sort of like the blob, but with unemployment statistics

via sarah shannon:

Check out LaToya Egwuekwe's time series animation map of US unemployment rates by county, January 2007 to October 2009. Eek. From Ms. Egwuekwe's site:

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 31 million people currently unemployed — that’s including those involuntarily working parttime and those who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one. In the face of the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are hurting. “The Decline: The Geography of a Recession” is a vivid representation of just how much. It’s an interactive map I created as a graduate student at American University, Washington, D.C. Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 — approximately one year before the start of the recession — to the most recent unemployment data available today.

skyway

With the first cold wind of the season blowing through town, even native Minnesotans are retreating to the skyways and tunnels that connect us.

Here's the talented Jeremy Messersmith prettying up the 'Mats classic for an anniversary show. The video is too literal, but the ol' song endures: Fourteen perfect lines that say just about all that needs be said about winter, social class, unrequited love, and the transition to adulthood in my fair cities.

City of Music: Jeremy Messersmith performs 'Skyway' presented by MPLS.TV from MPLS.TV on Vimeo.

moral entrepreneurs in a hardcore subculture

Utne's Jeff Guntzel and chunklet present a 40-minute "master class in stage banter" by Fugazi, the principled post-hardcore punk band.

Apart from their music, Fugazi is best known for community activism and an underground DIY ethos, holding their ticket prices to $5 and CD prices to $10, and refusing to deal with mainstream media, merchandising, or record companies.

The stage banter reveals Fugazi as full-on moral entrepreneurs, taking roles as both rule creators and rule enforcers. Though violent moshing and fistfights were pretty much standard practice in the hardcore punk subculture they entered in the 1980s, Fugazi were firmly and consistently anti-violent. And they enforced non-violence at shows, to the point of returning the $5 cover charge to fiestier patrons and sending them on their way.

To take but one example, the excerpt below draws a sharp line between the norms of the subculture (punk rockers) and a world (Fugazi's world) of crusading reform:

"Why are you giving me the finger? Let's talk about it. Because we walk out on stage, I say 'Good evening ladies and gentleman' and you give me the finger. What kind of people are you? Punk rockers? Oh! Fugazi is playing tonight. And in Fugazi's world, we don't use the finger to say hello."

The clips are plenty profane, but consistently clever too. Other clips from the Utne story:

* To an aggressive audience member: "This is insane, unacceptable behavior. We do not provide a soundtrack for violence."

* To a stage diver: "What's your name? David? Please don't come on the stage anymore... David, don't apologize. I know you meant nothing by it."

* To another aggressive audience member: "We were playing in Atlanta last night and everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time. People kept coming up and knocking my mic into my mouth. Finally, I lost a piece of my front tooth and that was a piece of calcium on my front tooth that my body had been working on for 24 years. And in a matter of one second, for this man's kind of moment of ecstasy and fun, he took out that piece of calcium."

* To two more aggressive audience members: "I saw you two guys earlier at the consumer truck and you were eating your ice cream like little boys and I thought, 'Those guys aren't so tough. They're eating ice cream, what a bunch of swell guys! I saw you eating ice cream pal! You're bad now but you were eating an ice cream cone and I saw you. That's the sh** you can't hide! Ice cream eating motherf*****. That's what you are."

Some viewed Fugazi as preachy and I can't say for certain that they changed the music industry, the conduct of concert-goers, or subcultural norms. Nevertheless, Ian MacKaye et al. certainly provided an alternative moral vision of bandlife that continues to draw kids to the crusade.

everything you wanted to know about death row (but were afraid to ask)

The Bureau of Justice Statistics just released Capital Punishment, 2008 -- Statistical Tables. I've been interested in the graying of prison populations for some time, so I plotted the age at arrest and current age (as of 12/31/08) for U.S. inmates under sentence of death (from Table 7 of the report).

The tables, compiled by Tracy Snell, offer a wealth of mostly-depressing information about the men and (increasingly) women on death row. Sample factoid: as of last week, therre were already 11 more executions in 2009 (48) than in all of 2008 (37).

world AIDS day

Sexuality & Society offers a detailed post on World AIDS Day today, with useful links to data from the UN and other sources. The chart below shows the enormous regional variation in the gender distribution of adults living with HIV. Women now constitute about half of all cases around the world, but this ranges from less than 30 percent in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America to over 60 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

good pie, bad pie

good pie (via contexts)













bad pie (via Jose at thickculture)

BJS report on intimate partner violence in urban counties

Erica Smith and Donald Farole of the Bureau of Justice Statistics just released a new report on domestic or intimate partner violence (IPV). The sample is based on 3,750 cases filed in 16 large urban counties in May 2002.

When I present on IPV in classes, I'm occasionally asked about differences by gender and sexual preference. The chart below shows some characteristics of the 3140 cases (84 percent) with male perpetrators and female targets in blue, the 441 cases (12 percent) with female perpetrators and male targets in orange, and the 146 same-sex cases (4 percent) in green. [I suspect they didn't distinguish male-male from female-female because the numbers were getting small.]

Some of the differences seem large to me. First, about half of all male-on-female dyads involve a prior history of abuse, relative to 34 percent of female-on-male dyads and 32 percent of same-sex dyads. Second, female-on-male and same-sex cases are far more likely to involve a weapon than male-on-female cases. Contrary to the old idea that a man must be stabbed before a woman will be arrested for IPV, however, only 41 percent of female-on-male IPV cases involved a weapon. Third, there are no other witnesses at all in most same-sex IPV cases, but there is a child present in 38 percent of male-on-female cases. Finally, regardless of sex or sexual orientation, the perpetrator was using alcohol or drugs in about one-third of the IPV cases. [Since that last number seems a bit low to me, I'd check how it was measured before citing it].
See the report or the source data for more information.

in the land of the hideous, the somewhat-less-than-loathsome man is king

OKCupid, an online matchmaking site, offers data on gender and perceived attractiveness that I might use in my spring deviance course (via boing). The figures might help me make a Durkheimian society of (hot) saints point about the relative nature of beauty and a Goffman point on stigma affecting social interaction, while providing another illustration of the taken-for-grantedness of heteronormativity.

In any case, the first figure shows that male OKCupid ratings of female OKCupid users follows something like a normal distribution, with mean=2.5 on a 0-to-5 scale from "least attractive" to "most attractive." Also, women rated as more attractive tend to get more messages. At first, I thought I saw evidence of positive deviance here, since women rated as most attractive get fewer messages than those rated somewhat below them -- the 4.5s garner more attention than the 5.0s. But, as I'll show below with the next chart, that would probably be an incorrect interpretation -- confounding the "persons" in the dashed lines with the "messages" in the solid lines.

The next figure shows that female OKCupid users tend to rate most male OKCupid users as well below "medium" in attractiveness. According to OKCupid, "women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable."


Hmm. The latter point isn't wrong, I guess, but it shouldn't obscure the bigger point that more attractive men still get more messages than less attractive men. Again, note that persons (OKCupid members) are the units of analysis for the dashed lines and messages (messages sent by OKCupid members) are the units for the solid lines. On first scan, I read the graph as suggesting that the top "attractiveness quintile" was getting fewer messages than the bottom attractiveness quintile -- that uglier men were actually doing better than more attractive men -- but that's not the case at all. Instead, it just means that in the land of the hideous, the somewhat-less-than-loathsome man is king.

If almost everybody is rated as unattractive, most of the messages will go to those rated as unattractive. Nevertheless, the rate of messages-per-person still rises monotonically with attractiveness. As the "message multiplier" chart below shows, the most attractive men get about 11 times the messages of the least attractive men -- and the most attractive women get about 25 times the messages of the least attractive women.

never saw it coming

herb alpert's tijuana brass, whipped cream & other delights, april 1965:













soul asylum, clam dip & other delights, april 1989:













contexts magazine, fall issue release pie party & other delights, november 2009

pat's back at the quarter

Good news -- Mr. Mallinger is returning home for a few thanksgiving shows in St. Paul.


Wednesday Nov. 25, 9PM; Friday Nov. 27, 9pm; Saturday Nov. 28, 9pm
Artists' Quarter; 408 St. Peter St. ; St. Paul, MN (651) 292-1359
Kenny Horst- drums; Chris Lomheim- piano; Billy Peterson- bass
Cover charge $8/Wed. $12/Fri.& Sat.

Mr. Mallinger is among the more full-time musicianly beneficiaries of arts education in Minnesota, and he continues to pay it forward:
As an original member of the Ravinia Jazz Mentor program, founded by Ramsey Lewis, Pat has mentored the underserved inner city youth through jazz performance and clinics in Chicago Public High Schools for fifteen years. He also teaches for Columbia College in a similar capacity as a Jazz Mentor at Burley Elementary in a program created by Jon Faddis entitled Louis Armstrong Legacy Project and Celebration. Pat also teaches privately to students enrolled at the American Conservatory of Music. Additionally, he is the director of the Concert Jazz Band at Merit School of Music in Chicago.

here's the resume:
His resume includes performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Harry Connick, Ramsey Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Rosemary Clooney, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Patti Austin, Manhattan Transfer, Gerald Wilson, Muhal Richard Abrams, Lalo Schifrin, Cab Calloway, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Reunion Band, Eddie Higgins, Junior Mance, Cedar Walton, Dave Brubeck, Marcus Roberts, Weldon Irving, Renee Rosness, Regina Carter, Kurt Elling, Jack McDuff, Joey DeFrancesco, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman, Eric Alexander, Billy Harper, Jimmy Heath, Johnny Griffin, James Moody, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Paquito D’Rivera, Nick Brignola, Franz Jackson, Von Freeman, Roscoe Mitchell, Buddy Defranco, Alvin Batiste, Slide Hampton, Curtis Fuller, Steve Turre, Clark Terry, Randy Brecker, Tom Harrell, Doc Severinsen, Roy Hargrove, Lester Bowie, Jon Faddis, Lou Soloff, Terell Stafford, Jim Rotondi, Marcus Belgrave, Lonnie Brooks, Big Time Sarah, Melvin Seals, Vince Welnick, Umphrey's McGee, and Dark Star Orchestra. Pat has toured with the Charles Earland Band, Artie Shaw Orchestra, and Woody Herman Orchestra.

Irv Piliavin

Back in grad school, my advisor and mentors gave so much and so generously that it sometimes felt like stealing. I stole from everybody at Wisconsin, but especially from the man in those badass plaid pants. So when I heard that Irv Piliavin died this week, my sadness for his loving family was mixed up with my gratitude for his inspiration.

When faced with a risky research project or crazy new venture, I can sometimes steel my nerves by asking, "What Would Irv Do?" For academics who knew Irv, this is a terrifying question. Brilliant and mercurial, he was not one to play it safe. I'll offer a few words about his work as evidence for his creativity and inspiration. Then I'll share a more personal story.

Irv made research sound like a wild weekend in Vegas. He told ripping good stories about field experiments in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, putting fake drunks on trains to study helping behavior. Irv rode with police and published an American Journal of Sociology article showing how "demeanor" swamps other factors in predicting arrest. He offered up a powerful control theory of delinquency in Social Problems, four years before Travis Hirschi's Causes. Irv brought a strong test of rational choice and deterrence theories to American Sociological Review in 1986. And, when they said it couldn't be done, he took to the streets and government centers to conduct systematic longitudinal research on careers in homelessness and foster care.

I've got a few Irv stories, both shareable and non-shareable, but I'll just relate one that brought us together. One day in my first or second year of grad school, Irv noticed that I hadn't slept much the night before. Somewhat reluctantly, because we didn't know each other all that well, I told him about this recurring dream.

In the dream, I was drinking coffee at my kitchen table, feeling drugged or hungover and struggling to piece together the previous night. I'm looking down bleary-eyed at a newspaper and see this front-page story of a gruesome murder. As the letters and words start to come into focus, a realization builds and builds before lodging unshakeably in my mind: I was the killer.

Well, as soon as Irv heard the word "newspaper," he recited the rest of my dream with perfect accuracy. I figured it must've been in a movie or Raymond Chandler story, but instead he says, "Maybe so, but I've had that dream since I was 17." Irv figured we were guilty about unpunished crimes that blew up into murder in the dark of the night, though he covered his bases (You didn't actually kill anyone, did you? Me neither). Then he said it took a little guilt to write good criminology -- to cut through the layers of stigma and moral repugnance and get to the essence of the thing -- and hinted that I might have a little potential along those lines.

So, I've got real gratitude for Irv and a real pang of sadness for his great love (and equally brilliant collaborator on those subway studies). But perhaps I'm repeating myself. Here's what I wrote in 1995:

To the extent that I've stolen from others, I've probably stolen more ideas from Irv than from anyone else. As I leave Wisconsin, I only wish I had committed more of them to paper.

sick as a dog

i don't mind being sick, as long as i've got hopes of getting better. top-5 sick songs:

5. love sick
4. touch me i'm sick
3. "feel like hell so you might as well go out and sell your smart ass door to door"
2. sick as a dog
1. sick of myself

a sociologist with "scary power"

Look who is featured on Fortune's scary power list of people business hates to see coming -- a scary-smart and highly-respected sociologist fighting the good fight in employment discrimination cases.

Bill Bielby
Sociologist, University of Illinois at Chicago
Bielby has become a key plaintiffs expert in dozens of employment-discrimination class-action suits. Among his targets: Wal-Mart, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, and FedEx.

Knowing Bill, he'd much prefer a mention in Rolling Stone, Spin, or Guitar Player...

be safe: keep one in your purse or wallet

Now that our enterprising grad board has established a contexts facebook group, I'm meeting new friends and supporters. We don't have much to offer in the way of swag, but I can at least send out a context.org guitar pick to anyone requesting one (via a comment or email with a snail mail address).

For those who haven't heard, I made these to herald the new website before the annual sociology meetings in August. In honor of our web editor/shredder, I made them to Smajdian specifications -- medium heavy (1mm), non-slip, and virtually unbreakable. The picks seemed popular among our core contexts constituency, many of whom strang a little themselves. Given my work and family backlog and upcoming travel schedule, please allow a few weeks for delivery.

super bowl, schmuper bowl

Some competitions start out as a lighthearted goof, but grow intense once the games begin. As the battle-scarred veteran of putatively friendly games that end in bloodshed, I love ESPN's rebroadcast of a classic Vikes-Steelers battle from the superstars and battle of the network stars era: Superteams!


And yes, that's current MN Supreme Court Justice Alan Page anchoring the men in powder blue. As Steve Rushin put it,

As I recall it, Page more or less pulled the entire Steelers team across the line -- they appeared to be barefoot water-skiing in the sand --- and then both teams collapsed in a pile of biceps, mustaches, muttonchops, jogging shorts and tube socks.

of poe and paisley

According to my sources at Lula, you'll be seeing lots of Mad Men costumes this weekend. Hmm. I'd need to rein in the hair, but with a little work I might be able to pull off a passable Roger Sterling.

If you are looking for something more literary, I'd suggest assembling one of these fine costumes from poets.org. Poe and Emily Dickinson seem do-able, but I've sort of got my eye on that WC Williams -- maybe fill that red wheelbarrow with almond joy bars and dots.

Though I love the velvet blazer look, I've never been much for Poe this time of year. As an alternative, I'll offer this seriously creepy and wicked-good new poem from Paisley Rekdal of the University of Utah.

Bats
by Paisley Rekdal

unveil themselves in dark.
They hang, each a jagged,

silken sleeve, from moonlit rafters bright
as polished knives. They swim

the muddled air and keen
like supersonic babies, the sound

we imagine empty wombs might make
in women who can’t fill them up.

A clasp, a scratch, a sigh.
They drink fruit dry.

And wheel, against feverish light flung hard
upon their faces,

in circles that nauseate.
Imagine one at breast or neck,

Patterning a name in driblets of iodine
that spatter your skin stars.

They flutter, shake like mystics.
They materialize. Revelatory

as a stranger’s underthings found tossed
upon the marital bed, you tremble

even at the thought. Asleep,
you tear your fingers

and search the sheets all night.

as if "From the Editors" wasn't enough

We generally try to avoid "inside sociology" stuff at contexts, but you can hear my bloviations and those of Doug E. Fresh on today's podcast. Though we were a tiny bit ambivalent about going toe-to-toe with Smajda and the Woz, this was a fun interview. Painful for the listener, perhaps, but fun for us.

You can also hear Sarah Lageson's fine intro and outro on this episode, plus Jesse Wozniak interviewing Sarah Shannon on David Kirk's great new Katrina/recidivism piece in ASR.* I'm continually amazed at the talented grad students here at Contexts World Headquarters, but especially happy to hear advisees sounding so much more articulate and authoritative than their advisor. If our grad board is any indication, the next generation of contexts-like sociological outreach is gonna leave me and doug in the dust.

*Sarah S. is also guest-posting today at public criminology.