Matthew Connor

How do people's perceptions of who is committing a crime compare with reality? In a 2012 paper, researchers argued that black people commit a much lower share of crimes than whites assume.

The paper compares two surveys of people’s perceptions about violent crime with actual statistics. The “mean perceived percentage” figures are based on responses of white people in two telephone surveys: A random telephone survey of 1,575 adults conducted in Florida by the Research Network in 2005, and a nationally representative sample of 961 respondents directed by Oppenheimer Research in the summer of 2010. The “actual percentage” figures are drawn from various annual statistics published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Justin Pickett, an assistant professor at the University at Albany and the lead author of the study, cautions that the values reported above should not be interpreted as accurate point estimates – the specific number that people say tends to vary a lot depending on how the survey question is asked. However, Pickett says the surveys do suggest that whites overestimate how much blacks are involved in serious street crime and, on average, believe that black people commit a larger proportion of serious street crime than whites do.

This post comes via Know More, Wonkblog's social media site for the best and most interesting visuals, videos, and data hits from around the Web. Check out Know More on its homepage, Twitter or Facebook.

The FBI processed three background checks for gun purchases every second on Friday, as more than 144,000 shoppers were expected to buy firearms on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

As of 2 p.m. Friday, an FBI spokesperson told CNN that the agency had already processed “more than 94,000 transactions, on pace to surpass last year’s 144,758.” Approximately 3,000 checks or 2 percent will not be completed as a result of insufficient information, 71 receive instant approvals, and approximately 1.1 percent of purchasers fail the check. If the government cannot complete the background check in three business days, the buyer is allowed to purchase the gun anyway.

“The challenge is to have staff keep up with this volume. We do that by limiting personal leave, asking employees to work extra shifts and reutilizing former … employees to serve in NICS during this busy period,” spokesman Stephen Fischer told CNN. Since 1999, the pace of background checks has doubled and the FBI has completed 21 million background checks.

U.S. law prohibits individuals with “felony conviction, arrest warrant, documented drug problem, mental illness, undocumented immigration status, dishonorable military discharge, renunciation of U.S. citizenship, restraining order, history of domestic violence or indictment for any crime punishable by longer than one year of prison” from purchasing weapons at licensed dealers.

However, the system is far from perfect, as some states don’t feed enough real-time information into the criminal background check system, allowing individuals with troubled mental health histories or criminal records to pass checks and purchase weapons. Gun sales on the internet or at gun shows are also unregulated and do not require an FBI background examination.

The Associated Press estimates that in the U.S., “there are already nine guns for every 10 people, and someone is killed with a firearm every 16 minutes.”

The post Americans Rushed To Purchase Guns This Black Friday appeared first on ThinkProgress.

In a recent dispatch from Ferguson, Missouri, Jelani Cobb noted that President Obama's responses to "unpunished racial injustices" constitute "a genre unto themselves." Monday night, when Barack Obama stood before the nation to interpret the non-indictment of Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, he offered a particularly tame specimen. The elements of "the genre" were all on display—an unmitigated optimism, an urge for calm, a fantastic faith in American institutions, an even-handedness exercised to a fault. But if all the limbs of the construct were accounted for, the soul of the thing was not.

There was none of the spontaneous annoyance at the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, and little of the sheer pain exhibited in the line, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." The deft hand Obama employed in explaining to Americans why the acquittal of George Zimmerman so rankled had gone arthritic. This was a perfunctory execution of "the genre," offered with all the energy of a man ticking items off a to-do list.

Barack Obama is an earnest moderate. His instincts seem to lead him to the middle ground. For instance, he genuinely believes that there is more overlap between liberals and conservatives than generally admitted. On Monday he nodded toward the "deep distrust" that divides black and brown people from the police, and then pointed out that this was tragic because these are the communities most in need of "good policing." Whatever one makes of this pat framing, it is not a cynical centrism—he believes in the old wisdom of traditional America. This is his strength. This is his weakness. But Obama's moderation is as sincere and real as his blackness, and the latter almost certainly has granted him more knowledge of his country than he generally chooses to share.

In the case of Michael Brown, this is more disappointing than enraging. The genre of Obama race speeches has always been bounded by the job he was hired to do. Specifically, Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. But black people, the community to which both Michael Brown and Barack Obama belong, have the distinct fortune of having survived in significant numbers. For a creedal country like America, this poses a problem—in nearly every major American city one can find a population of people whose very existence, whose very history, whose very traditions, are an assault upon this country's nationalist instincts. Black people are the chastener of their own country. Their experience says to America, "You wear the mask."

In 2008, Barack Obama's task was to capture the presidency of a country which historically has despised the community from which he hails. This was no mean feat. But more importantly, it was not unprecedented. And just as Léon Blum's prime ministership did not lead to a post-anti-Semitic France, Barack Obama's presidency should never have been expected to lead to a post-racist America. As it happens, there is nothing about a congenitally racist country that necessarily prevents an individual leader hailing from the pariah class. The office does not care where the leader originates, so long as the leader ultimately speaks for the state. On Monday night, watching Obama both be black and speak for the state was torturous. One got the sense of a man fatigued by people demanding he say something both eminently profound and only partially true. This must be tiring.

Black people know what cannot be said. What clearly cannot be said is that the events of Ferguson do not begin with Michael Brown lying dead in the street, but with policies set forth by government at every level. What clearly cannot be said is that the people of Ferguson are regularly plundered, as their grandparents were plundered, and generally regarded as a slush-fund for the government that has pledged to protect them. What clearly cannot be said is the idea of superhuman black men who "bulk up" to run through bullets is not an invention of Darren Wilson, but a staple of American racism.

What clearly cannot be said is that American society's affection for nonviolence is notional. What cannot be said is that American society's admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. increases with distance, that the movement he led was bugged, smeared, harassed, and attacked by the same country that now celebrates him. King had the courage to condemn not merely the violence of blacks, nor the violence of the Klan, but the violence of the American state itself.

What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools, and that violence—like nonviolence—sometimes works. "Property damage and looting impede social progress," Jonathan Chait wrote Tuesday. He delivered this sentence with unearned authority. Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America. They describe everything from enslavement to Jim Crow laws to lynching to red-lining.

"Property damage and looting"—perhaps more than nonviolence—has also been a significant tool in black "social progress." In 1851, when Shadrach Minkins was snatched off the streets of Boston under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Law, abolitionists "stormed the courtroom" and "overpowered the federal guards" to set Minkins free. That same year, when slaveholders came to Christiana, Pennsylvania, to reclaim their property under the same law, they were not greeted with prayer and hymnals but with gunfire.

"Property damage and looting" is a fairly accurate description of the emancipation of black people in 1865, who only five years earlier constituted some $4 billion in property. The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 is inseparable from the threat of riots. The housing bill of 1968—the most proactive civil-rights legislation on the books—is a direct response to the riots that swept American cities after King was killed. Violence, lingering on the outside, often backed nonviolence during the civil-rights movement. "We could go into meetings and say, 'Well, either deal with us or you will have Malcolm X coming into here,'" said SNCC organizer Gloria Richardson. "They would get just hysterical. The police chief would say, 'Oh no!'"

What cannot be said is that America does not really believe in nonviolence—Barack Obama has said as much—so much as it believes in order. What cannot be said is that there are very convincing reasons for black people in Ferguson to be nonviolent. But those reasons emanate from an intelligent fear of the law, not a benevolent respect for the law.

The fact is that when the president came to the podium on Monday night there actually was very little he could say. His mildest admonitions of racism had only earned him trouble. If the American public cannot stomach the idea that arresting a Harvard professor for breaking into his own home is "stupid," then there is virtually nothing worthwhile that Barack Obama can say about Michael Brown.

And that is because the death of all of our Michael Browns at the hands of people who are supposed to protect them originates in a force more powerful than any president: American society itself. This is the world our collective American ancestors wanted. This is the world our collective grandparents made. And this is the country that we, the people, now preserve in our fantastic dream. What can never be said is that the Fergusons of America can be changed—but, right now, we lack the will to do it.

Perhaps one day we won't, and maybe that is reason to hope. Hope is what Barack Obama promised to bring, but he was promising something he could never bring. Hope is not the naiveté that would change the face on a racist system and then wash its hands of its heritage. Hope is not feel-goodism built on the belief in unicorns. Martin Luther King had hope, but it was rooted in years of study and struggle, not in looking the other way. Hope is not magical. Hope is earned.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/barack-obama-ferguson-and-the-evidence-of-things-unsaid/383212/

He stands ramrod straight, in a pitch-black overcoat and matching top hat, like a scarecrow done up in Victorian evening wear. His fingers are unnervingly long and slender, his face as round and pale as the moon. And when he speaks, in a low guttural croak and through a crooked Cheshire Cat grin, it’s usually to utter his own horrid name, stretching out each syllable for dramatic effect. He is the dreaded Babadook—or Mister Babadook, to those who haven’t made his ghastly acquaintance—and not since Robert Englund first slipped on a striped sweater and brown fedora has a film conjured up a bogeyman of such primal, classical dread. Believe it or not, though, the real horror of this superb Aussie monster movie has almost nothing to do with the title fiend and everything to do with the unspoken, unspeakable impulses he represents. Remove the Babadook from ...

The AP reports this week that The Gambian President Yahya Jammeh signed into law a bill that raises the criminal penalties for homosexual acts, including life sentences for a variety of charges.

The bill criminalizes “aggravated homosexuality,” which encompasses a wide variety of behaviors and also targets certain individuals, like those living with HIV. Among those who would be in violation are “serial offenders” — in other words, anybody who’s simply having gay sex with any frequency. Having gay sex with anyone under the age 18, anyone with a disability, or anyone who has been drugged also constitutes an “aggravated homosexuality” charge, which would allow for a life sentence in prison.

Jammeh apparently signed the bill into law on October 9, but government officials have not actually notified the country that it’s now law, even though it’s also already being enforced. According to Amnesty International, the government has already arrested at least eight people, including a 17-year-old boy, on suspicion of “homosexuality.” They were not officially charged, but were tortured while in custody to make them confess their “crimes” and out others who might be gay. They were also threatened with anal and vaginal probes to somehow “test” their sexual orientation.

Earlier this year, Jammeh said of anyone who might seek asylum in other countries because they’re afraid of how they’ll be treated for being gay, “If I catch them I will kill them.”

The post The Gambia Will Now Punish Homosexuality With Life In Prison appeared first on ThinkProgress.

mrmatthewconnor:

My new music video for “Midnight Blue” has arrived! It was directed by my dreamy husband, kennethfrank, and nylonguysmagazine premiered it yesterday here (and compared me to Michael Jackson? whoa). Hope y’all love it! Please share! Sending you spooky vibes on this brutally cold November day.

xoxo. m

i made a thing!

Though support for LGBT legal equality continues to climb, that doesn’t mean that Americans are comfortable with LGBT people in their everyday lives. A new study from Indiana University finds that people who identify as heterosexual are significantly less comfortable seeing same-sex couples’ displays of affection than they are supporting those couples’ legal rights.

For example, about 70 percent of straight respondents supported inheritance rights for gay and lesbian couples, which was actually about the same for heterosexual couples. But while 95 percent approved of seeing a different-sex couple exchange a kiss on the cheek, only 55 percent approved the same for a gay couple and 72 percent for a lesbian couple.

The divide was similar for French kissing, which enjoyed 50 percent approval for different-sex couples, but only 22 percent for gay couples and 26 percent for lesbian couples.

Straight men were largely responsible for the split between male same-sex couples and female same-sex couples. They were much more comfortable overall witnessing lesbian behavior than witnessing two men exchanging affection.

That split was also evident on the basic question of marriage equality. The study found that 53 percent supported marriage equality for male couples, but 59 percent supported marriage equality for female couples (99 percent approved marriage for different-sex couples).

The fact that support for public displays of affection was higher than for legal equality is somewhat encouraging, but the gap between what’s okay for different-sex couples and what’s okay for same-sex couples indicates that there are still many cultural barriers to acceptance of LGBT people.

And some of that intolerance is also internalized by LGBT people. The study also interviewed people who identify as gay and lesbian, and they were also less supportive of same-sex couples’ public displays of affection. For example, 45 percent thought it was acceptable for different-sex couples to French kiss in public, but only 39 percent believed it was acceptable for a gay couple to do so. Lead researcher Long Doan told the Chicago Tribune that he believes this suggests that “they’re afraid of the negative backlash that gay and lesbian couples may experience.”

Doan also noted that the disconnect between straight respondents’ support for certain legal rights compared to marriage itself suggests that heterosexuals conceptualize marriage more as about intimacy than about legal rights and protections.

The post Many Americans Still Not Comfortable With Same-Sex Displays Of Affection, Study Finds appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Last year saw the highest number of terrorist incidents since 2000, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index released by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Worldwide, the number of terrorist incidents increased from less than 1,500 in 2000 to nearly 10,000 in 2013. Sixty percent of attacks last year occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

The report suggests that U.S. foreign policy has played a big role in making the problem worse: "The rise in terrorist activity coincided with the US invasion of Iraq," it concludes. "This created large power vacuums in the country allowing different factions to surface and become violent." Indeed, among the five countries accounting for the bulk of attacks, the U.S. has prosecuted lengthy ground wars in two (Iraq and Afghanistan), a drone campaign in one (Pakistan), and airstrikes in a fourth (Syria).

The report defines terrorism as  “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.”

The U.S. will invest somewhere between $4 and 6 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with untold additional resources spent on anti-terrorism efforts elsewhere, according to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. While we haven't suffered any major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, the Global Terrorism Index numbers cast considerable doubt on whether that money's been well-spent. And they give some credence to the notion that our ham-handed foreign policy is actually a destabilizing factor in world affairs.

In other news, the Obama administration recently approved doubling the number of troops we currently have on the ground in Iraq.

Monday afternoon, Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency ahead of the grand jury decision to indict Darren Wilson. But activists and civil rights groups believe the measure is premature and actually fuels the fire in Ferguson.

“Whereas, regardless of the outcomes of the federal and state criminal investigations, there is the possibility of expanded unrest; and whereas, the State of Missouri will be prepared to appropriately respond to any reaction to these announcements; and whereas, our citizens have the right to peacefully assemble and protest and the State of Missouri is committed to protecting those rights; and whereas, citizens and businesses must be protected from violence and damage…..I…by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Laws of the State of Missouri…hereby declare a State of Emergency exists in the State of Missouri,” Nixon said in Executive Order 14-14. He also activated the Missouri National Guard.

At the federal level, the FBI is also on alert. “The announcement of the grand jury’s decision … will likely be exploited by some individuals to justify threats and attacks against law enforcement and critical infrastructure,” it said in an intelligence bulletin, which also “stresses the importance of remaining aware of the protections afforded to all U.S. persons exercising their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”

But civil rights organizations like the NAACP argue that the declaration quells free speech, and is actually fueling tensions ahead of the jury’s verdict. “Governor Nixon’s decision to declare a state of emergency without evidence of violence or danger only threatens to stir up tensions and denigrate the peaceful efforts of countless non-violent activists. We at the NAACP will work tirelessly to ensure that the civil rights of the demonstrators are upheld. And finally, we commend as well as stand with those practitioners of democracy who have stood strong for over 100 days.”

Local groups and activists who have continuously organized in Ferguson since August 9, took to social media to vocalize their anger.

Our country is in a state of emergency. And not becuz of protestors. Every 28 hours, a black man is killed by police. Let's get it right.

— handsupunited (@handsupunited_) November 17, 2014

The United States Gov has officially declared war upon black ppl in the state of Missouri in the name of protecting a killer

— Tef Poe/FootKlan (@TefPoe) November 17, 2014

Follow the law @GovJayNixon #Ferguson #FergusonNBeyond http://t.co/R5hFMoYeV9 pic.twitter.com/1IN7RoOGlb

— Tory Russell (@HotepTNT) November 17, 2014

Human rights organizations are also warning government leaders and law enforcement.

State of emergency in #Ferguson must not be used to violate human rights, including the right to peaceful protest. @GovJayNixon

— AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) November 17, 2014

The grand jury announcement will come any moment.

The post Civil Rights Groups, Activists Object To ‘State Of Emergency’ Ahead Of Ferguson Grand Jury Decision appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Sia and Charli XCX all appear on the forthcoming Giorgio Moroder album, ’74 Is The New 24′, it’s been announced.

Incredible.

That image above is the album’s ‘cover art’ and it will be out via Sony/RCA in the Spring of next year (although the title track is on iTunes right now).

Hurrah.

There's no easy way to say this: You're eating too much chocolate, all of you. And it's getting so out of hand that the world could be headed towards a potentially disastrous (if you love chocolate) scenario if it doesn't stop.

Those are, roughly speaking, the words of two huge chocolate makers, Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut. And there's some data to back them up.

Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than the world eats, are becoming the norm. Already, we are in the midst of what could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years. It also looks like deficits aren't just carrying over from year-to-year—the industry expects them to grow. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the two chocolate-makers warn that that number could swell to 1 million metric tons, a more than 14-fold increase; by 2030, they think the deficit could reach 2 million metric tons.

The problem is, for one, a supply issue. Dry weather in West Africa (specifically in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where more than 70 percent of the world's cocoa is produced) has greatly decreased production in the region. A nasty fungal disease known as frosty pod hasn't helped either. The International Cocoa Organization estimates it has wiped out between 30 percent and 40 percent of global cocoa production. Because of all this, cocoa farming has proven a particularly tough business, and many farmers have shifted to more profitable crops, like corn, as a result.

Then there's the world's insatiable appetite for chocolate. China's growing love for the stuff is of particular concern. The Chinese are buying more and more chocolate each year. Still, they only consume per capita about 5 percent of what the average Western European eats. There's also the rising popularity of dark chocolate, which contains a good deal more cocoa by volume than traditional chocolate bars (the average chocolate bar contains about 10 percent, while dark chocolate often contains upwards of 70 percent).

For these reasons, cocoa prices have climbed by more than 60 percent since 2012, when people started eating more chocolate than the world could produce. And chocolate makers have, in turn, been forced to adjust by raising the price of their bars. Hershey's was the first, but others have followed suit.

Efforts to counter the growing imbalance between the amount of chocolate the world wants and the amount farmers can produce has inspired a bit of much needed innovation. Specifically, an agricultural research group in Central Africa is developing trees that can produce up to seven times the amount of beans traditional cocoa trees can. The uptick in efficiency, however, might be compromising taste, says Bloomberg's Mark Schatzker. He likens the trade-off to other mass-produced commodities.

Efforts are under way to make chocolate cheap and abundant -- in the process inadvertently rendering it as tasteless as today’s store-bought tomatoes, yet another food, along with chicken and strawberries, that went from flavorful to forgettable on the road to plenitude.

It's unclear anyone will mind a milder flavor if it keeps prices down. And the industry certainly won't mind, so long as it keeps the potential for a gargantuan shortage at bay.

On Thursday, incoming Senate Majority Leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell said that when it comes to serving his home state, his top priority is “to try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.”

In his first one-on-one interview since his landslide re-election for a sixth term, McConnell told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he is convinced that coal has a future and that he feels a “deep responsibility” to stop the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions at coal-burning power plants. He said he won a number of coal-producing counties for the first time this election, but that it was a “disappointment” that the state House didn’t go to the GOP on Tuesday night as it would have helped him in his crusade to block the Obama administration’s efforts to promote low carbon, clean energy.

As it stands, McConnell said the only good tool with which to stifle the EPA “is through the spending process, and if (President Barack Obama) feels strongly enough about it, he can veto the bill.”

What this means is that McConnell will have a hard time killing the EPA’s carbon pollution regulations without shutting down the government, a thing he has already pledged not to do.

McConnell, who recently used the “I’m not a scientist” line to avoid taking a stance on climate change, decided to focus on the future of coal rather than that of the climate.

“I’m absolutely convinced from the people I talk to around the country, not just here but around the country, that coal has a future,” McConnell said. “The question is whether or not coal is going to have a future here. It’s got a future in Europe. It’s got a future in China, India, Australia. But not here?”

A recent investigation by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute found that much of McConnell’s vast personal fortune comes via his wife, Elaine Chao, whose father founded a shipping company, Foremost Maritime Corporation, that ships commodities, including coal, all over the world. Notably, the investigation found that the company ships cheap coal from Columbia — coal that can undercut the more costly production in Kentucky.

McConnell consistently places blame for the declining fortune of Appalachian coal squarely on the Democrats’ shoulders, but the real story is much more complicated and entails mechanization, natural gas, international trade, and much more powerful forces than EPA regulations.

Nonetheless, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, a Karl Rove-linked group, supported McConnell’s protection of the coal industry from the “Obama’s war on coal” this election with ad buys.

In both Thursday’s interview and a post-election speech, McConnell made the war on coal a high-profile talking point and his renewed war on the war on coal as Senate leader the rejoinder.

“I think it is reasonable to assume we will use the power of the purse to push back against this overactive bureaucracy,” McConnell said in a post-election speech November 5. “Of course, we have a huge example of that in this state with the war on coal.”

In his post-election speech, McConnell refrained from throwing any major punches, and took a more conciliatory tone, as did President Obama in his speech shortly thereafter. But as Evan Osnos noted in the New Yorker this week, if McConnell has a deep instinct to rise above his penchant for political calculation now “in a bid for comity and history, he hides it well.”

In so many ways, McConnell is the leader that this U.S. Senate deserves, Osnos continued. “He is a pure political being: he entered politics as a center-leaning, pro-environment, pro-choice Republican in a Democratic state; year by year, he has marched to the right in step with his Party,” he wrote.

For a glimpse into the incoming Senate Majority Leader’s plans for the next two years, McConnell has told his donors that he will work hard to thwart the Obama agenda, including pushing coal, moving forward with the Keystone XL pipeline, and stopping the EPA from doing anything to confront climate change.

The post Mitch McConnell Says His Top Priority Is To ‘Get The EPA Reined In’ appeared first on ThinkProgress.

"A shiny otherworld of holographic reverie pairs dollar store gift bags and haunting resound, unfolding an effervescent melancholy in three parts. Featuring compositions for bowed vibraphone by Elliot Cole." 

Presented by the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Read our own Daniel Kasman's interview with Jodie Mack here on Notebook.

The 2014 elections are barely gone, but some Mississippi groups are already gearing up for a 2016 fight over a ballot initiative involving official religions, languages, and the state’s Confederate history. According to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, one Mississippi group has begun a drive to put an initiative on the 2016 ballot that would establish English as the state’s official language, Christianity as its official religion, and a Confederate Heritage Month that would mandate its Confederate history be taught in public schools across the state.

The initiative aims to re-establish significant parts of Mississippi’s Confederate heritage, from flying the Stars and Bars over the state capitol building to mandating that the song “Dixie” be played after the national anthem at public events. In addition, it takes up the cause of one of the more iconic symbols of the Confederacy in the state: the University of Mississippi’s use of Colonel Reb, which depicts an old plantation owner, as the mascot of its athletic teams. The Clarion-Ledger reports:

It also includes multiple provisions regarding the state’s universities. State universities Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi University for Women and Mississippi Valley State University would not be permitted to merge or consolidate. If passed, the University of Mississippi’s on-field mascot would once again become “Colonel Reb” and the song “Dixie” would be played by the university. The initiative would also secure the existing mascots and traditions of Mississippi State University and University of Southern Mississippi.

The issue of Confederate symbolism has been a pertinent and contentious one at Ole Miss, and it has drawn both local controversy and national attention. Ole Miss in 1997 banned Confederate flags from its football games; later, it nixed Colonel Reb’s status as the school’s official mascot and prohibited the school band from playing the song “From Dixie With Love.” Those decisions, as USA Today’s Dan Wolken detailed earlier this year, were made in an effort to re-brand the school and its history but have “drawn significant backlash from students and alumni who accused the school’s leadership of sacrificing sacred traditions in the name of political correctness.” Even as the school won’t let him into football games, students still traditionally dress as Colonel Reb for pre-game tailgates.

In 2003, when the university took Colonel Reb off the sidelines, a student government poll found that 94 percent of students wanted to keep him around. According to the Colonel Reb foundation, Ole Miss allowed a new mascot, named Colonel Too, to roam the stands from 2004 to 2009 before it banned him from sporting events too.

Previous efforts to bring back the mascot have been unsuccessful. A 2011 initiative that would have re-established Colonel Reb’s place on the sidelines of Vaught-Heimingway Stadium failed. So too did a legislative effort to put him back on the field. Those failures, though, led to this broader effort, spearheaded by a former local Tea Party leader, to include the other provisions to widen the initiative’s popularity.

According to the Clarion-Ledger, the petition drive needs 107,216 signatures from Mississippi residents over the next year in order for it to make the 2016 ballot.

The post Mississippi Ballot Initiative Aims To Bring Back Ole Miss’ Confederate Mascot appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Opera is officially dead. Or maybe not completely dead, but at best ekeing out a zombie-like existence in a state of undeath. As proof, I submit this fascinating chart of Metropolitan Opera performances, which shows that for decades the Met has rarely performed any operas composed in the preceding 50 years.

The chart shows that opera ceased to exist as a contemporary art form roughly around 1970. It's from a blog post by composer and programmer Suby Raman, who scraped the Met's public database of performances going back to the 19th century. As Raman notes, 50 years is an insanely low bar for measuring the "contemporary" - in pop music terms, it would be like considering The Beatles' I Wanna Hold Your Hand as cutting-edge.

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of Met performances were of operas composed in some time in the 50 years prior. But since 1980, the share of contemporary performances has surpassed 10 percent only once.

Opera, as a genre, is essentially frozen in amber - Raman found that the median year of composition of pieces performed at the Met has always been right around 1870. In other words, the Met is essentially performing the exact same pieces now that it was 100 years ago.

The entire classical music industry faces a similar relevance problem. Over at Slate, Mark Vanhoenacker marshalled an impressive collection of data tracing the industry's decline earlier this year. Falling album sales and a rash of orchestra bankruptcies are only the most visible signs of an art form failing to resonate with audiences.

It's not clear to me that this is a crisis, or that there's even anything anyone should do about it. The fall of classical music may simply be a natural consequence of evolving tastes in art. We may be writing similar elegies for what we now know as pop music in 100 years time. But nonetheless it's uncommon to see a genre's decline charted as clearly as Raman has done above.

 

Human beings are, in general, a superstitious lot. Our tendency to see patterns where they don't exist, and to falsely apply cause to effect, may have helped keep us alive back when we were little more than a band of frightened critters scurrying about the savanna. Those tendencies linger to the present day, reflected in our stubborn belief in completely irrational things: Rabbit's feet. Horoscopes. A return to the gold standard.

The Chapman University Survey on American Fears, a comprehensive study of the fears, phobias and irrational beliefs of the American people, was just released this week and contains an interesting section on belief in the paranormal. The results are drawn from a nationally-representative sample of 2,500 American adults.

It finds that belief in certain paranormal phenomenon - like influencing the world with physical thought, and foretelling the future with dreams - are fairly widespread. On the other hand, few Americans actually believe in astrology.

 

It's instructive to compare Americans' belief in the paranormal with their understanding of scientific knowledge. For instance, a 2014 AP poll found that 51 percent of Americans said they were confident that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. This is roughly the same proportion of Americans who believe houses or rooms can be haunted by spirits.

Slightly over 40 percent of Americans believe in UFOs. This is considerably higher than the share of Americans who are confident that global warming is real, that life evolved through natural selection, or that the earth is 4.5 billion years old.

About as many Americans say they believe in Bigfoot as say they're confident that the universe began with a big bang.

The Chapman authors provided me with breakdowns by party affiliation. In general, Democrats were slightly and in some cases significantly more likely than Republicans to believe in paranormal phenomena: 75.6 percent of Democrats agreed that positive thoughts could influence the physical world, compared to 68.6 percent of Republicans.

Democrats were significantly more likely than Republicans to believe in fortune telling, and about twice as likely to believe in astrology.

 

On the other hand, Republicans were significantly more likely to say that Satan causes most evil in the world, a reflection of the higher degree of religiosity in the Republican party.

There were no significant partisan differences on belief in Atlantis, UFOs or Bigfoot.

Inside the soul-crushing world of content moderation, where low-wage laborers soak up the worst of humanity, and keep it off your Facebook feed.

The post The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed appeared first on WIRED.

In the year since we first posted about the Canadian trans-media anthology project Darknet, a lot has happened though surprisingly, very little of it to do with the project itself. Mostly, darknet has entered the general consciousness thanks to the latest season of "House of Lies." Now that people know, or think they know, what really goes on on darknet, it'll be interesting to see how and if that general public tunes into a show that has very clear horror tendencies.

Darknet aired on Super Channel earlier this year but with so few subscribers, the show came and went with little fanfare but worry not because come tomorrow, Netflix subscribers in Canad [Continued ...]

Ooooh boy, John Grisham.

John Grisham, mega-bestselling legal-thriller-writer, had some choice things to say to the Telegraph about child pornography. John Grisham is deeply concerned about the real victims here. The real victims of child pornography, according to John Grisham: Sixty-year-old white men.

“We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child. But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn.”

Apparently, to Grisham, child porn is just something you stumble into, like an old friend at Trader Joe’s.

Grisham went on to describe the case of “good buddy from law school”:

“His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labelled ‘sixteen year old wannabee hookers or something like that’. And it said ’16-year-old girls’. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff – it was 16 year old girls who looked 30.

“He shouldn’t ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys. He didn’t touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: ‘FBI!’ and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people – sex offenders – and he went to prison for three years.

“There’s so many of them now. There’s so many ‘sex offenders’ – that’s what they’re called – that they put them in the same prison. Like they’re a bunch of perverts, or something; thousands of ’em. We’ve gone nuts with this incarceration… I have no sympathy for real paedophiles. God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that’s what they’re getting.”

Here, in no particular order, is everything wrong with John Grisham’s take on child pornography and its victims:

1. 16-year-olds are minors. They are children. They are children if they are “dressed up to look 30 years old” (as determined by “she looks about 30 to me” expert John Grisham). They are children if their images are posted under a banner that labels them “wannabee hookers.” They are children whether or not you want them to be children. There is no legal difference between looking at pornography of a 16-year-old and looking at pornography of a 10-year-old.

2. Looking at the photos causes harm. It’s not a victimless crime. Those men Grisham claims have “never harmed anybody” have, in fact, caused plenty of harm. The criminal activity does not start and end with the person or persons who photographed the victim. To download those images is to be complicit in their creation — it creates the demand that inspires the supply — and there is no loophole through which you can jump and land in a place where viewing child pornography is anything but a sex crime.

3. This idea that Grisham’s “good buddy” is innocent because “he didn’t touch anything” demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of both the purpose of anti-pornography laws and the impact the distribution of child pornography has on its victims. (The victims, as in, the children in the pictures, not drunk, AARP-card-carrying men.) Take Nicole, one of the subjects of Emily Bazelon’s New York Times Magazine feature from last year on child pornography victims:

“It was the worst moment of my life,” Nicole said of seeing the pictures of herself [online]. “In a way, I didn’t remember it being that bad with my father — and then I saw that it was. Knowing that other people, all over, had seen me like that, I just froze. I could hear my mother crying, but I couldn’t cry.”… For Nicole, knowing that so many men have witnessed and taken pleasure from her abuse has been excruciating. “You have an image of yourself as a person, but here is this other image,” she told me. “You know it’s not true, but all those other people will believe that it’s you — that this is who you really are.”… For Nicole, knowing that her photos were circulating was an unrelenting burden…

Nicole got a series of messages on Myspace from a man who said he had been looking for her for five years. He asked, “Want me to come visit u?” When Nicole blocked him, he wrote to one of her friends on Myspace, telling her that Nicole was a “porn star” — and sending two images. “That’s when I fully realized what it meant for these pictures to be out there,” Nicole said. “I couldn’t get away from it, not really. I started getting paranoid and having nightmares.”

These laws are in place to punish offenders and deter would-be offenders before they do something abhorrent and disgusting. They exist to protect future potential victims so that they never become victims, so they can make it through life without being violated first by someone who would take advantage of them face-to-face and then over and over and over again by a million strangers and John Grisham’s good buddies from law school, clicking in the dark.

4. “Like they’re a bunch of perverts.” As my parents would say to me when I used “like” as a filler: are they “like” perverts, or are they perverts? They are perverts.

5. “I have no sympathy for real pedophiles.” They are real pedophiles. The internet is a real place. The internet is not Narnia. The crimes committed on the internet are real crimes. If you engage in pedophilia on the internet, you are a real pedophile.

6. Grisham’s concern for the 60-year-old men in this situation is just hilarious. Because that’s definitely the problem with our prisons: they are overrun with middle-aged white dudes, serving time for insignificant non-crimes. Not black men who were busted with marijuana, no siree.

7. “A good buddy from law school.” Really don’t care how good of a buddy he was, John.

8. What about who these girls are? What about their “good buddies”? Is it not a “harsh sentence,” to know that images of you, of underage, naked you, are circulating the internet as you try to go about your life and there is nothing you can do, and there is no way to know if anyone you ever meet has seen them or not? Isn’t that significantly harsher than three years in prison? Isn’t that a life sentence, in a different kind of prison?

9. The way that Grisham just dehumanizes the actual victims here — well, they look 30 and besides they aren’t 10-year-olds and they aren’t boys! — is sickening. Like they don’t even matter. Like they aren’t too young to be legitimate pornography, because they aren’t too young for a 60-year-old man to find them sexy. Like a violation of them is not so violating because John Grisham decided it wasn’t. Now they are being violated all over again, a hat trick of violations: first by being photographed, then by having those photographs seen by who knows how many people, and then by having a high-profile person in a position of cultural power dismiss those first two violations as really not being so bad after all, relatively speaking.

10. Just want to take a moment and tip my hat to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who, within a week, found this guy and arrested him in what sounds like a quite efficient and well-executed sting operation.

The post Everything Wrong With John Grisham’s Defense Of Old Guys Who Look At Child Pornography appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Think you like wasabi? Think again.

The little green balls that sting nostrils and line sushi platters around the world are very rarely what their name suggests.

What sushi restaurants actually serve alongside spicy tuna rolls is a horseradish-based concoction that is injected with green food coloring, infused with various types of mustard, and, often even, a bunch of other chemicals. Trevor Corson, the author of The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice, put it pretty starkly a few years back:

...it’s just plain old horseradish, plus some mix of mustard extract, citric acid, yellow dye no. 5, and blue dye no. 1. It comes in big industrial bags as a powder, and the chefs mix it with water before dinner to make that caustic paste.

The real thing is quite different. True wasabi comes from the stem of the wasabi plant, which grows to nearly two feet long, and is famously finicky to harvest. It's most often sold by the stem, and served freshly grated. "It has a more delicate, complex, and sweeter flavor than the fake stuff you’re used to," according to Corson.

Very few people have tried the real thing, because the real thing is that rare. "The extent to which we're eating fake wasabi is huge," said Brian Oats, the president of Pacific Coast Wasabi, which bills itself as "North America’s only commercial grower of high-quality water-grown authentic Wasabi.". "Probably about 99 percent of wasabi is fake in the North America." That holds just about everywhere else, too. Even, though some might not realize it, in Japan. "I'd say about 95 percent is fake in Japan," he added.

Hiroko Shimbo, a sushi chef and the author of The Sushi Experience, agrees. "99 percent sounds about right," She said. "But it could be 95 percent."

And even in instances that real wasabi is used, it makes up a (very) negligible part of the paste—less than 1 percent, according to Oats.

The reason real, fresh wasabi is rarely served is mainly an issue of economics. There's a lot more demand than there is supply—largely because wasabi root is hard to grow and handle—and there has been for a long time. As a result, serving fresh, shaved wasabi to sushi goers, or even selling it dried in packages, would mean charging more than most customers were willing to pay—between $3 and $5 dollars for the typical ball served alongside sushi, according to Oats.

Rather than pair pricey raw fish with a popular but pricey flavor counterpart, the industry developed a considerably cheaper alternative—and long before sushi was popularized in the United States. "It was first created in Japan, before it came to America," said Shimbo. "People who love food, like 'foodies' from New York City, probably know this, but a lot of people don't."

a bunch of fan-made alternate Halloween posters…

go here for some (and lots more Carpenters):  http://www.massappealdesigns.com/official-fan-made-alternate-posters-for-john-carpenter-movies/

UPDATE: Though the early numbers were good, the final ratings were adjusted down quite a bit, with the season 10 premiere getting 2.48 million. That’s down slightly from last year’s premiere, but still enough to make it one of the seven most-watched episodes in the past five years.