StrangeSox

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ May 9, 2013 -> 03:00 PM) All very good books, I'd recommend reading them as for the most part they are really worth reading. Siddartha was the first book assigned to me going into high school (it was summer reading before the school year started) and I just couldn't get into it when it was assigned. I reread it a few years later and loved it. I take that back about 1984, we did have to read that (I still have my copy from high school!) I've read the others in recent years. Actually just finished To Kill a Mockingbird last weekend. Something like Of Mice and Men or Animal Farm can be finished in an hour or so.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ May 9, 2013 -> 02:52 PM) Well we read chapters in class, did assignments on them, watch the movie. I know the story, I just found it really boring. It's about more than just a basic plot. Plot's just something to build your themes and ideas around.

Somehow I never read Catcher in the Rye, 1984, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, any Twain and a bunch of other "everybody reads those in school" books.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 9, 2013 -> 01:20 PM) Yeah, probably.

Elizabeth Smart didn't run because she “felt so dirty and so filthy” Hooray abstinence-only rhetoric that tells people they're worthless if they're not chaste-until-marriage!

QUOTE (farmteam @ May 9, 2013 -> 09:38 AM) Minnesota House voting on marriage equality today. By this time next week Minnesota could be the 12th state! EDIT: link Delaware was the 11th just last week.

I only have internet service

yeah

Tried to get a deal with Comcast today, of course I don't actually have any alternatives and they know it so I get charged more for the same plan than many other people in the area.

http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.net//

Yeah, failing to reject the null isn't proving the null and a lot of people seem to be missing that. Plus, you know, there actually were substantial gains in some areas, like 30% better results for depression.

Wasn't brought up here yet, but the Incidental Economist blog has a whole bunch of posts covering the Oregon Medicare study that came out. Oregon Medicaid – Power problems are important How should the new Medicaid study change our policy preferences? Oregon Medicaid experiment “is a Rorschach test of people’s views of the ACA” What about power for the blood pressure result? (And so much more)

Relevant to the criminal justice system discussion: http://prospect.org/article/house-takes-ma...arceration-task

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 24, 2013 -> 05:04 PM) Frontline on the great retirement caper: Watch The Retirement Gamble on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE. Finally got around to watching this. Pretty depressing. The part about the fees was pretty incredible. Investment companies get anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of your money over time while taking essentially no risk. Also started me digging into all of my accounts this morning, switching some things around.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ May 8, 2013 -> 09:17 AM) is it 2004 in here?

QUOTE (kev211 @ May 7, 2013 -> 11:23 PM) What exactly does this mean? Why wouldn't they be be impeding these stations during the day? http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/why-am-rad...adcasting-night Basically, the signal broadcasts farther at night than during the day for a given power level, so they have to decrease power at night so that their signal isn't interfering with other stations hundreds of miles away.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2013 -> 03:19 PM) Back when they were the flagship, I could get Sox games past Toledo. They're somewhat directional, so you can pick things up in Ohio crystal-clear while struggling to get it in DeKalb or Champaign.

The "I'm sorry that some may have been offended" non-apology is perfectly appropriate in this case.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 7, 2013 -> 12:30 PM) Yeah, I mean that's no different than what you're talking about - the results are unequal so it's due to racist policies. If you grow up in Englewood or Austin, yeah, your life compared to whites living in Burr Ridge is going to be different. You have no property value, the jobs aren't great, you have crime problems, etc. But that's not because society and policy in 2013 is racist, it's because society was racist decades ago and put minorities in a hole that is difficult to climb out of. If a bank doesn't want to loan money to someone living in Englewood or Austin, is it because they're black or is it because of the situation around them? The study you linked to would include that decision in the "structural racism" that keeps minorities down even though the decision or policy itself is not racist at all. That is structural racism, and yes, decisions or policies themselves don't have to be racist on their face to contribute to it. When the system keeps turning out racially disparate results... e.g. black unemployment is higher than white unemployment across all educational attainment levels. How is that explained other than structural racism? Resumes of people with stereotypical black names get far less responses than identical resumes with stereotypical white names; what explanation other than structural racism?

Which represents a pretty substantial portion of our incarcerations, right? Locking up so many young men has all sorts of deleterious effects on the community and helps perpetuate the cycle.

This report from the Aspen Institute goes over what I've been calling systemic racism but is also referred to as institutional or structural racism if you're curious to read what this subject is about. http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/defaul...ral_racism2.pdf

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 7, 2013 -> 11:45 AM) Ok fine, but that's not the same as saying our system is racist anymore than me claiming that the NFL is racist because it has more blacks than whites. Yes, it is the same as saying there's systemic racism, and every time you try to make the pro-sports comparison, it demonstrates that you're missing the core concept. Could be because I'm doing a poor job of explaining it. This is pretty circular. Disparate incarceration rates are a symptom of the systemic racism. What laws we craft and how and where we choose to investigate and enforce them are part-and-parcel. Drug use is pretty much equal across race and class, and yet the criminal prosecution and incarceration rates are highly disparate. I think this is it: http://www.ussc.gov/Research/Research_Proj...Study/chap4.pdf

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 7, 2013 -> 11:03 AM) So then what you denied yesterday is true - the police, prosecutors and juries that convict minorities more than whites do so because they're racist, at least a little bit. Everyone has prejudices. edit: but even policies that have no racial animus, explicitly or implicitly, in their crafting can have disparate racial impact and have a racially prejudiced outcome. But there's not evidence that minorities actually commit more crimes than non-minorities. You can control for economic status and you still get massive disparities. This really shows up in sentencing for similar crimes. Or that report I posted a page or two ago about how minority children are disciplined differently and more likely to be pushed towards the criminal justice system. Your alternate theory just doesn't match reality. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412...3789858002.html