Morning Ed: United States {2016.02.23.T}
As immigrants assimilate and intermarry, it’s becoming harder to see the lines and count the people on each side.
Feral hogs are running rampant in Texas. Over 750,000 killed, but a growing population all the same.
If you’re looking to leave the country when Donald Trump becomes president, Nova Scotia may want you!
Some NIMBYs in California needed some residents to object, so they hired actors.
Are trafficked prostitutes victims or perpetrators of crime?
Ali Shakur doesn’t want to be black anymore. I debated whether or not to share this one, but it was a fascinating read and decided to do so. Please comment with care.
The map you’ve all been waiting for: Squirrel-sourced power outages. Also, who knew there were so many goats in Texas (maybe the Rams should have gone to San Antonio?).
when you’re at an ancient fort passing time by the canal, you will see that rams and goats are bitter enemiesReport
Feral hogs: I’m sure some entrepreneurial bbq chefs, yes I know Texas bbq is beef-centric, can figure out what to do.
NIMBYs: We should stop taking them seriously at this point.
Prostitutes: It depends who you ask. Having now read the article, the problem is that a person can legally be both a victim and perpetrator of a sex crime depending on the circumstances even though this makes no sense. I think the Alabama Supreme Court had to deal with a case of two fourteen year olds having sex once. A literal reading of the law would make them both statutory rapists and sex victims at the same time. Even the Alabama Supreme Court found this maddening. I don’t know what ended up happening but what really should have happened was jury nullification at the trial level.Report
I’d counter, Lee, that we need to start taking NIMBYs seriously, as in take steps to actively weaken their veto points. It is in ignoring them that their power grows.Report
The political structure of the United States favors NIMBYs because it places land use, planning and other development issues at the extremely local level. This incentivizes a lot of people with vested interests, i.e. NIMBYs, to show up and dominate the meetings. Renters and developers have just as much as a voice and vote. They need to actually show up. The only real way to defeat NIMBYism is to take development and land use issues from the local to state level because it would make it harder for NIMBYs to lobby and act as a pressure group.Report
yes, state governments are never beholden to special interests nor do they cater to those that already have significant socioeconomic power.
it would go from NIMBYS to NIOBYS (not in our backyards)Report
Its not that state governments are never beholden to special interests, its that the lobbying work gets more difficult the higher you come up in government. State legislatures don’t have meetings where NIMBYs can hijack and voice their complaints. Japan’s success in having relatively low cost housing for a high density country with the population heavily concentrated in a few metro areas is because zoning is handled at the national rather than regional or local level. Its harder to lobby the Japanese Diet than it is the local city council.Report
From years of looking a overseas housing allowance table for US government workers, I’m not convinced Japanese housing is all that low cost. Accepting that its true, I’m also not convinced that having a nation of few kids and even fewer immigrants isn’t the main thing that keeps housing prices in check. Japan’s population has grown by about 10% *total*, since 1980, (and hardly at all since 1990), about 10 million more people. The US population has grown by about 50% in that time, about 100 million people – or almost one entire Japan.Report
… low cost housing?????? Japan????
Please, go talk with Krugman.
Please, you make my head hurt.Report
oh good heavens no. California has 58 counties, 482 municipalities, about 1100 school districts, and at least 3,000 special districts (according to wikipedia). Every single one of those agencies has some degree of planning powers. The thought of centralizing all of that in Sacramento sends shivers down my spine. Every single planning commission meeting going over traffic and noise studies needs to be held in Sacto? Never work.
Sure, in theory you could create a regionalized system where the State Planning Agency creates suboffices in every city and county. On the other hand, that’s exactly what cities and counties are — subdivisions of the State.
Oddly, given your general political leanings, what you what is a profoundly undemocratic process, in which a few rich and powerful actors control all planning decisions state-wide. good luck in persuading the voters to go for that.Report
We have to take NIMBYs seriously when they keep winning!Report
& NIMBY’s have been the only people that have defeated Donald Trump.Report
I am glad that you did share it, but I wonder if this won’t be entirely lost on anyone without the requisite understanding of Hotep.Report
Since “Hotep” was an entirely new term to me, just spent a few minutes reading up on it.Report
I can’t really see much to argue about in the article itself, but it’s pretty easy to impugn Mr. Shakur with what he has said elsewhere.
(is someone going to tell Twitter?)
(I was also disappointed in the NFL Illuminati video that he linked to)Report
This is obviously because you are insufficiently woke.Report
Yeah, from what I can tell, in some people’s opinion Hotep is kind of what you get if you cross, like, Nation of Islam and MRAs. (NOTE: I only heard of Hotep like twenty minutes ago and just started reading up on it, pro and con, so please don’t jump down my throat if this description is wildly-inaccurate).Report
Nova Scotia? My Mum would welcome us with open arms. This is a foul time to be visiting though.Report
Are there any jobs there?Report
You can fish and sing sea shanties.Report
If you’re lucky. Most places today have switched to automated shanty-singers, and those that can’t afford the automated technology mostly have undocumented immigrants sing them.Report
Bzzt, no fish. There is still Lobster though.
And the songs are divine, so you get half credit.Report
Really, no fishing at all in Nova Scotia?Report
Commercial fishing? Like to earn a living? Lobster is the only thing you can be certain of and that is seasonal. You can scrape around for other things, there’s some aquaculture and some shellfish, scallops off of Digby for instance but in general the stocks for all the major species were commercially wrecked about thirty years ago by unrestricted draggers.
If you could make money hunting seals you could do that. The damned sea-rats are all over, but the only thing you get killing a seal is some Greenpeace yahoos showing up and then getting airlifted to Halifax for treatment for seal bites.Report
Not particularly. Nova Scotia has one of the best ports and harbors in North America but centuries of systematic favoritism by the Federal Government sends shipping up the Saint Lawrence instead. Libertarian treatment of the commons wrecked a lot of the commercial fisheries and their other primary industries have faded away. There’s tourism, it’s a very beautiful landscape in the four months that the ice/rain/fog/bugs lift, but very little else over all. Poor lil NS is one of Canada’s poorer provinces. They do, however, have a mingled scots/celt/irish/English musical heritage that is amazing.
And Cape Breton is one of the poorer parts of Nova Scotia. Also the winter is awful there. Not recommended, though the people who live there have hearts of gold.Report
NIMBY’s : How is it different from stuff like this?Report
Good point!Report
There are hog problems all over the South. Georgia and SC IIRC. And, frankly, in South Africa. Folks can shoot them all they want. No limits, no season. If I hunted and lived in the south, I’d probably live on fresh wild pig.
NIMBY: “Tyson testified how the proposed development was bad for the community, representing himself as “a concerned citizen.” that’s not “making false representations” like the UCLA guy says. He didn’t claim he was a resident in the area. He didn’t claim he owned land or was effected by the issue at hand. Sounds like a legal but kinda sleazy business.Report
do the hogs taste like boar? i had a boar burger once (at bareburger) and i was not…bored? (it was kinda weird)Report
I’d say “probably”. I generally use boar and wild hog/pig interchangeably. I do know that they can be delicious. They can also be “gamey”. They are not, however, to be confused with warthog, which isn’t the same, although it is tasty too. 🙂Report
Yes. There are several species of wild pig – some native(-ish) and others of more recent import. Like all game, age, time of season, and other factors will impact the basic flavor of the meat… knowing this should impact the final preparation. Your boar burger probably (certainly if at a restaurant as they cannot sell wild products – which is part of the problem) came from a domesticated “feral” pig… which is to say not the white (flavorless) potbelly pig used in industrial farming.
There’s a bit of controversy around this, and naming them Feral is a little bit of a scare tactic. People raising heritage breeds for more flavorful pork (all the great hams/pork products in Europe like the famous Spanish Hams are from these sorts of pigs) are under extreme pressure from Industrial Ag on two fronts: 1) Pigs will definitely root up crops, so farmers are dead-set against them (but, their rooting in prairies and forests is ultimately very beneficial to the ecosystem) and 2) the industrial pig colonies are unstable and wildly susceptible to disease in ways that wild pigs are not – so the wild pigs can be construed as a danger to their colonies.
There are definitely some population bombs in certain areas (like Texas) owing to fewer natural predators and a decline in hunting… so yes, there is certainly a strong need for more game management and more hunting. They are an awesome natural resource and some of the best food I ever had was “Feral” Pig in Belgium.Report
Having had to participate in vermin control of feral pigs, they are annoying. OTOH, I have to admit — hunting deer has always been a bit difficult (deer are cute, if tasty) but I’ve never had a qualm killing one of those wild hogs. Ugly, mean, nasty things that they are.Report
Yeah, it is certainly possible that the scrub lands of TX are producing some unique tasting critters… most of the ones we eat are forest foragers which are optimal.
On the other hand, “gamey” is one of those weird things… I’ve had folks simply amazed at the incredible flavor of venison prepared medium-rare and wonder why its not gamely like all the other venison they’ve had – and are shocked further when we tell them it is from an older buck (we actually label our vacuum bags with that info).
Then again, I’ve had some venison with a tinge of “liver” to it… which I can’t quite explain… I can’t tell if it is stress from the manner of the kill or something they’ve been eating, or something hormonal… it happens (not often). Though our overwhelming experience serving game and pastured and heritage breeds is that many of the bad experiences people have had with these products comes from the wrong preparation (or handling) of the product.Report
There is a sub-field of linguistics called “pragmatics.” This studies how people actually use language, as contrasted with formal semantics.
By way of example, suppose you tell an acquaintance “I need a ride downtown” and he replies “I’m going that way.” Should you understand this as him offering you a ride, or merely an exchange of information. In the real world, it is the first. Suppose it subsequently came out that you were not being offered a ride, and your acquaintance protested that he had never offered you one, and you had no basis for thinking otherwise. Your reasonable conclusion would be that your acquaintance either suffered from some sort of cognitive disability, or was a dick.
The defense that this guy merely said he was a citizen, and didn’t specify of where, is another example. You can look it up. The keywords are “Paul Grice” and “cooperative principle”.Report
The real wild ones — the kind running around that are classified as vermin (a problem in Texas as well — 24/7/365 season, no bag limit, they’re just awful) are gamey as heck.
They’re about the only game animal my father-in-law will actually shoot and not always bother eating. (It’s vermin control when he hunts them). They’re a PITA to prepare if you dislike super gamey meats. (Which most of his family, myself included, do).
They get into his deer feeders, tear up the ground, and the less said about what they do to the farmers in the area the better. The things are nuisances.
When we go thin them out, it’s generally bury or burn them. (But then, when we thin them out we end up with several dead hogs in a really short time. We dress maybe one and have it processed, and that’s because a few of the neighbors love that stuff)Report
Does he eat bear?Report
He’s probably had it, but I don’t think he’s ever hunted it. 95% of his hunting was in Texas, and even then he switched to bows about 20 years back. (We use rifles for hogs though. It’s not hunting, it’s more pest control).
Out of state, he actually prefers fly fishing. I know he’s hunted elk and a few other things more common in the north and in Canada. But honestly, these days — he’s happier with a rod and reel.
Pigs are a chore, and I suspect deer season is more of an excuse to be out in the woods. 🙂Report
An interesting article on how tech start up office design is influencing many other businesses in their design choices:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2016/02/23/drivetime_is_a_used_car_company_that_designed_its_new_headquarters_to_look.html
Sample quote:
“We’ve never had any intention to not look like a used car company,” DriveTime spokesman Chris Piper said in an email, “but that’s not who we are at our core. We are an organization deeply rooted in technology, human capital and analytics—and we just so happen to be serving the used car industry.”
Oh Okay. This reads to me “We are a used car company but don’t want to admit it. Let’s use a bunch of fancy buzz words.” But business always struck me as being odd for being impractical and relentless practical at the same time. Impractical because look at the gymnastics this guy goes through because he doesn’t want to say “We sell used cars and provide financing for the purchase of used cars.” Relentless practical because business people have marveled that I do things like read novels. Why spend time reading books that aren’t business books?Report
eh, it’s a guy who pitched a story about a revamped (and mostly nice looking, with some uggo touches) new office space and got hit by a driveby slatepitch. and if you take away the snotty headline, the piece is mostly pictures with a few grafs on the design process and firm that ran it.
personally i would have tried to address the assumed aesthetic/operational mismatch (which is a weird thing to hang one’s hat on when it comes to non-public facing offices but whatever, it’s slate) by focusing on the employee buy-in and all that shizz but such is life. i hate the phrase “human capital” but one must swim in the waters one swims in.
“Relentless practical because business people have marveled that I do things like read novels.”
you need to stop hanging out with vincent adultman.Report
You know what I want in office design? Desk space, good walls or baffles so I’m not stuck listening to the idiot next door’s conversations, and peace and quiet to work.
Also, stop making me stick my back to the door/cubicle opening. I don’t like having people sneak up behind me and don’t like them reading over my shoulder.
It’s annoying.Report
Get back to work, Morat20.Report
Pretty much. 🙂 (Hey, I got a full day’s work done in about two hours this morning. Mostly because I didn’t have people hovering behind me while I’m trying to concentrate).Report
My last tech gig, I was senior enough that I could dictate my cubicle layout to some extent, so I got enough work surface and could sit with my side to the wall. As almost everyone noted, I seemed to have both more stuff and less crowding in my cubicle than anyone else. The standard layouts all seem designed to waste volume.
When I worked for the Joint Budget Committee of the Colorado legislature, I got an actual office with a closing door — better digs than most of the members of the GA got. They didn’t have a lot of choice, since we were regularly in the position of having to have private conversations with members, or with people from the departments.Report
The quote might be a bit much but I really don’t think wanting have a nice place to work is bad thing even if your working in a very non-glamorous industry like the used car market. Having a good looking office makes the work day go easier for the employees and adds to customer satisfaction. Would you prefer a minimalist office filled with poorly dressed employees?Report
Another article on how urban public schools adapt to gentrification.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/how-to-transform-a-school-in-a-gentrifying-neighborhood/470352/
There is a tension here because the wants and needs of upper-middle class gentrifying parents can be (and often are) different than the wants and needs of immigrant and/or low-income parents.Report
Transforming a local neighborhood school that serves nearly everybody into a selective school seems like a less than optimal way to get affluent parents to send their kids to a NYC public school. The children that were served by the local neighborhood school are basically going to get kicked out and sent to other low performing and bad schools for the benefit of the gentrifiers. This seems really unjust. It doesn’t exactly help the pre-gentrification residents that much and it’s likely to increase tensions.Report
It might be an optimal way to get affluent people to move into the neighborhood, though. For good or for ill.Report
Re: the squirrels. So many ways to take it. Who knew modern technological society would be nibbled to death by squirrels? Shouldn’t China’s PLA quit spending money on hackers probing the US power grid control systems, and train kamikaze squirrels instead? This is what you get when you destroy certain monopolies — Bell Laboratories, with the world’s greatest experts on compounds that tasted bad to squirrels, didn’t kill them, and could be incorporated into wire insulation, is no longer in that business. (Honestly, when I worked at Bell Labs and helped run the ski club for a couple of years, I met one of the researchers whose job was squirrel-resistant insulation. Making it taste bad was a very successful strategy.)Report
There’s still a lot of bad blood between the Chinese and the Japanese, so such an alliance is unlikely.Report
“Who knew modern technological society would be nibbled to death by squirrels? ”
trolls, of course, because it was their idea to use peanut oil to line the fiberoptics. Drives the squirrels crazy, and is a fun national security issue to boot.
If China could convince decent hackers to work for them, they wouldn’t be in this situationReport
compounds that tasted bad to squirrels, didn’t kill them, and could be incorporated into wire insulation
That’s nuts.Report
No I think that would be the opposite of what they’d be looking for. Nut flavored insulation would, presumably, draw squirrels in droves.Report
Where I live in the Tx Hill country it is ringtails that cause the power outages because they are big enough to bridge gaps in substations and frying themselves. A ringtail is a relative of the racoon:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring-tailed_cat . I recall one night at 4 am when the power went out for 2 hours after one of them decided that it was time to commit suicide.Report
A not so heart-warming story. A few weeks ago a 73 year old man named John Beck went missing in the Bay Area. He had an appointment that he never showed up to. His photo was placed all over social media and telephone poles in the Bay Area. Turns out he is a massive scammer:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Reputed-victims-of-John-Beck-speak-out-6847874.php?cmpid=gaterailReport
He;s a disgrace to the rest of the Becks, if such a thing is possible.Report
Article is paywalled. So is his being missing a scam or is he a scammer who has actually gone missing?Report
Not sure whether is going missing is a scam or not but it is an interesting twistReport
He owed 113 million to the FTC. My guess is that he jumped shipReport
What about Joe Montana, who is the GOAT.Report