Today I biked into town against high winds, but believe me, Minnesota, I'm not complaining. I was on a mission to find a glass piggy bank as video prop, and sure enough, I found this cutie in the first antique shop I visited.
Cost me eight bucks plus tax. No idea how long it had been on the shelf, but the price certainly had not gone up recently due to inflation, commodity prices, transportation costs, devaluation of the dollar or supply and demand. I'm reasonably confident Colorado antiques retailers aren't walking through their shops, marking up prices of other inventory on the shelves, either.
If anything, there's downward pressure on their prices, just as there is on homes right now. I mean, who needs a butter churn — or a bigger house payment with a longer commute?
Bike dealer Jim Thill reports that he watched the wholesale price of a certain item increase 25% over the weekend, and a 50% over the past few months. Unfortunately, it's probably an indicator of the dollar's weakness, and not a sign that bikes are becoming the new hybrids.
The World According to Data.
The tagline for Worldmapper is "The world as you've never seen it before." Actually, if you're into information design, you probably have.
Michael Kidron married global perspective, political analysis, graphic design and data from the CIA in the State of the World Atlas (first published in 1981 and heading into its 8th edition) and The War Atlas (1983). Worldmapper may be more up-to-date and accessible, but its more fluid reworking of maps to portray relative differences among nations actually conveys less information — especially if you're looking for specific countries.
Still, the maps do succeed as a way of provoking global thoughts in the short-attention-span crowd.
Here's a picture of the countries of destination for both refugees and internally displaced persons. Unfortunately, there's no way on the map to distinguish internally uprooted people (in Iraq or the Sudan) with refugees entering another country (say, France or the U.S.). A poster version does list top 20 countries and shows the breakout by region, however.
Here's a map showing where the world's rabies cases occur — most are in India.
And here's the distribution of the Sunni Muslim population.
I Feel I Should Show Up.
The boys are at it again, and I promised not to miss the next one, but I'm a bit out of range to make it to Intermedia Arts on April 1st.
Instead of repeating themselves with another speed lecture series, Troy Gallas and Colin Kloecker, young designers who brought us Solutions Twin Cities, are curating an exhibit and other events that merge "data visualization, artistic expression, and interactive installations."
The promo site will give you a better idea of what to expect on Tuesday as well as the rest of the exhibition run.
While there, I ran across We Feel Fine, which I gather is part of the exhibition, but you can also explore it online. It searches blogs for versions of the phrase "I feel" and then incorporates the statement in an interactive "exploration of emotion on a global scale."
I feel certain I'll be showing up there soon.
Raul Castro has lifted the Cuban ban on cell phone ownership for regular citizens. So, reportedly, is Korea's Kim Jong-Il. No word on whether they will also follow the U.S. example on monitoring phone traffic.
How is the End of the World like Bill Clinton?
It never shows up on time.
So why go into a cave in November to await the predicted May arrival of the end? Seems like July would be soon enough. Or better yet, why go into a cave at all and miss the fireworks?
And you thought "price war" was a figure of speech. A Detroit gas station owner was killed in his yard by an unknown assailant.
[Hassan] Masbouth was facing open murder charges. He never denied shooting Jawad Bazzi, his 46-year-old business rival and owner of the BP gas station near Fort and Springwells.
Masbouth was accused of shooting Bazzi in November, after Bazzi and other men walked across the street to confront his competitor about lowering prices at his station. A fight broke out between the two men and Masbouth allegedly shot Bazzi to death.
[I]n the back of the head and abdomen after Masbouth was hit over the head with a pole used to change gas prices on signs at stations, according to the reports.
The two had been involved in an ongoing price war. And even the shooting did not stop the stations from continuing their fight. WXYZ's Bill Proctor reported at the time that that as soon as Bazzi's body was taken away, workers at his station changed the price-per-gallon of unleaded from $2.96 to $3.09.
A new short film by a right-wing Dutch critic of Islam Geert Wilders is provoking demonstrations in the Muslim world and raising questions about multiculturalism, free speech and conflicts between fundamentalism and Dutch liberalism.
A Pakistani diplomat said the film deeply offended the sentiments of Muslims all over the world and could result in expression of strong abhorrence and outrage. Given the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and film director Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch have reason to be concerned about how strong those expressions might be.
Dutch immigration expert Paul Scheffer thinks the conflict is "indicative of integration."
The atmosphere of tolerance that was created in Holland during the 1960s and 1970s was not genuine, Scheffer explains, and should therefore not be mourned. In fact, he says, it encouraged "mutual cultural avoidance" on the part of immigrant and native communities alike. Integration, he argues, involves conflict and change. "When change does not occur, then it's a sign we have cultural avoidance."
The Netherlands, with its population of one million immigrants, can be seen as "a laboratory where many of the questions visible everywhere in Europe are debated," according to Scheffer. By contrast, Wilders says he sees the conflict as threatening the country's ability to survive as a free society.
"Wilders urges the Muslims to respect our constitution and the separation of state and church, but in the very same sentence he says he's against building more mosques, and advocates banning the Koran," Scheffer complains. "I think he should be publicly confronted about this internal confliction more often and more effectively."
One the explanations that the scholar offers for the Netherlands' immigrant problems sounds uncomfortably similar to Israel's relationship with its population of approximately 200,000 foreign workers and asylum-seekers.
"People who came in as 'guest workers' in the 1960s thought they would stay a while, earn some money and go back home," Scheffer said on his visit, which was arranged as a joint initiative by The Royal Dutch Embassy in Israel together with Tel Aviv University.
"They didn't think of about the possibility that their children could become Dutch. They lived in a state of suspension and they didn't even learn the language." Dutch society, Scheffer said, shared in this "mutual illusion" to find itself "enormously changed without ever preparing."
Sick of political nonsense? Me, too. I took a ride around my hometown and put together a personal Parade of Homes. I didn't cover everything, but a Parade is all about exclusion.
I this case, I exclude granite counter tops, great rooms and a bunch of other stuff you can find anywhere.
Remember, this'll autoplay unless you seize the controls and use the arrows.
Why Do Religious Conservatives Kill Their Kids?
On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children, who ranged in age from six months to seven years, in a bathtub in her home. Prior to this, she had manifested symptoms of depression with psychosis, which were exacerbated in her postpartum periods. She had been hospitalized four times and was catatonic and mute during one admission. In statements made following the crime, she indicated that she believed that she was a bad mother and that she had concerns that her children would not grow up properly secondary to her shortcomings. She noted that she killed them to save them from eternal damnation.
Here's a topic for study by some enterprising PhD student: Do more religious conservatives than liberals murder their children?
I was thinking about this even before George Will's latest column about how conservatives are more generous than liberals, which I'll take up in a separate post.
In Wisconsin this week, the home schooled daughter of a fundamentalist family died because her diabetes was left untreated. The mother says they are not crazy, religious people who belong to any organized faith. She just writes for an end-of-days ministry website on the side and actively proselytizes other women. Her sister-in-law, who called the sheriff, seemed to think there was a problem.
The aunt: "My sister-in-law, she’s very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors ... and she called my mother-in-law today ... and she explained to us that she believes her daughter’s in a coma now and she’s relying on faith. ..."
The dispatcher got more information from the caller and asked if an ambulance should be sent.
The aunt: "Please. I mean, she’s refusing. She’s gonna fight it so ... We’ve been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week, a few days now so."
In Iowa, an embezzling banker bludgeoned his wife and four kids to death before killing himself. In communications left behind, he indicated he believed his family was in heaven.
And, not to leave anyone out, a Muslim cab driver in Canada strangled his 16-year-old daughter because she refused to submit to his control and demands she wear traditional Muslim garb.
I've looked for a study that examines the role of political and religious beliefs of parents who murder their children. Haven't found one. But golly, the circumstantial evidence doesn't look good, does it? And it stands to reason, when you decide to kill your kids with a baseball bat, the idea you're sending them to heaven might lets you swing just a little more freely.
Anyone offended yet? No, I'm not calling all religious fundamentalists child murderers. But if there's a pattern of behavior that could lead to prevention, wouldn't it be good to understand it?
Psychiatric researchers may not see much merit in testing my only half-serious hypothesis. The research already indicates that filicide is a multidimensional crime, and like most human behavior, is not likely to reduce down to red state/blue state simplification.
But it's hard to shake that whenever I see news of a suicide bomber or a murderous parent, God shows up pretty frequently in the story. John Kerry bumper stickers, not so much.
As long as my empathy for the military is being questioned this week, I might as well pass along this time and motion information graphic [via The Deets]. I'm sure someone with an underdeveloped insula can turn this into trivializing the deaths of 4,000 service members.
Non-Compassionate Conservatives, Here's Your Chance!
Using brain scans, University of Wisconsin researchers have isolated a region of the brain — the insula — that plays a significant role in positive emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion.
"The insula is extremely important in detecting emotions in general and specifically in mapping bodily responses to emotion - such as heart rate and blood pressure - and making that information available to other parts of the brain," says Davidson, also co-director of the HealthEmotions Research Institute.
develop skills that promote happiness and compassion. "People are not just stuck at their respective set points," he says. "We can take advantage of our brain's plasticity and train it to enhance these qualities."
How soon before certain legislators call for the project's funding to be cut off?