Steve Dyer

Boston, Massachusetts, 7.54 pm

thahalfrican:

boredhottie:

aaliyahghostsighting:

dynastylnoire:

wooooooooooooooooow

omfg

Lmao

#STOPSNITCHING!!?!

The worries are exaggerated: Only 7% of young adults with student debt have $50,000 or more. http://t.co/Aavawc8KpC

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) June 24, 2014

Doesn’t that sound like a fact? Well, it’s something that might be a fact.

The Brookings Institute is here to tell you that the whole fable of debt-panicked young people in America is a lie! And their study comes complete with a huge announcement in the New York Times, which puts a rather snide slant on the whole thing. It’s all in your head, millennials! “Only 7 percent of young-adult households with education debt have $50,000 or more of it,” summarizes the Times up top. (There’s a quiet and enormous caveat in that sentence, which we’ll get to shortly!)

But then they must backtrack from this tale a bit:

The first thing to acknowledge is that student debt has risen over the last two decades. In 2010, 36 percent of households with people between the ages of 20 and 40 had education debt, up from 14 percent in 1989. The median amount of debt—among those with debt—more than doubled, to $8,500 from $3,517, after adjusting for inflation.

So let’s see: people with college debt saw their debt double, and also the number of those households with debt more than doubled. That is not exactly undermining this supposedly fake narrative of the increase of student debt! What’s more, the Times notes, tuition and fees at public colleges are up 50% in the last ten years.

Then they must come to this graph.

Do you see where that says “based on households with people between 20 to 40 years old with at least some education debt”? That’s actually quite a bit of a fudge!

What’s the deal with these numbers? GLAD YOU ASKED. It’s not what it sounds like!

• Those aren’t households with people between 20 and 40; those are households headed by people between 20 and 40. Which is to say, this data excludes all people living in households headed by, say, their parents, or other adults. The way Brookings put this is: “households led by adults between the ages of 20 and 40.” Just another way to say it excludes all households led by anyone over 40! (Those households might be identical in student debt to “young” households! Or they might not? WHO KNOWS!)

• One effect of this age spread sample is that it includes college graduates from up to almost 20 years ago. This is literally not at all a study of college graduates of the last five years, or even ten years. We’re talking about people up to the age of 40, well into Gen X.

• Also, in this survey, when there are multiple people in the household, the Brookings Institute simply divided the amount of college debt by number of people in the household. So one person’s $20,000 college debt becomes two people’s $10,000 college debt. This works out mathematically, of course, but not structurally.

• And finally: The number of the people making up this data is quite small.

Where does it come from? GLAD YOU ASKED.

All this data comes from the Survey of Consumer Finances, which is conducted by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Department of Treasury. It takes place every three years, since 1983. It samples about 4500 households in the U.S., usually, but recently expanded to 6500 households. And this isn’t new data; this is the data from their 2010 survey. (The 2013 survey will be published in 2015.)

Of all the households in that study, only about 1711 have “household heads” that are younger than 40. That’s what they’re extrapolating from. (And, intriguingly, a small number of those have a head of household younger than 18.) This is not a big sample!

What, obviously, does this data completely omit? Well, one obvious thing is… households who are headed by someone who is not under 40. One thing we know is that, in 2012, 36% of Americans aged 18 to 31 were not their head of household, because they were living with their families.

This survey also clearly combines family and non-family households. (Also, there’s some unknown amount of statistical imbalance from same-sex households; 31% of same-sex households are likely to have two college-degreed people, compared to 24% of opposite-sex married households and just 12% of opposite-sex cohabitating households.)

And finally… this survey is, essentially, of rich people. No, literally!

We apply survey weights throughout the analysis so that the results are representative of the U.S.
population of households. The use of survey weights is particularly important in the SCF because
the sample design oversamples high-income households to properly measure the full distribution of
wealth and assets in the United States. This high-income sample makes up approximately 25 percent of
households in the SCF.

Literally what they are saying there is that the information on which they are basing a sweeping assessment of American student loan debt is based on a sample in which 25% of those surveyed were “high-income households.” This is insane.

Here’s a fun footnote in the actual Brookings Institute report:

These statistics are based on households that had education debt, annual wage income of at least $1,000,
and that were making positive monthly payments on student loans. Between 24 and 36 percent of
borrowers with wage income of at least $1,000 were not making positive monthly payments, likely due
to use of deferment and forbearance….

So… they… set aside as much as 1/3rd of people in the survey sample because they weren’t paying off their student debt. That’s an intriguing class of debtors, don’t you think? They claim that dismissing these people from the sample did not “qualitatively alter the pattern of results reported above”; so why dismiss them at all?

It’s shocking that the Times presents this survey in this way. This study does actually tell us things! It’s not actually a pack of lies. It just doesn’t tell us necessarily what people are saying it’s telling us. And no one of course will actually read the whole survey, so its repackaging will now enter the narrative, thanks to bloggers….

Great @dleonhardt piece on research by @chingos and @bethakersed suggesting the sky isn't falling on student debt http://t.co/R7eOuCQJPY

— Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt) June 24, 2014

The new DC parlor game: Find some random economic or social shift. Blame it on student loan debt. Ignore data. Repeat yourself. Meme started

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) June 24, 2014

… and professional policy wonks alike. And that’s a huge disservice.

I was on vacation last week (while apparently you all fell for some app that just sent the word "yo" to each other, and also all suddenly became soccer fans? Great work!) and I took the opportunity to handle all those little annoying tasks that you never get to. For instance: iPhone autocorrect is the most horrible thing in the world. For years, my phone has been typing "ducxking" for me when clearly I intend to type… not that. It's easy to fix!

Go to Settings.

Go to General.

Scroll down for Keyboard.

Hit Shortcuts.

There you can add a "shortcut" but that is actually a dictionary of sorts. If you just add the word or phrase you want, and don't add an actual shortcut, it will stop autocorrecting the word you mean to type. NO MORE DUCXKING.

This exercise of adding my commonly used swearwords was, as always, an excellent reminder about the horrors of our gendered and sexphobic and certainly slutphobic swear economy. I mean: TRIGGER WARNING for "the existence of humanity." (Ya fudgepackers.)

The post How I Got My iPhone to Finally Let Me Swear appeared first on The Awl.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a chum of the Toast and an all-around jet-setting, aces kind of dude. He writes very smart things and I think he’s just tremendous.

But I had a question for him.

.@tanehisicoates ok be 100% honest have you ever put on a big peacoat and whisper “I’m Ta-Nehisi COATS” to yourself in the mirror

— Mallory Ortberg (@mallelis) June 18, 2014

Turns out yes!

@mallelis Every day, homegirl. Sometimes works.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) June 18, 2014

Okay so now I had to draw some stuff. Good news: I have a rhyming dictionary and I can’t draw hands at all. Here are some drawings of beloved public intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates and different things his last name rhymes with.

Read more Maybe The Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Mallory Draws Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Toast.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry sticks up for the American preference for calling it “soccer” rather than “football”:

I’m writing this post as a public service to point out the actual fact, which is that the word “soccer” is basically as old as the sport itself, and has impeccable English bona fides. Here’s the real story, as Wikipedia notes: soccer came into existence at around the same time as other forms of football, in particular rugby football. The sport therefore became referred to as “association football”, to differentiate it from rugby football. With their talent for abbreviation and metonymy, “association football” quickly became “soccer”, from the word “association”.

Call soccer whatever you like. But now you know that the word soccer has impeccable historical and European bona fides, and is not some navel-gazing American invention. It is absolutely proper to call soccer soccer. If anything, calling it “football” is the navel-gazing form, since it ignores other forms of football, whether NFL football or rugby football.

Uri Friedman digs deeper into the history of the term:

If the word “soccer” originated in England, why did it fall into disuse there and become dominant in the States?

To answer that question, [sports economist Stefan] Szymanski counted the frequency with which the words “football” and soccer” appeared in American and British news outlets as far back as 1900. What he found is fascinating: “Soccer” was a recognized term in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century, but it wasn’t widely used until after World War II, when it was in vogue (and interchangeable with “football” and other phrases like “soccer football”) for a couple decades, perhaps because of the influence of American troops stationed in Britain during the war and the allure of American culture in its aftermath. In the 1980s, however, Brits began rejecting the term, as soccer became a more popular sport in the United States.

In recent decades, “The penetration of the game into American culture, measured by the use of the name ‘soccer,’ has led to backlash against the use of the word in Britain, where it was once considered an innocuous alternative to the word ‘football,’” Szymanski explains.

selenerwieners:

perfect bands don’t exi-

From Yue Li:

This paper examines the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by considering a dynamic interaction between extending health insurance coverage and the demand for federal disability insurance. This paper extends the Bewley-Huggett-Aiyagari incomplete markets model by endogenizing health accumulation and disability decisions. The model suggests that the ACA will reduce the fraction of working-age people receiving disability benefits by 1 percentage point. In turn, the changes associated with disability decisions will help fund 47 percent of the ACA’s cost. Last, compared to the ACA, an alternative plan without Medicaid expansion will reduce tax burdens and improve welfare.

The pointer is from the excellent Kevin Lewis.  I have not yet read the piece but thought it of sufficient interest to pass along right away.

The US beat Ghana 2-1 in their first round World Cup match yesterday. Hard luck for Ghana, which had rationed electricity to make sure everyone could watch the match on TV:

Ghana has been suffering from a power shortage this year due to low water levels at hydroelectric dams on the Volta River. The nation’s utilities regulator is already rationing electricity by mandating sporadic shutdowns. To ensure World Cup viewing won’t be interrupted, Ghana is purchasing 50 megawatts of electricity from its neighbor, Ivory Coast. Power plants will also be running at maximum capacity, and Volta Aluminum, the nation’s largest smelter and a large drain on electricity, will slow production during the match.

Plumer takes the opportunity to point out that “access to electricity is a hugely pressing concern throughout Africa”:

Ghana is actually one of the luckier countries on this score — roughly 72 percent of its population has access to electricity, however unreliable. In neighboring Ivory Coast, by contrast, it’s 59 percent. In Tanzania, only 15 percent of people have reliable access to electricity. Add it all up, and some 590 million people across sub-Saharan Africa don’t have any power at all. Among other things, that’s a major public-health issue: Without electricity, many households turn to wood stoves, whose indoor pollution now kills 4.3 million people per year (worldwide), more than AIDS and malaria combined.

(Chart from Todd Moss)

A reader writes:

At first glance, I thought I was looking at an airport. The wide concrete slabs and numerous arrows triggered that impression in my brain. Of course when it registered that there were benches lining the edges, I realized how wrong I was!

The wide man-made beach leading to what looks like a very unfriendly lagoon is clearly not South American, although it does conjure up the vision of a curiously deserted section of Ipanema. Most interesting are what looks like windmills on the upper left corner. The top of the hill has what looks like some sort of ruin, but probably isn’t. I’m not sure what makes me think Scandinavian, except that it is an unusually pristine beach and surroundings. However, I couldn’t find a pic resembling this image online. Again, this feels like a sad little place, the overcast skies darkening the lagoon water, with rather stark architecture. Somewhere in Scandinavia, Norway or Sweden, Copenhagen.

Another reader senses “a very Russian feeling” from the view. Another gets topical:

I do not have the time to follow through on my immediate instincts, which are “World Cup,” and “Brazil.” When I start looking at beaches in Brazil, I find some that have very similar light fixtures, so I think I am in the right country. But there are a lot of beaches! I’m taking a guess to say it is a beach in the vicinity of Recife, Brazil.

Another is clearly looking forward to summer:

Congratulations. Wherever this is, they have created the perfect beach experience for people who hate both sand and water.

Another hits the States:

This week’s view is really a puzzler. At first glance I thought there were plenty of clues to go on: the beach next to a densely-packed urban landscape, the concrete promenade, the bike path. There are odd buildings along the shore, and … is that a set of stairs going down to a parking garage? I can’t tell. There aren’t any palm trees, which suggests a temperate climate. I’ve been chasing up all these clues obsessively and haven’t found anything that seems remotely close. I’m certain it’s not Chicago, but I’m going with that anyway. So frustrating!

Even a correct guesser notes:

Wow, this one was hard.

Indeed. There were only 20 readers who even hazarded a guess this week. One of them frowns:

I would waste the day investigating this location but I am disqualifying it because it shows no part of the window frame and contains an animal (dog). I can do something productive instead.

True, we never post frameless views for our daily VFYW feature, but due to the lack of good candidates for the contest, we occasionally use them here.  And animals are only disqualifying when they are the central focus of the view, not incidental background. The closest incorrect entry:

Nice beach. No one swimming, not even a dog, despite the green flags. Must be the North Sea. I say it’s Dunkirk, France.

Another nails the right country and city:

My guess for this week is a city on the northern coast of Spain, specifically Gijon, Spain. The dense city, the streetlight fixtures, and the beautiful beach were my clues. There are a number of half-moon beaches in the area, and I suspect this photo was taken from the aquarium or some restaurant in the area looking east.

A previous winner nails the building too. Here’s his breakdown:

It took a while to figure this contest out because the items in the photo pulled me in different directions. The buildings and grey concrete sidewalks next to a beach with calm waters made me think it is an Eastern European location, perhaps on the Black Sea. The Kompan pirate playground, the wind, and the people dressed in long sleeved clothing made me think western or northern Europe. But the palm trees are too tall for northern Europe.

To confuse things further, I initially thought the statute on the hill opposite was a Greek ruin. After realizing the object was too large for that to be true, I started to try random bits of the European coastline. Then after stumbling across similar looking lamp posts in San Sebastián and Biarritz in North Spain, I realized the contest window must be nearby.

Soon enough, I discovered that Gijón, Spain had the same lamp posts as in the picture and I arrived at Calle Mariano Pola, 2, 33212 Gijón, Asturias, Spain. Based on this photo, I think the contest picture was taken from this two-bedroom vacation apartment for rent. For the exact window within the apartment, I highlighted it in the attached screenshot. The sculpture in the distance turns out to be Eulogy to the Horizon by Eduardo Chillida.

Below is a visual glimpse of all of the entries (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

From a reader in country:

Well, no special story or anything other than I have walked along that waterfront, as it’s fairly well known here in Spain. Only once have I been up to Gijón (pronounced in English as “hee-hone”), but I instantly recognized it, so I imagine you will have quite a few correct guesses this week. Let me recommend Asturias and the northern parts of Spain in general to so many of the readers who may have an image of the country that completely forgets the very verdant North. It’s a completely different style that is absolutely lovely.

Anyway, after knowing where it was from memory, I just used Google Maps to confirm it was the same place I was thinking of and found a nice street view photo sphere of the area:

And looking around I found a pleasant piece of architecture that I’m pretty sure is the building in question:

​Now that I noticed that the rules were bent a bit this week to not show the actual window, I’m going to guess that the photo is from the top balcony of the building at Calle de Mariano Pola, number 2.

A veteran player:

I got lucky looking at beaches with roof structures. I found a TripAdvisor shot, showing that striking wall design at the beach steps. That led to Google Map view, excerpted below, at a sunnier and more populated moment:

Below is a photo from an apartment for rent, described as Calle Mariano Pola, 2, 3:

I am not sure if this is the very apartment, but it seems awfully close! Perhaps the VFYW was taken early in the day; beach looks very empty, and with its lack of shadows, can’t tell what time it was. But I am thrilled to have found it, anyhow!

Another reader:

Playa de Poniente, white building shaped like a ship (there are three in a row; it’s the one nearest an old chimney), fourth floor. For the window, see the attached image:

This one was really hard. I came close to giving up, then my sister told me: “looks like Spain” (I was sure it was a northern country somewhere in Europe). So I googled “playa artificial” (it is definitely an artificial beach), and after a hundred photos of Japanese beaches-under-a-dome there it was.

Another:

Six in a row!  A new record for my wife and me.  And hard-earned, too, as this was easily the contest I’ve had to spend the most time on over the last month and a half.

But why, when there’s so much to look at?  I really thought a European beach would give itself up rather quickly, but this tiny beach near the Gijon marina hid itself as well as any place can on the internet these days.  Our first instinct was actually Scandinavia, and the lack of wave activity had us thinking it was perhaps a lake beach.  So a lot of wrong roads turned down this week, and had it not been for our streak I may have given up.  Eventually some combination of search terms yielded a travel site about Spanish beaches, and while Gijon wasn’t featured there were certain similarities in the plazas and access ramps that made me think Spain was the way to go.  That also made me aware that all those dark-haired people in the picture probably aren’t milling about a beach in Scandinavia.

And so I did what I’ve done before on obvious coastline scenes — just follow the damn coast of spain, stopping at every spot where sandy beaches intersected with a densely-populated area.  Plenty of false positives, but with so much detail in the view I was able to move on from each rather quickly.

There are three parallel ugly apartment buildings (I presume) lining that plaza, and the view is taken from the far-right one that sorta looks like a cruise ship.  3rd floor, let’s say.

Another:

The view is from Calle de Mariano Pola, 2, Gijón, Spain. Third floor balcony, at the northeastern corner. This is a private building, one of three condo buildings that are shaped like a ship, so I can’t even venture a guess as to the exact address. Attached I can’t believe I found this, but I’ve circled what I think is the window.

I’m never right on my first guess with these, but I looked at the photo and said, wait, I’ve been there. It’s Gijón! I had a summer of fun debauchery as an exchange student in a small town in northwestern Spain, almost 15 years ago. My host brother and I took the bus up to Gijón for a couple of days on the beach. Lovely. That’s the Playa de Poniente, one of Gijón’s several beautiful crescent beaches.

Yes, I questioned myself for a few minutes, because it could’ve also been San Sebastián with its famous crescent-shaped Playa de la Concha, and I haven’t been to either in 15 years and maybe I was wrong. The tip-off was the big gray building, when I re-reviewed the photo. It had to be the Talaso Poniente.

I assume you’ll get lots of submissions because it’s a rather unique building. Takes all the fun out of things that the crazy savants can always turn these out easily. Oh, well.

Our favorite spousal team rocks their 11th contest in a row:

Our guess is that the contest photograph was taken in Gijón, Spain. The view is of Poniente Beach and the surrounding area, and was taken facing northeast from the building and fourth-floor window shown in the photograph below:

We were out of town this weekend and did not expect we would be able to get to the VFYW contest, but we did a whirlwind search this evening (Monday) and got it done. Once our toddler was in bed my wife hopped on Google and called out possibilities while I was on Google Earth checking out her suggestions. Narrowing this one down was difficult, but my wife (correctly) suspected northern Spain. The contest photo featured several construction cranes, so when she spied a New York Times article that mentioned new construction in Gijón she sent me there to check.

Not that Chini is feeling the heat:

Unlike the memories that last week’s visit to the Musee Rodin brought back for me, this week … oh who am I kidding #distractedbyworldcup. The basics then: This week’s view comes from Gijon, Spain and looks east-north-east along a heading of 70.12 degrees from a 3rd floor window in the Linea Rural apartments located at 2 Calle de Mariano Pola.

This week’s winner was the longest-playing veteran with a near-miss guess (by one floor):

A third floor apartment in this block, which looks like the rear end of a liner, on Calle de Mariano Pola in Gijon, in northern Spain.

It was the bike path that made me think Spain, the calm water that made me think bay, and the crane at rest suggested a northern facing coast.

Congrats! From the view’s submitter:

The photo was taken from the second (European) floor of the building at Poniente Gijón, Spain this week. The name means “where the sun sets.”

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.

sonnysantana:

i just found this on furby’s facebook page. 

mightymorphinlightskin:

newjackkween:

spot-the-misfits:

king-emare:

noontime-shadows:

redvelvetlola:

angelica-aswald:

justcallmesappho:

best-of-imgur:

Casey Kasem, the voice of Shaggy from the Scooby Doo cartoons has passed away. He has all the Scooby snacks he wants now. R.I.P.
http://best-of-imgur.tumblr.com

My heart..

Why the fuck did you do this?

Noooooo :(((

I’m crying

damn =[

Aww :(

Nooooo 😥

😭😭😭

dcmldcml:

hungryzekes:

I had to watch this a few times because I thought she grew twice the size after he pulled out her hair band

yes that’s the only strange thing about this gif

lindseyisnotonfire:

this is what yahoo paid 1.1 billion dollars for

A reader updates us with some data:

Despite Dish-heads’ anecdotes, an analysis of voting patterns and vote totals by WaPo indicate that Democratic cross-over votes had little to do with Cantor’s loss:

Virginia’s lack of party registration makes it difficult to pin down whether Democrats crossed over in large numbers, but local level turnout provides some indirect clues on whether this phenomenon was widespread. On two counts, the data cast doubt on whether Democratic cross-over voting caused Cantor’s loss. …

Some Democrats surely selected a Republican ballot and voted for David Brat, but Cantor’s loss seems to be much more the result of weak support among Republican voters, some of whom showed up for a race they typically ignore to vote for the tea party conservative who was besieged with attack ads.

A reader writes:

I live in the 7th District in Virginia, and I am a Democrat who voted for David Brat in the open primary. There has been a whisper campaign going on among the Democrats in the district for the last few weeks and it resulted in many Democrats coming out to vote for Brat. We felt especially encouraged after the 7th District committee nominated Jack Trammell to be the Democratic candidate for the seat last Sunday. We now feel we at least have a fair chance at winning it. (By the way, Jack Trammell is a professor at the same small college as Brat, Randolph-Macon.)

Well, not quite the Democrats of Mickey’s dreams, I guess. Update from a reader:

Here’s a theory to support your reader who, though a Democrat, voted for Brat: in 2012, roughly 47,000 people voted in the 7th District Republican primary. This time, roughly 65,000.  Now let’s assume that of those 18,000 new voters, 16,000 were Democrats voting to axe Cantor, then rework the numbers if they hadn’t voted: Cantor would then have had around 29,000+ votes, and Brat would have had around 20,000+.  Which would have worked out to approximately 59% for Cantor, which is where he was at in 2012 and much closer to his internal polling showing him with a lead of 34% among likely REPUBLICAN voters.

I’m thinking time will show that Democrats in his district were fed up with him, and decided to do something about it.

A subsequent Dish update here throws cold water on the theory.

A reader writes:

Unlikely is one thing, impossible another. If someone gets a correct answer to this, there is devilry at work.

Another sees himself in the photo:

I think that’s me in the pink shirt.  Wish I could remember where I was.

Another:

Because no European would dress like that guy in the pink shirt, this must be America and not France (Versailles) or Austria (Schonbrunn). Thus, I go with the one European-style palace in America: The Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Another surges into first place:

I knew right off the bat where this was, since I’ve spent many hours racing around the topiary bushes here with Mario and Luigi. This is obviously the garden at Princess Peach’s Castle in the Mushroom Kingdom (Mario Kart Wii). I can even point out the window from which the photo was taken:

Another looks to cinema:

I’ve never actively participated before, but when I saw this picture I immediately was reminded of Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Much Ado About Nothing. I am probably wrong – but in case I’m not, my guess is Villa Vignamaggio in Tuscany, Italy.

Another gets the right country:

The window in need of repair, with the garden looking immaculate, brings back memories of Versailles, France, and the righteous anger rising inside at the excessive opulence, which no doubt contributed to the unrest and eventual revolution. Yes, I say Versailles! Now let me calm down and foster thoughts of Jean Valjean.

Another makes an important discovery:

I’m pretty sure that this will be the most popular wrong answer this week. After a weekend learning about formal gardens, I couldn’t find the location in the picture, but while glancing at the screen, my wife noticed that a section of the gardens at Versailles looks like a panda from the air. So there’s that.

Another reader, although far too brief, nails the city:

Paris, France

Another gets the right location in Paris:

I’ll make this short and sweet because I’m leaving to take my wife in for spinal surgery:

The photo was taken from the far left window overlooking the gardens at the Musée Rodin in Paris. 79 Rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris, France. More specifically:

That’s also the right window, which most of our correct guessers picked this week. Below is an OpenHeatMap of all of the entries (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

Another reader goes into greater detail:

This is definitely France, given the particular kind of molding on the window frames, the fact they are French windows and not sash windows, and the way the roses are surrounded by trimmed box hedges. This could be any one of many 18th century manoirs/hotels particuliers/chateaux, but I would bet it’s the formal gardens in back of the Hotel Biron in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, aka the Musee Rodin.

Another walks us through the garden:

It contains characters from Dante’s Inferno, each depicted in a separate sculpture that Rodin brought together in his Gates of Hell.  In the contest picture, for example, sitting in the fountain is Rodin’s Ugolino before he devours his children:

I bet the family walking down the path in the contest photo will have a great time discussing that sculpture over dinner.  Also, one of the Shades which Rodin later combined with two others to create The Three Shades is off on the left of the fountain. Rodin placed a small version of The Three Shades at the top of his Gates of Hell above The Thinker.

Another:

I went to the Rodin museum in my stumbling early twenties and it absolutely transformed the way I thought and felt about art. Rodin had such a unique and powerful gift for capturing emotion and form, and to be surrounded by so much of his work was simply overwhelming in a way no previous museum or gallery had ever been for me. In particular there was something about the raw, eros-charged physicality of Rodin’s pieces that I practically had to restrain myself from reaching out and touching them:

His impressive private art collection is housed there as well, as is some of the work of his lover and muse Camille Claudel, which truly emphasizes the intimacy of the place. What an incredible, unforgettable experience. Everyone should go.

Along those lines, a few people mentioned the museum was on their bucket list, but none more movingly than this reader:

I immediately recognized the surroundings, as this is, along with Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre, among my very favorite places in the world. Rodin’s most famous works are found in the elegant surroundings of the Hôtel Biron - where from inside this photo was taken - and the surrounding gardens.

On a personal note: You’ve detailed my health situation in the past, as I deal with an eventually terminal illness. My “bucket list” trip while I could still travel was to Paris with my wife last year, to visit these places one more time - and the first time with her.

This contest gives me something to fill my time and look forward to each week, and I would be lying to say that this week hasn’t been a little more special. The memories that seeing this window evokes have made this week’s contest a trip outside of my everyday reality. I’ve been hoping for a win, but this is (almost) just as good. Thanks.

On a very different note:

In the course of investigating this view on Google Streetview, I found what appears to be a lesser known Rodin work. Looks like Jared from Subway:

Another examines the image for more useful clues:

It’s not much past midday, judging from the shadows, a beautiful temperate day, the quality of light, the flowers, and the tourists’ choices of attire, yet very few tourists have chosen to spend this lovely day in this garden. Might that suggest that the garden has lots of competition for tourists’ attention just beyond the hedges?

Therefore we have a garden attached to a museum, probably a museum of statuary, which is probably in a great city. Since it isn’t the Galleria Borghese in Rome, because I’ve been to it, then it must be the Musée Rodin, 79 rue de Varenne, Paris. And the three statues visible in the frame are “Adam” to the left, “The Meditation” to the right, and between them, just above mister pinkshirt, is “Ugolino [kneeling over] and [about to chow down on] his children” in the center of a difficult-to-discern pool.

Tourists avoiding this garden may be a mile to the east perched at a table outside Café de Flore, nursing un p’tit rouge and trying to be existentialists. Or a mile and change to the west at the top of the Eiffel Tower, gazing east toward Les Invalides (and so, incidentally, over the hedge into this very jardin).

I only wish that was how I identified this window. But no. I Googled “sculpture garden hedges” and the 134th image looked remarkably similar to that tri-arch hedge in the background. It took seconds. After that it was just a matter of picking out the panes of the window (not the window itself, because that’s obvious). Ground floor, west wing, south side, second and third pair of panes up from the bottom, on the right half of the window when viewed from the garden.

A reader living in Paris:

I bet this one will get plenty of correct answers. Or, at least I hope so! The tiny bronze forms on the horizon are unmistakeable: Rodin. I recognized them at first sight.

Six months out of every year, I teach drawing from 16th – 18th c. sculpture at the Musee du Louvre, to art students from all over the world, in a private program that I founded myself. I’m American but have lived in France for the last 13 years, and in Paris for the last 4.5 years. My wife and I are both artists, and the gardens of the Musee Rodin are a favorite place to visit. The museum has been in renovations for years, and the last time I visited there was last winter. The first time I went was as a student, in 1994 as seen in this embarrassingly earnest pic:

They are currently hosting a fine exhibition on the influence of Rodin’s sculpture on the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. I hope to go this weekend.

Another:

How I WISH I could be one of the Dishheads who goes scouting the location of the VFYW this week. This is not just a sculpture garden, it is the sculpture garden. (If you want to mess with all the NSFW-phobic folks, you can post this image, which the museum is using to promote the current Mappelthorpe/Rodin exhibit. It’s effing culture, people!)

Personal story? I first visited the Rodin Garden in 1998 after a term studying in England; my mother and I spent a week touring Paris and climbing all the stairs we could find in the city. Not too many stairs in the Musée Rodin, but I thought it was the most romantic place I’d ever been and dreamed of proposing to a girl there one day. Fast forward fifteen years and … my brother proposed to his girlfriend there. Younger brothers always steal your best ideas.

Another:

As an architect I’ve taken my kids – they would say dragged – to many of the worlds great museums and buildings. Since I never got a chance to go anywhere when I was a kid, I hoped they would appreciate it and enjoy learning about Art & Architecture as I did during my studies.

More often than than not, though, they would just melt down. We visited the Musee Rodin over the holiday break in 2005. To express their displeasure with having to walk through another museum in Paris they decided to reenact the pained pose of Andrieus d’Andre Vetu, one of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. Oh well, what’s a dad to do?

Another learns to never doubt the spouse when it comes to Paris:

I spent several hours yesterday sifting through approximately one jillion pictures of formal gardens. No luck, although I did learn some gardening jargon (have you ever wondered what a parterre or a pelouse is?).  Just when I was losing all hope, my wife walked over and said “Hey, isn’t that a Rodin?”  I took a closer look at the sculpture near the left side of the circular walkway, but it just looked like a little gray smudge.  I told her she was crazy, we could barely tell that it was a sculpture, let alone who the artist was. Oops.

Chini yawns:

Some of these VFYW searches would take forever to explain, but my thought process this week was pretty short: “Hmm, hedges, looks like it’s gonna be a garden hunt … hey, that statue looks like a Rodin … kinda like The Burghers at the Met, but in a garden … oh wait, it can’t be … <google searches> … oh darnit, it is. And I didn’t even get started on my latte … ”

Another reader owes Rodin a beer:

I’ve never visited here, nor do I have any particular interest in gardens or sculpture. BUT I did once have a framed print of Rodin’s The Kiss in my apartment when I was in college, and the air of worldly sophistication that it afforded me certainly helped with the ladies. Maybe. But it definitely helped tonight, when I realized that those fuzzy globs sort of looked Rodin-esque.

A former winner shows how it’s done:

Attempts to identify the window panes in the photograph assumed that they were above the decorative wrought iron window grill (because it is not in the photograph) and at the height of someone standing. The window hardware barely visible in the darkened left side of the contest photograph places the panes on the western casement of the double casement window (actually two double casement inswing windows as found throughout the museum). The visible hardware includes components of the vertical rod and locking device that hold the two casements shut and is therefore located where the two join when closed. The round component is probably the handle connected to the locking device and vertical rod. Attached is a collage comparing hardware found on other museum windows with that visible in the contest window.

Speaking of collages, here’s another Dish original:

This week’s tiebreaker goes to a reader on our list of previous contestants who have correctly guessed difficult contests but never won. A process walkthrough:

No buildings? No skyline? You’ve got to be kidding me. Google Earth isn’t going to be a help on this one. So what do we know? Looks like it could be the gardens at Versailles, couple of sculptures can be seen but its hard to make out what they are. Since there doesn’t seem to be a lot of other clues, what the heck, let’s just Google: “Sculpture Garden”. For some reason, when you do, you come up with an inordinate number of images for this Spoon with a Cherry in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden:

But the window really doesn’t look like it is in Minneapolis, so what else do I know? There really isn’t a lot there. I guess there are a bunch of hedges. So why not, I’m feeling lucky, let’s unleash the power of Google: “Sculpture Garden Hedge”. And Boom! Just like that. By the magic of the internet there it is. On the first page of image results … it’s the hedge with three arches from the from the back of the photo along with a caption specifying Gardens of Rodin! And so, the Musée Rodin in Paris.

With a three-word Google search, this week’s window goes from completely impossible to getting my weekend back in the span of just 10 minutes! My guess:

Congrats, and with a cherry on top! From the submitter of the window view, an artist:

It’s one of my favorite places in Paris, though nothing like it was in Rodin’s time, when it was more of a pastural paradise in the city. What an amazing place it must have been to have had a studio.

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

hammerlock:

does whatever a sipdre cna

The number of stay-at-home fathers is on the rise. But reasons for that increase aren’t all positive:

Olga Khazan mentions the fact that “mothers are still more likely to stay at home because they think it’s the best way to raise the kids; fathers are more likely to do it because they physically can’t work outside the home”:

These fathers’ lack of options reflects in their educational attainment and on their families’ financial situations: Dads who stay at home are twice as likely to lack a high school diploma as working dads, Pew found, and they’re far more likely to be ill or disabled than stay-at-home mothers (35 percent to 11 percent). Importantly, nearly half of stay-at-home dads live in poverty (47 percent), while only 34 percent of stay-at-home mothers and 8 percent of working fathers do.

But Yglesias contends that the trend isn’t all economic:

Each time the economy recovers, the share of stay-at-home dads declines. But it doesn’t decline all the way back to where it was before the recession started. The business cycle, in other words, seems to intersect with shifting gender norms. If the economy keeps recovering, we should expect to see more and more dads reenter the labor force (moms too) but there likely will be a more lasting impact.

Claire Cain Miller agrees:

[T]aking a longer view shows a marked increase in the number of stay-at-home fathers, to 2 million in 2012 from 1.1 million in 1989, according to Pew. Even if fathers who can’t find jobs are excluded from the data, there is still a notable increase since 1989 in stay-at-home dads, said Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at Pew and an author of the report.

The most telling change is that just over a fifth of at-home fathers say the main reason they are home is to care for family, up from 5 percent in 1989, and that segment is the fastest-growing.

Lil cats get crunk to Lil Jon: