Recently, the Ten Commandments were once again in the news. This time after school officials tore down copies off of students' lockers at Floyd County High School in Virginia. Display of the Decalogue was in part to protest the February 22 decision of the school board to remove "God's imperatives" from all school buildings.

That decision was made due to threats from the ACLU and Freedom of Religion Foundation to sue if they were not removed. However, threats of legal actions were made again by the ACLU after Floyd High School administrators banned students from displaying the Ten Commandments on their personal lockers. The ACLU sent another letter on February 24 to school administrators to clarify their obvious misunderstanding of the difference between a government entity sponsoring an organized religion and that of an individual's right to religious expression.

The week of March 6, the Floyd County Superintendent, Terry Arbogast, agreed to allow students' display of religious messages on their lockers — for now.

"We have decided to review our policy and procedures to put in writing more specific guidelines for students. Until that review and publication occurs, Jacob [the student at the center of this] will be permitted to place on his locker a copy of the Ten Commandments as requested."

Translation: "In order to stay out of trouble, we are going to honour your pesky Constitutional right to free speech until we can find a legal way to quash it."

Do not get me wrong, I do not care whether a kid gets to hang the Ten Commandments on their locker or not; even in a public school. But I do care when political correctness begins to intrude on individuals' rights, as was the case here.

Progressives like to attack the Ten Commandments not for what it says, but for what it represents to them — not Christians, but right-wing conservatives. Not to say that the association is incomprehensible. In my personal experience, most Christians, who wear Jesus on their sleeve, are not only fiscally conservative but exceedingly socially conservative as well. Display of the Ten Commandments has become synonymous with the impertinent, "When you die, where do you think you will you go?"

Even so, the ten "commandments" still are not at all idiosyncratic. In the United States, for example, we live under a system of government that demands the same of its citizens as God did of the people of Israel, which I demonstrate through legal code below.

For those of you that support the right-wing evangelicals in spirit, but not necessarily through the public display of symbols thereof, I present to you the Ten Commandments of Government. The US Federal government will be playing the role of God, of course, while the state of Virginia will be filling in for all the interpersonal commandments of man (except for number five).  Hang it in solidarity. Hang it in parody. Hell, hang it just to be a nuisance.

The Ten Commandments of Government:

Thou shalt have no other nations before me 18 U.S.C. § 2381: Whoever, owing allegiance to the U.S., levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the U.S. or elsewhere, is guilty of treason Thou shalt not worship false idols 4 U.S.C. § 41: The seal heretofore used by the United States in Congress assembled is declared to be the seal of the United States. Thou shalt not take the flag of the United States in vain 4 U.S.C. § 8: No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America Remember the Independence Day, to keep it holy 5 U.S.C. § 3103: (a) The following are legal public holidays: Independence Day, July 4 Honour thy father and thy mother 36 U.S.C. § 109 & 36 U.S.C. § 117: offer public and private expressions of Father’s Day to the abiding love and gratitude they have for their fathers & display the flag . . . on Mother’s Day as a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of the United States Thou shalt not kill Virginia Code § 18.2-30: Murder and manslaughter declared felonies Thou shalt not steal Virginia Code: § 18.2-95: Larceny: Theft from the person of another of money or other thing of value. . . Thou shalt not commit adultery Virginia Code § 18.2-366: Any person who commits adultery or fornication with any person whom he or she is forbidden by law to marry shall be guilty. . . Thou shalt bear false witness against thy neighbor Virginia Code: § 18.2-434: If any person [under oath] . . . willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe is true, he is guilty of perjury. . . Thou shalt not covet Virginia Code: § 18.2-60.3: [No stalking people!]

Download it:

  10-commandments-of-gov.pdf (957.8 KiB, 409 hits)

Ever wondered how gay (or not gay) where you live is? Some time ago, I remember getting into a conversation regarding how gay the Montrose area in Houston, Texas, was. A friend told me it was “gayer” than even San Francisco. The argument was that Montrose had a greater per square mile density than even the preeminently gay San Francisco. The logic was, being an entire city, many of its alternative lifestyle residents lived outside the city limits.

While that sounded like a plausible argument, I felt that it was certainly incorrect to compare a very small geographical area of Houston to a city of 764,976 people. So, I looked it up.

Beginning in 2000, the Census began tracking same-sex cohabitating couples.

Married and Unmarried-Partner Households by Metropolitan Residence Status: 2000

http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-5.pdf

The same-sex totals are aggregated by adding “Male householder and male partner” and “Female householder and female partner” together from under “Unmarried-partner households” in the UNMARRIED-PARTNER HOUSEHOLDS BY SEX OF PARTNERS data table (PCT14 from the 2000 Census, and B11009 from the American Community Surveys).

Although the U.S. Census records of same-sex couples are not a true reflection of the amount of gays living in a particular region, it can be used as a proxy to compare and contrast different areas of the country. The website gaydemographics.org has done an  used to do an excellent job tallying gay demographics for different countries, states, cities, etc.

Turns out that Montrose is pretty gay. Looking at the 77006 area code in the 2000 Census, one will find it had the tenth largest percentage of same sex couples for any zip code reporting more than 100 same-sex couples. However, San Francisco’s 94114 area code comes in at second place under this same qualifier. While 15.97 percent of Montrose’s couples reported to be same-sex, Castro/Noe Valley was 32.09 percent–more than double. The city of San Francisco, itself, was 6.91 percent while Houston was 1.75 percent. So, technically, my friend was right when he said that Montrose was gayer than San Francisco; albeit an unfair comparison.

Unfortunately, until the 2010 Census comes out sometime in 2011, zip code data is only available from 2000.

Zip Codes with Highest Percentage of Same-Sex Couple Households (100 or more): 2000

The Gay Demographics site does not yet have state totals for 2007. But do not fret–I do:

Same-Sex Couple Households for U.S. States, D.C.: 2007

Additional state data for the years 2000 and 2007 can be found in this Excel spreadsheet:

  2000-2007-Same-Sex-Couples-by-State.xlsx (41.9 KiB, 630 hits)

Turns out that one needs to study for more than just puzzles, logic arguments, and passage structures: You also need to know cursive! Despite having three books, totaling 1,362 pages between them, not one of them mentioned having to write out the following statement in cursive!

 LSAT Certifying Statement

The proctor instructed us to write the certifying statement in cursive, and when finished, look to the front of the room so she would know when to move on to the next set of instructions. At first glance, it did not seem like that big of a deal. But after attempting to write out a few words, panic set in when I realized that I forgot how to write in cursive!

I thought about questioning authority as to why we needed to write in cursive. I thought about sharing with the group that I had forgotten this third grade skill. But instead, I kept my head down and tried to relight those burned out synapses as fast as I could. About half way through the statement, I could sense that all writing in the room had ceased. I could feel attention shifting to me. Nonetheless, I kept my focus and plowed ahead. After a few more moments of silence, she moved to the next set of instructions without me. When it was all said and done, I had produced a paragraph that looked like it had been penned by a mentally challenged elementary kid. I could not even make it all fit in the box!

I quit writing in cursive not long after I learned it. The reason for that is two part: 1) Anything that I hand write is usually for me to read (i.e. notes); and I have trouble reading my own cursive handwriting. 2) Anything that I write, for anyone besides me, is nearly always typed. For these reasons, I have been writing exclusively in print and typeface for more than a decade. However, it was not so much that I could not actually write in cursive, it was just really hard. Imagine someone that is not ambidextrous trying to write out a paragraph using their non-dominant hand. That is what it felt like–slow and labored.

As soon as I got back home, I hit the internet to find out why the certifying statement had to be written in cursive, and whether or not I was alone in my inability to formulate this particular esoteric scrawl. While I never found a satisfying answer as to why, I did run into a dissonance abating report from the College Board. It reported that of the almost 1.5 million students completing the first ever essay section on the SAT in 2006, only 15 percent of them utilized cursive. The other 85 percent printed. So, maybe I am not alone?

I get a certain enigmatic aesthetical pleasure by methodically printing very ossified, invariate, and often rectilinear letters. Personally, I believe that cursive should be relegated solely to fancy dinner menus, wedding invitations, and other formal event informational brochures, as it serves no uniquely practical or functional purpose. It is already known fact that cursive takes readers longer to read and is not actually faster to write.[1,2] Besides, having to read it for anything more, gives me a headache, seeing as everything in the digital age comes in print. Moreover, I am very ardent in the belief that cursive should only be undertaken by calligraphers and those displaying the utmost technically proficient penmanship. Nothing irritates me more than having to read a page full of sloppy cursive. If only I were king…

Here is to hopefully never having to do it again: ¡Muerte a cursive! ¡Viva la print!

References:

1) Cursive vs. Printing: Is One Better Than the Other?

2) Graham, Steve, Naomi Weintraub, and Virginia W. Berninger. 1998. The Relationship Between Handwriting Style and Legibility. Journal of Educational Research 91 (5):7

At some point every year, it seems news organizations collectively report on the United States’ safest and most dangerous cities. Shortly thereafter, the unfortunate city to be tagged with that year’s “most dangerous city” award goes on the defensive, lambasting what it sees as a “misuse of statistical crime data.”

While cities with high crime typically display high unemployment, low average educational achievement, and high levels of poverty compared to those with low crime rates, one thing is certain of cities making the top ten: their populations are comprised of high percentages of minorities. However, does this hold true for the rest of the cities on the nefarious most dangerous list?

Background:

Since 1995, the annual publication entitled City Crime Rankings has been produced by Morgan Quinto Press until it was bought out in 2007 by CQ Press. Essentially, this publication is simply a regurgitation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) annual statistical publication Crime in the United States. However, City Crime Rankings’ purpose—as described by its publisher—is to “. . .provide easy-to-understand crime comparisons for cities and metro areas throughout the United States.” It is from this publication that the infamous and controversial America’s Safest and Most Dangerous Cities ranking is derived.

In the listing, cities, which have populations in excess of 75,000 and report their crime statistics to the FBI, are ranked based on six categorical crime rates: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. These crime categories are equally weighted and added together to calculate a city’s aggregate level of violent crime, then divided by its total population to create the violent crime rate used to create the lists’ ordinal ranking.

Although widely reported at its face value by nearly all media outlets, the outright ordinal ranking of entire cities from best to worst is controversial due to its often misleading perceptions of the danger or safety associated with a particular a city. In fact, the FBI, which produces the annual statistical data that the report utilizes, cautions against attempting to compare crime data of different geographical units solely on the basis of their population coverage. According to their warning, rankings such as with the City Crime Rankings publication “provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular . . . city,” and “lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents.”

Some key points of contention concerning the city rankings are the report’s indifference towards: individuals risk profiles (such as age and lifestyle); violent crime that is disproportionately concentrated in a few small areas; property versus bodily crime; and to the degree which suburbs are located within a city’s boundary line. The FBI also details some additional variables that can distort crime rankings.

The Data:

The racial and ethnic composition was found for the 100 most dangerous cities of 2006 from America’s Safest and Most Dangerous Cities. The numbers for the three racial groups examined were found from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey. From this, percentages of “blacks or African Americans,” “whites,” and “Hispanics or Latinos (of any race)” were calculated for each city. The racial and ethnic classifications follow the Federal Register Notice, Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.

For the three racial or ethnic groups, and for blacks and Hispanics combined, each group’s percentage of total population is plotted for each city — from most to least dangerous. A line of best fit — or trend line — is then found to show the relationship between the ranking of the cities and their racial and/or ethnic groups.

Blacks as a Percentage of the Total Population for the Most Dangerous Cities:

In terms of the most dangerous cities and black populations, a correlation of .5427 between blacks and crime was found with an R² of 29.45 percent. This means that for every increase in the ranking of a city as more dangerous, the black population variable would explain 29.45 percent of the change.

The slope of the trend line is -.003610. Thus, for every increase in a city’s “danger” ranking, the black population percentage increases by .3 percent on average.

Hispanics as a Percentage of the Total Population for the Most Dangerous Cities:

A slightly negative correlation of -.0416 was found between Hispanics and crime. However, the results were not statistically significant from zero.

Blacks and Hispanics as a Percentage of the Total Population for the Most Dangerous Cities:

Combining Hispanic and black populations together actually decreased the correlation compared to blacks’ correlation singularly. Correlation decreased by .0199 to .5228 – R² decreased by 2.12 to 27.33 percent.

Whites as a Percentage of the Total Population for the Most Dangerous Cities:

A negative correlation of -.5607 was found between the white population of a city and its crime ranking. The absolute correlation between crime and city rankings for white populations was slightly higher than for black populations. That means an increase in the percentage of whites within a city has slightly more of an impact on decreases in crime rankings than does a decrease in the percentage of blacks.

The slope of the trend line was a positive 0.003469. This is nearly a perfectly inverse slope of the black population trend line. A close to perfect inverse relationship exists between black and white populations and a city’s crime ranking. Stated another way: For every increase in a city’s “danger” ranking, the percentage of black population increases by 0.36 percent while the white population decreases by 0.35 percent.

Sadly, I already knew of blacks' correlation to violent crime in the US. Although there are a many of variables that go into predicting whether a city has a high propensity for violence, no single variable predicts it better than blacks' percentage of the population. That, of course, in no way speaks to causation. Being black absolutely does not mean you are more likely to be violent. But it can be inferred that the long list of variables — including culture –  associated with causing violent criminal behaviour, is closely associated with a very large proportion of America's black population when compared relatively to other ethnically or racially defined US populations.

I was surprised though to find the statistically insignificant correlation to violent crime and Hispanic population, alone. The broad stereotypical thought is that areas with high concentrations of minorities are predictably more violent. However, in examining the cities in this top 100, we find that Hispanics are not a predictor of violent crime at all. In fact, when included with blacks in the regression, the coefficient of determination actually decreased.

So, the answer to the question of whether or not minorities comprise high percentages of the populations for the rest of "America's most dangerous cities" is yes for the vast majority, excluding a couple outliers. But more specifically, the data suggests that, in general, blacks' percentage of a city's total population predicts a city's ordinal ranking of violence, possibly better than any other single variable's influence.

Sometime after lunch on February 8, I was leaving the library for class when I saw several people all standing around one of the televisions. Instantly, I knew it had to be breaking news, so I rushed over to it. I was surprised to find that it was only a report on the death of Anna Nicole Smith. I remained long enough to read the ticker before continuing on my way.

I knew that this story would be a news highlight for a day or two. I had no idea it would be covered continuously for weeks on end. Why? We already knew what happened and what would happen. She died of a drug overdose, which would turn into some conspiracy theory to reside forever in the moon landing, Monroe, and Trade Center nut sites of the internet. There would be a custody battle over the only physical receipt left on J. Howard Marshall’s estate. And eventually, one court would finally get a final say on how much should be dealt to the child that is destined to become another whisper of tawdry Americana.

Of all the things that happen in this world every day, why does Smith fascinate the media? With thousands of reporters, hundreds of hours of daily broadcast time, and state of the art equipment spanning the globe, they bring it all to bear on Vicki Lynn Hogan, shoving her down our throats. However, we cannot blame the media; we blame the people that watch it. It is no mystery why this former walking tabloid scores high ratings for television broadcasts. The same breed of viewers that makes Jerry Springer and Maury Povich top-rated programming is the driving force behind this trailer trash bonanza.

Who was this woman? She began as a stripper with an eighth grade education before going on to become a model, drug addict, and ultimately a whore—both metaphorically and literally. The only positive contribution that Smith left to this world came in a Supreme Court ruling defining equal jurisdiction between federal and probate courts for tort claims. Everything else resulted in entertainment for the fatuous masses and paydays for leeches, like Howard K. Stern, that fed off her reprehensible wake like lame dogs scarfing down table scraps. And now, even in death, she continues to further pervade American culture like a herpes virus that never goes away. She, like Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, and Kevin Federline, is famous for being famous and is the epitome of what is wrong with our reality television culture today. She was simply a symptom of a much larger disease that, unfortunately, I see no cure for in sight.