Kicking. Squealing.
1. Steve Sailer asks for theories on why Chicago’s murder rate is so high even while most city’s rates are on the decline. I can’t say that I know the answer, but some interesting statistics on police force size and murder rate trends among Chicago and several big cities is worth a look. Chicago has the biggest relatively police force and the highest murder rate. Perhaps the city has not beefed up its gang prevention units, or perhaps they’ve built a large number of public housing units, or maybe there are a lot of cops but they are less productive than cops in other cities. Also, gentrification seems to have been much stronger in the other comparable city, NYC. Because of the financial sector and the art and culture of NYC, lots of young white people have moved there, dispersing the ne’er do wells.
2. Rod Dreher: The Curse of Upselling. I work for a company that forces the upsell. My company wages psychological warfare on customers to get them to buy add-ons. When the customer sits in the seat or enters the store, the company accrues a certain marginal amount of revenue and profit (hopefully). The up-sells are where the real money lies as they are usually high margin products. It is very difficult for customers to just avoid the upsell because everyone does it. The upsell is preached by every type of business from restaurants to Pandora to banks to car dealerships.
3. The Oxygen channel, Oprah’s project, will begin airing a TV show called “All My Babies’ Mamas” about a black guy that has 10 kids with a bunch of different women.
4. America has too many malls.
5. A fascinating report from a tweet by Heartiste: sexual and romantic relationship trees of students at “Jefferson High School”.
6. Habits of instantly likable people. I have to say that I perform most of these, and that I’m better at befriending strangers than I am at maintaining friendships with non-strangers. The interesting one to me is that likable people get others to open up while also withholding information about themselves.
7. An old piece by Mark Kleiman via Reihan Salam. Kleiman hits on something that I think is important in any contentious tribalistic political debate:
With any luck, taking the “gun confiscation” card out of the political pack might actually reduce the fervor of the opposition the NRA can whip up to sensible measures such as requiring background checks for gun sales by private individuals (the current rule that requires them only for purchases from gun dealers), computerizing data on which dealers are selling the guns that get used in crimes, and developing and deploying technology that would allow police to identify, from a bullet or a shell casing found at a crime scene, when, to whom, and by whom the gun that produced that metal was lawfully transferred.
Right. You set lawful owners of guns at ease first rather than come right out of the gates and saying, like a friend of mine did the other night at dinner, that gun-owners are “hillbillies”. Or as Michael Moore is saying – that gun ownership is relatively high here because of our inherent racism. This turns all gun advocates and semi-advocates on to “fuck you” mode.
#3 – lol, didn’t know this was a reality show
Re #7 – the idea might be sound, but the particular application to gun control is completely impossible. There is a substantial minority within the gun-control tribe who really do want to confiscate guns, and they just won’t shut up. Worse – they’ve been yammering about that for *so* long that the NRA can use their long, well-documented record against any kind of gun control for decades to come, even if they did shut up. (And they haven’t yet – some prominent eastern politician just revivied the thought after Sandy Hook.)
On the other hand, just try to imagine any way the right could use this and have it work. Romney and Ryan proposed changing the way Medicare would work for people who are currently 46 and under, yet got pilloried for “taking Medicare away from seniors”. So I’m inclined to think that Kleiman is just plain wrong.
Perhaps she didn’t want to think racist thoughts but contra Anti-Waaacisss, it seems that some white women just don’t like black c*ck.
Does anyone have any stats on the percentage of blacks in Chicago that they could overlay on that graph about homicides in Chicago over that time.
Also, non-fatal shootings would be an interesting measure. To what extent is the decline in homicides due to improvements in trauma care.
almost no desirable white women with options choose black cock
All My Babies Mamas sounds entertaining. I’m definitely going to try and watch a few episodes.
Any idea if all the baby mamas are black?
All of them are black.
I guess we’ve come a long way from the “Cosby Show.”
It seems very likely to me that the current Democrat concentration on gun control is to divert attention away from the makers of SSRIs and their possible liability.
Didn’t the Democrats hand the drug companies a sinecure a little while ago?
BTW, any sightings of Doug1 anywhere lately?
“A fascinating report from a tweet by Heartiste: sexual and romantic relationship trees of students at ‘Jefferson High School’.”
ancient ytmnd.
I haven’t seen a comment from Doug1 in a while. I’m not sure the Cosby show ever had widespread appeal with black Americans. I think this new show is targeted mostly to a black audience.
7.
A good idea. A gradualism plan works better if people don’t know the ultimate goal.
the upselling link is broken…
I remember The Cosby Show. I watched it regularly the first couple of seasons until they ditched the Bobby McFerrin intro and opted for some bizarro “Jungle Book” presentation with the Vanessa character sporting a hideous-looking Afro (in the late ’80s!!??). That was around the time they were pushing the lame “missing” sibling Sondra and her milquetoasty hubby, Elvin. I think that was also the year a washed-up Lisa Bonet post-”Angel Heart”-post-”A Different World” returned. Lara-to me “The Cosby Show” was marketed towards Whites exclusively so the show would be #1 and make NBC the #1 network. It’s sort of the television equivalent to Motown Records. To be sure, they never missed a beat when it came to promoting carefully-selected black icons, jazz music and musicians and all the trappings of uppity blackdom (lawyer wife, doctor husband, everyone answering the phone with “Huxtable Residence”, the surname Huxtable). Ironically, the show’s spinoff, “A Different World”, was as ghetto fab as it comes.
I came of age in an upper class DC suburb and to me “The Cosby Show” rang true. There really were black families like that. They might not have been the norm, but they did exist.
Also, Motown may have made deliberately commercial records, but the talent they had was authentic. Getting a voice on the radio like Martha Reeves or Marvin Gaye’s was a serious act of subversion at the time. People also don’t seem to remember Motown was an indie start-up, not part of a conglomeration.
DOBA–Motown seems to have three distinct eras: pre-1964 (when Mary Wells, Martha & Vandellas, Marvelettes, early Marvin Gaye and early Smokey Robinson were their big acts), 1964-1972 (when it was all about Diana Ross & The Supremes, Four Tops, Temptations) and post-1972 (the move to LA, the defections of the Four Tops, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Jackson 5 to other labels). Yes, Motown started as an indie label. A lot of people seem to forget that. Motown lost its dominance when Aretha Franklin, Stax/Volt and Philly Soul made heavy inroads in the late ’60s-early ’70s. Also, Motown wasn’t that big into the whole “black consciousness” thang (the Temptations went that route for a few years before it became predictable and cliched, like most of black music up until about 1975).
lara, p.a.,
I’ve seen comments by Doug1 on half-sigma, but i don’t recall exactly how recent they were. i believe they were fairly so, though…… i, too, recall him commenting a lot at onestdv.com….. speaking of, do you know if he ever did anything else, or if he comments under a different handle.
it’s sort of funny how you develop these routine habits communicating on certain blogs and with certain avatars, and then —– poof! ——- they’re gone just like that.
First, I left high-n-dry by Guy White; then, I get jilted by OneSTDV. lol!
Probably in prison for racist tweets.
I don’t really get Dreher’s problem here. What’s so tough about saying, “No thanks”?
Habits of instantly likable people.
Interesting article. I have to say that I take an instant disliking to people whose first question is, “So, what do you do?” – that is to say, “So, how much money do you make and where do you fit into my preconceived social status hierarchy”, as if those are the most interesting things to know about anybody.
4. I predict shopping malls will survive, but they are going to look different than in the past, and attract different kinds of shoppers and have different competition.
In my third tier city, there are two major malls. The more upscale one is still doing okay with traditional clothing and housewares type stores. The other went downhill and has started taking different kinds of stores.
Most of the boutique clothes stores and Hallmark/gift type stores are gone or not doing so well. But they do have the gym I go to, a few restaurants, a gymnastics place for children, a boxing/MMA training place, a coffeehouse, one of those for-profit colleges that specialize in culinary and beauty and medical assisting, and a Target. There are two movie theatres across the street so they don’t have that for now.
I think people still want to have a place with multiple “stores”. But in the new model they will compete more with downtown, and more for adult entertainment dollars. They will stick with the one-stop model, but turn to stuff that can’t be easily delivered to your home.
“I predict shopping malls will survive, but they are going to look different than in the past, and attract different kinds of shoppers and have different competition.”
This seems to be true, and I don’t know if the emergence and proliferation of e-commerce plays a factor or not; moreso, it seems to be just a time-driven business cycle craving change and novelty. what I do find odd yet intriguing is the emergence of these type shopping centers to compete with the late-20th-century-conceived ‘malls.’:
http://www.google.com/search?q=town+of+bayshore,+wisconsin&hl=en&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=6-PgUJ3uKoHM9QSk84HwAQ&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAA&biw=1106&bih=671
Having spent time in adolescence at this very typical ‘mall’ in the 90s, only to see it morph into a ‘shopping town’ in the new millenium, replete with Pleasantville-like apartments, condos and social centers situated around certain stores, was kinda surreal. Basically, every aspect of the design and urban planning is executed with commerical urges in mind. Actrually, certain fiction/satirists of the 70s depicted malls, which had emerged a few years earlier, as future social centers that would service but ultimately overwhelm every social urge an extinct in its quest to master the consumer —– and some of the ‘shopping towns appear to be well on their way to doing just that.’
Still another example, when I lived in Texas there was one of the malls in a not upscale Mexican neighborhood. It branched out and seemed to try to turn itself into a Spanish speaking community center of sorts. It would bring in mariachi bands on the weekends and had a movie theater for movies dubbed into Spanish. Interesting, to see what they try.
@4th doorman – For a Chicago graph of murders vs black pop, use the NY Times 2010 census maps. They have maps using 2000 census data and 2010 census data so you could check back the last decade and scatterplot the murders vs. census tracts. I did this with Indy for a summer.
nikcrit 12/30/2012 at 8:08 pm
FWIW, I live in NNJ and I shop Ramsey Outdoor (both stores) and Dicks Sporting Goods on Rt 17 for ammo on a regular basis. I figured that in the last month or so, Rt. 17 and all those malls and strip malls along the east and west sides would be crazy and impossible to drive to grab some shells. I was actually surprised that it was no more crazy than say a weeknight of people heading home from work, even at at 1pm Saturday. I think that the interweb ordering is “hurting” these stores. Then again, I can’t complain, every time I wanted to grab a shirt, shoes or whatever for work or play, they never have my size, so I just order off the sites and have it shipped to my job (not ammo though, kind of picky about that sort of thing…).
Good stuff on today’s buffet!
CHICAGO HOMICIDES: ‘density of ne’er do wells’ is always a good bet, especially with respect to the number and rate of “re-entrants”—-that is, the concentration of felons returning from prison. While it is popular on the left to argue that prison causes crime (rather than the other way around) it may be that mass incarceration, as certainly did happen in the heels of the crack wars, was a tremendous success in those cities that were most MOST thorough in isolating and incapacitating offenders. If the volume or rate of *un*incarcerated violent offenders drops below a certain floor (call it a criminal quorum) in a given neighborhood or city; gentrification by eager bourgeois urbanists even starts to take hold; felons age out behind bars; re-entrants are displaced and dispersed and–most importantly–cultural norms have shifted in their old neighborhoods. With creeping but noticeable improvements in local security and newcomers willing to call police AND testify, the triumph of fear ends and the ‘start-snitching’ culture takes root. That’s the recipe that seems to elude self-segregated Chicago.
GUN DERIDERS: You nailed it. I gasp at the contempt toward owners which flows so freely from the mouths of gun control advocates. Pure disdain cannot be concealed by an incrementalist legislative strategy of registering existing semi-auto rifles now, limiting sales, and banning them all later (i.e., as soon as the politics/demographics allow). The most the down-low prohibitionists will get out of the House is a temporary ban on hi-cap magazines, if that. And behold as the 2014 and 2018 electoral backlash leaves the already-under-populated centrist wing of the Donkey party hemorrhaging badly. They just couldn’t learn from 2008, apparently. Oh well.
Besides, if the $2k+ asking price for ARs of late says anything, it says that rifle-owners are willing to do a lot to operationalize their 2nd amendment rights—and probably to preserve them, too. More than most liberals would lay out in favor of a ban, I dare say. In the end, the market will preserve itself from all-but-theatrical regulation, and the volume of rifles in circulation will just continue to go up. Rust will take more guns off the streets than any American Congress will.
Down South the old-style (fully enclosed) malls will no longer be built or financed. They attract huge numbers of NAM’s that do little more than stand around and case trouble in the food court. After the neighborhood goes down the tubes and the whites move out you are then left with a huge building filled with “urban wear” shops, jewelry stores, barber shops and African hair braiding salons. In Atlanta, the dead malls include Gwinnett Place, Atlanta Underground, North Dekalb Mall, Greenbriar Mall, Shannon Mall and Northlake Mall – all going downscale very fast with white with children moving further away from the center of the city. In fact, there’s really two types of malls in the USA – the ones that whites visit and the ones whites used to visit. (as so elegantly noted by Chris Rock)
Any new malls built will have the more upscale, open, European-type of feel. This deters the lower-end clientele who intend to loiter more than spend.
@Mista Thang: Good points. I think Motown’s journey from Mary Wells’ and the Marvelettes’ cha-cha-cha rhythms to the Tempts’ progressive soul by the decade’s end is as impressive if not more so than what the British Invasion bands did. I also think Smokey’s Cole Porter-type rhymes and sophisticated jazz chords not only rival but top the UK acts. I see Motown on a musical level, not so much on a sociological one. I even think those early Jackson 5 records are masterpieces of pop craft. Then there’s Stevie Wonder…I just think so much great music came out of there that they’re above reproach, which probably isn’t true, but the old vinyl I collect speaks otherwise…
(There’s also a clip of Martha and the Vandellas doing “Come and Get These Memories” live at the Apollo that’s on YouTube and shows these acts could get a lot more soulful than they appeared on record.)
Amendment to my last comment: the clip is on DailyMotion, not YouTube. Sorry for going way, way off topic, but… http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3067n_martha-reeves-the-vandellas-come-an_music
Yeah, in the mall I was talking about above, there are four or five sports themed stores but none of them sell much equipment. It’s mostly just jerseys and jackets, and the two better ones sell exercise equipment like heart rate monitors and chin up bars. But you want, say, a baseball glove or one of those stand up soccer goals for your backyard? Forget it.
This is an interesting heat map of crime in Chicago. If you drill down into one of the tiles, you can look at school ie demographic data. The island of blue near the lakeshore on the south side is the U of Chicago, by the way. Venturing 20 feet beyond the 60th on the south side of the campus was like walking into a bombed out war zone . . . two sides of the same street, where the municipal boundaries changed, could also make a very visible difference.
http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/il/chicago/crime/#.UOGPh6PVSdC
On Chicago police, I say the main factor is politics/management.
Good blog written by chicago cops:
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/
I would guess that Manhattan is easier to police against disenfranchised “youths” partly due to being a long and narrow island.
Regarding #7: Adam Carolla explains why the NRA is smart to be obstinate about “reasonable” gun restrictions.
Stuff like Newtown certainly puts the left into frenzied overdrive for a while, but most of the time, dealing with the left is like getting pecked to death by ducks.
From Second City Cop we see:
But remember, crime is down. If the police don’t show up, it never gets reported, therefore, it never happened.
So, how much of that “crime is down” mantra is due to:
1. Fewer cops,
2. Under-reporting by police departments, and
3. Better trauma care?
A better number to track would be trauma-care patients who were victims of assault. Of course, it still cannot tell you about all those dead bodies in the mess that is Detroit that never go reported or who are listed as missing persons.
@The fourth doorman of the apocalypse that daily mail article is fucked up.
I hope there is a day when anti-racists pay the price for their ideology.