Pimpin ain’t easy atoll (Wikimedia Commons) The Cocos (Keeling) (why the parentheses?) Islands is an Australian-owned archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean and home to about 600 people. Its founding myth is much more interesting than that: After the discovery of the islands by Captain Keeling, their first notable visitor was Captain John…
Rich, highly developed countries tend to have fewer murders than poorer ones. The thinking is that when more people have more to lose by not playing by the rules, and when there is effective law enforcement to enforce said rules, they will increasingly pursue alternate means of conflict resolution. If the best government can provide…
Going through some of the homicide data I teased in this post sparked an idea to show it in map form. Here it is: I had hoped to use a different country for every state, but there was a whole cluster of states with homicide rates close to that of Haiti and Cuba (5.8 per…
The United States has a murder rate that stands out among rich-world countries. Over the past 16 years, it has averaged about 4.8 homicides per 100,000 people (according to UN statistics), which is about the same level as countries like Laos and Tajikstan and slightly less than Haiti and Cuba. However, the U.S. is also…
From a July 12, 2013 Bureau of Labor Statistics release: Where are the jobs for young men without college degrees? Government jobs across the country, which especially in urban America have long been a source of middle-class stability, have (partly for Tea Party-related reasons) not reappeared as the larger economy continues to bounce back. Construction,…
In other words, people who are willing to break the law to own guns might just be more likely to use them to kill people than people who go through legal channels to acquire them. One thing that is quickly and frustratingly apparent when working on a gun crime/gun control related project is just how…
On the occasion of moving my official web presence to a domain I registered on a whim several years ago, lost the key information, and figured was gone forever (or just way too much of a hassle to try to regain control of anytime soon), I’m going to link to some older pieces that should…