounge around all day. They have incentive to work too, because the 38 cents an hour they're paid (some jobs pay more, but that's "minimum wage" in prison) goes into their canteen account for buying stuff in the prison.
And the harsh reality is that, since we started the "get tough on crime" attitude in the U.S. back in the early 80's, violent crime has seen a steady decline. Juvenile crime has dropped *dramatically*. And the juvenile crime drop started to *really* plummet about 12-15 years after the "get tough on crime" stuff started to hit the adult system (more adult scumbags locked up means less scumbags having kids to pass along their life of crime to).
The old "these guys sit around all day watching cable TV" crap is also a tired old myth. AFAIK, no mainstream prison system in the country offers prisoners cable TV (some will allow a prisoner to purchase a small TV for their cell on their own dime and watch whatever over-the-air broadcasts they can get). And, far from sitting around, all juvenile prisoners in the U.S. go to school every day (just like their non-prison counterparts) and most adult prisoners have some sort of job (either in the prison or, for lower risk offenders, outside). So the idea that these guys in prisons are on some sort of vacation is just ridiculous.
First of all, juvenile prisons actually have their own schools (sometimes their own special school districts), and those schools are often even more poorly funded than public schools (since they don't have a property tax base to rely on). Most of the money for juvenile justice agencies and their facilities goes toward security, probation/parole supervision, facilities maintenance, etc. NOT just for education (as this letter writer seems to presume). And some adult prison systems don't have any real education system AT ALL.
So the average prisoner is getting much *less* per person for actual education than the average student in any given state. As to his points about free health care, threes square a day, etc.; well that's getting in much larger social issues that has little to do with direct school funding.
This reminds me of one of those "Autistic Reporter" stories at the Onion News Network.
Fortunately, nature generally is pretty good at stopping scientists from reproducing--which may ultimately be for the best. I can really only take so much of there pedantic over-analysis of even the most trivial things. I guarantee you that, even now, a scientist reading/. is furiously typing away at his keyboard to point out the fact that I misused "there" in my previous sentence.
retelling all of the origin stories again just in case readers missed them the first (or second, or third) time
At this point, I think it's more like dozens (for some of the bigger characters). Comic books make soap operas look modest when it comes to the silly deus ex machina plot devices to kill-off and return characters, redo their origins, retroactively change their histories, etc. Superman alone must have at least a hundred "origins" by now (especially if you count all the alternate universe Supermen, versions in different media, etc.).
Personally, I wish they would return to all the politically-incorrect storylines and eras they've swept under the rug over the decades. I would love to see Captain American fight the buck-toothed Japs again, or let the commie menace know what's for at least one more time! And whatever happened to all those great ghetto superheroes from the 70's that used to say "Right on!" all the time and fight with switchblades?
Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of the Sputnik program (and every subsequent Soviet space vehicle until 1965), started out designing amateur gliders in his backyard when he was a teenager. I suspect many a great aerospace engineer started out as an amateur aircraft or rocket designer.
Today's amateur is the man who takes us to Mars tomorrow.
No, they'll just make it to where you only have to pay if you want to actually be competitive. The pay guys will all be carrying the Super-Elite-Kickass-M-58-Death-Bringer-Plasma-Cannon and the free guys will be carrying the Cheap-Ass-Pussy--.22-Caliber-"Peashooter."
I'm glad to see that the "Invite CmdrTaco to your cool place" campaign has went a lot better so far than its predecessor, the "Come kick kdawson in the balls" campaign.
Sounds like a great plan; start a terror campaign to make Americans believe an alien invasion is about to start.
Except that would be an incredibly stupid way to go about it. If you were going to do something like that (and it would be a stupid idea, on so *many* levels), you wouldn't crash your "alien craft" on some desert farm in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. You would crash it in a suburb, or near a city. And, even so, the panic wouldn't last very long--because a quick autopsy would reveal the "alien" pilots to be human almost immediately. Not only that, but the U.S. government would tear your "UFO" apart and find Soviet serial numbers and markings on the parts (removing all traceable evidence of earthly construction from a modern aircraft would be almost impossible)--and use that as a pretense for possible war (or, at least, a very embarrassing reveal at the UN).
No remotely sane person would buy that as a workable plan. It's so epically stupid, it almost boggles the mind that anyone would even dare propose it , much less execute it.
On a related note, I've always been intrigued with Project Blue Book and its ilk and their role in the Cold War. The goals of this program and others were to covertly survey the public around secret military bases to find out what they knew about the technology being tested there (the "Tell me about any strange craft you've seen" question), as well as to determine if there had been any legitimate sightings of Soviet spycraft on U.S. soil (and if anything could be learned from these sightings).
But I've often wondered if an secondary goal of this wasn't to actually encourage the public belief in extraterrestrial UFO's. After all, the Air Force, et.al. were very well-served by alien conspiracy theories that diverted attention away from questions about the actual secret aircraft and spycraft they were testing. Did they see this as a tool? Did they actually encourage the nutballs?
Slashdot Mirror
I had a friend who got hit by lightening and all it did was kill him. And so far not ONE supervillain, superhero, or giant fire-breathing lizard has come out of Fukushima. Not even ONE.
Fucking lying comic books.
In Tennessee you can bribe a legislator with a pair of shoes and one of them fancy Yankee repeater rifles.
You didn't develop superpowers? Man, that's a letdown.
Do the sharks have a preference?
Bon was a wild man, but he also once sang in a bubblegum pop band.
Brian's got a great voice, but lately he's also developed a great gut.
We are Apple. YOU WILL DO WHAT WE SAY!
You wouldn't want to lose your hipster status, would you? Well?
That's what we thought.
Oops, you're right. The numbers (aged 0-16) are actually:
66 million in 1996
68 million in 2000
70 million in 2008
The juvenile population in the U.S., like the overall population, has trended pretty steadily upward (making the decline in juvenile arrests even more impressive). For example:
In 1996 there were 269 million juveniles in the U.S.
In 2000 there were 282 million juveniles in the U.S.
In 2008 there were 304 million juveniles in the U.S.
Here is the source, so you can look for yourself.
If legalized abortion were the root cause, shouldn't the drop have started around 1984 (12 years or so after Roe V. Wade)? In fact, there was a significant bump before the mid-90's, which suggests to me that abortion isn't it.
The numbers have been dropping since the mid-90's (as I said, about 12-15 years after the "get tough on crime" stuff began in the early 80's), From the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP):
Here is the data from 1996 to 2000, showing a 15% drop in total juvenile arrests between 1996 and 2000.
Here is the data from 1998-2008, showing a 16% drop in total juvenile arrests between 1998 and 2008.
And, you're right, correlation is not causation. But SOMETHING is clearly changed. Juveniles born after the early 80's are much less likely to become juvenile delinquents than juveniles born before that period.
Well, I was talking about prisons, not jails (there is a big difference). Jails don't have much employment because they're generally short-term facilities. Prisoners, though almost all have some sort of "job" to do. I couldn't find any citeable numbers for the entire country, but here in Alabama about 10%-15% of prisoners work in "prison industries" (i.e. for outside contractors), another 10% work in odd state-contracted jobs (other state agencies here can "rent" prison gangs for dirt cheap), another 15% work on the prison farm system (prisoners grow and raise most of their own food here), and almost all of them are responsible for duties within the prison (i.e. cleaning bathrooms, doing odd jobs around the prison itself) in some form. So very few prisoners (especially at the lower security levels) just lounge around all day. They have incentive to work too, because the 38 cents an hour they're paid (some jobs pay more, but that's "minimum wage" in prison) goes into their canteen account for buying stuff in the prison.
And the harsh reality is that, since we started the "get tough on crime" attitude in the U.S. back in the early 80's, violent crime has seen a steady decline. Juvenile crime has dropped *dramatically*. And the juvenile crime drop started to *really* plummet about 12-15 years after the "get tough on crime" stuff started to hit the adult system (more adult scumbags locked up means less scumbags having kids to pass along their life of crime to).
The old "these guys sit around all day watching cable TV" crap is also a tired old myth. AFAIK, no mainstream prison system in the country offers prisoners cable TV (some will allow a prisoner to purchase a small TV for their cell on their own dime and watch whatever over-the-air broadcasts they can get). And, far from sitting around, all juvenile prisoners in the U.S. go to school every day (just like their non-prison counterparts) and most adult prisoners have some sort of job (either in the prison or, for lower risk offenders, outside). So the idea that these guys in prisons are on some sort of vacation is just ridiculous.
First of all, juvenile prisons actually have their own schools (sometimes their own special school districts), and those schools are often even more poorly funded than public schools (since they don't have a property tax base to rely on). Most of the money for juvenile justice agencies and their facilities goes toward security, probation/parole supervision, facilities maintenance, etc. NOT just for education (as this letter writer seems to presume). And some adult prison systems don't have any real education system AT ALL.
So the average prisoner is getting much *less* per person for actual education than the average student in any given state. As to his points about free health care, threes square a day, etc.; well that's getting in much larger social issues that has little to do with direct school funding.
This reminds me of one of those "Autistic Reporter" stories at the Onion News Network.
Fortunately, nature generally is pretty good at stopping scientists from reproducing--which may ultimately be for the best. I can really only take so much of there pedantic over-analysis of even the most trivial things. I guarantee you that, even now, a scientist reading /. is furiously typing away at his keyboard to point out the fact that I misused "there" in my previous sentence.
Yeah, but those Onion guys all have cancerAIDS.
What superhero hasn't been reinvented at least once in "decades"? Shit, I think Batman has had three costume changes just this month.
retelling all of the origin stories again just in case readers missed them the first (or second, or third) time
At this point, I think it's more like dozens (for some of the bigger characters). Comic books make soap operas look modest when it comes to the silly deus ex machina plot devices to kill-off and return characters, redo their origins, retroactively change their histories, etc. Superman alone must have at least a hundred "origins" by now (especially if you count all the alternate universe Supermen, versions in different media, etc.).
Personally, I wish they would return to all the politically-incorrect storylines and eras they've swept under the rug over the decades. I would love to see Captain American fight the buck-toothed Japs again, or let the commie menace know what's for at least one more time! And whatever happened to all those great ghetto superheroes from the 70's that used to say "Right on!" all the time and fight with switchblades?
In other news, a large group of hackers were arrested today after sexually assaulting their maids...
Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of the Sputnik program (and every subsequent Soviet space vehicle until 1965), started out designing amateur gliders in his backyard when he was a teenager. I suspect many a great aerospace engineer started out as an amateur aircraft or rocket designer.
Today's amateur is the man who takes us to Mars tomorrow.
An apple and and orange are both sweet, right? Well, there you go.
Not only does Blizzard get you for $150 a year, but you also still have to pay full price for all the expansion packs.
And to think, my guidance counselor used to tell me that drug dealing wasn't profitable.
Nowhere does it say it's Pay to Play.
No, they'll just make it to where you only have to pay if you want to actually be competitive. The pay guys will all be carrying the Super-Elite-Kickass-M-58-Death-Bringer-Plasma-Cannon and the free guys will be carrying the Cheap-Ass-Pussy--.22-Caliber-"Peashooter."
I'm glad to see that the "Invite CmdrTaco to your cool place" campaign has went a lot better so far than its predecessor, the "Come kick kdawson in the balls" campaign.
Sounds like a great plan; start a terror campaign to make Americans believe an alien invasion is about to start.
Except that would be an incredibly stupid way to go about it. If you were going to do something like that (and it would be a stupid idea, on so *many* levels), you wouldn't crash your "alien craft" on some desert farm in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. You would crash it in a suburb, or near a city. And, even so, the panic wouldn't last very long--because a quick autopsy would reveal the "alien" pilots to be human almost immediately. Not only that, but the U.S. government would tear your "UFO" apart and find Soviet serial numbers and markings on the parts (removing all traceable evidence of earthly construction from a modern aircraft would be almost impossible)--and use that as a pretense for possible war (or, at least, a very embarrassing reveal at the UN).
No remotely sane person would buy that as a workable plan. It's so epically stupid, it almost boggles the mind that anyone would even dare propose it , much less execute it.
On a related note, I've always been intrigued with Project Blue Book and its ilk and their role in the Cold War. The goals of this program and others were to covertly survey the public around secret military bases to find out what they knew about the technology being tested there (the "Tell me about any strange craft you've seen" question), as well as to determine if there had been any legitimate sightings of Soviet spycraft on U.S. soil (and if anything could be learned from these sightings).
But I've often wondered if an secondary goal of this wasn't to actually encourage the public belief in extraterrestrial UFO's. After all, the Air Force, et.al. were very well-served by alien conspiracy theories that diverted attention away from questions about the actual secret aircraft and spycraft they were testing. Did they see this as a tool? Did they actually encourage the nutballs?