Category Archives: Sociology

Searching through millions of paper records of guns, modern crime fighting, and large scale societies

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Key to identifying the man who shot at Donald Trump was a large set of paper records:

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Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives analysts at a facility in West Virginia search through millions of documents by hand every day to try to identify the provenance of guns used in crimes. Typically, the bureau takes around eight days to track a weapon, though for urgent traces that average falls to 24 hours…

In an era of high-tech evidence gathering, including location data and a trove of evidence from cell phones and other electronic devices used by shooting suspects, ATF agents have to search through paper records to find a gun’s history.

In some cases, those records have even been kept on microfiche or were held in shipping containers, sources told CNN, especially for some of the closed business records like in this case.

The outdated records-keeping system stems from congressional laws that prohibit the ATF from creating searchable digital records, in part because gun rights groups for years have fanned fears that the ATF could create a database of firearm owners and that it could eventually lead to confiscation.

But the urgent ATF trace Saturday proved indispensable in identifying the Pennsylvania shooter, giving authorities a key clue toward his identity in less than half an hour.

On one hand, searching through paper records could appear to be inefficient in the third decade of the twenty-first century. In today’s large-scale societies and systems, the ability to quickly search and retrieve digital records is essential in numerous social and economic sectors.

On the other hand, a large set of paper records is a reminder of the relatively recent shift humans have made to adjust to large populations, and in this case, specifically addressing crime. I recently read The Infernal Machine, a story about dynamite, anarchists at the turn of the twentieth century, and developing police efforts to address the threat of political violence. These changes included systems of records to identify suspects, such as having fingerprints or photos on file.

More broadly, the development of databases and filing systems helped people and institutions keep up with the data they wanted to collect and access. To do fairly basic things in our current world, from getting a driver’s license to voting to accessing health care, requires large databases.

The most recent wave of Irish pubs in Chicago

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If early Irish pubs in Chicago functioned more like “social service agencies,” some of the more recent ones in the city have different roots:

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In 1986, Kitty O’Shea’s opened on the ground level of the Chicago Hilton with the mission of creating an “authentic Irish pub experience” in downtown Chicago. Its owners paid careful attention to detail, traveling to Dublin to research the look and feel of some of its treasured pubs. They flew in Irish bartenders with authentic brogues and offered nightly Irish entertainment. It quickly became the most successful Hilton hotel restaurant in the world, according to news reports…

Chief among them is the Irish Pub Concept, creators of the Fadó franchise. They offer consulting and resources for prospective pub owners, with several templates to choose from (including Celtic, English and country-style bars). The company says it helped launch upwards of 6,500 Irish pubs across the world. They provide everything — down to the brick-a-brack and employee training manuals.

These mass-produced Irish pubs have been criticized for offering a caricaturized, Disneyfied version of Irish culture — an Irish “pub in a box,” if you will. But they are also hugely popular.

Chicago still has its share of Irish pubs that grew organically and are owned and operated by Irish emigrants and their descendants. They include Shinnick’s Pub, which has been in Bridgeport for 80 years; Chief O’Neill’s, named in honor of an Irish-born Chicago police chief and opened by Irish emigrants in the ’90s; and the Fifth Province in the Irish-American Heritage Center. These places didn’t need to consult anyone on authenticity. And they continue to draw Irish emigrants, locals and people like me — the descendants of those early arrivals.

Presumably, some of these locations serve as “third places,” settings where people can go between work and home to socialize, eat, and talk. Sociologists and others have noted that Americans have relatively few places like this and this limits social interaction and civic engagement.

But other locations may serve more like consumer spaces where people visit, enjoy, and leave having had a good time. There are plenty of these in American communities where people seek out a particular experience they like with less concern for community-building and longer-term relationships.

Could online or virtual spaces ever replicate these settings? I am skeptical. Could online or virtual spaces drive people back to pubs and other gathering spots to converse and interact in person with other humans? Maybe.

Transportation advantage: Illinois has the third most interstate miles in the country

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Among states, Illinois is 25th in area and and 6th in population but has the 3rd most interstate miles. Here are the top 5 states:

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  • Texas – 3,233 miles
  • California – 2,456 miles
  • Illinois – 2,169 miles
  • Pennsylvania – 1,759 miles
  • Ohio – 1,572 miles

Illinois has the third-largest region in the country by population but its next largest cities are relatively small. Interstates connect all of these population centers, connect to big cities not far beyond the borders of the state (like St. Louis and Milwaukee), and link to places far away. Here is how the Illinois Department of Transportation describes the interstates:

Illinois is at the heart of the country’s interstate highway system. This vast system consists of coast-to-coast interstates I-80 and I-90, along with I-70 that extends from the east coast to Utah. These major corridors are joined by multiple north – south corridors including I-39, I-55, and I-57 and additional east – west corridors such as I-24, I-64, and I-74.

This is in part due to geographic advantages – a particular location along the Great Lakes, connections to major rivers like the Mississippi and the Ohio, and in-between other places – plus developing transportation infrastructure – highways and roads plus railroads and air options in addition to the early water transport.

Indiana may have the state motto of “The Crossroads of America” but would Illinois have a better claim to this? I am not sure it could replace the state slogan “Land of Lincoln” but it may speak more to the current state of Illinois economic and social life.

Post pandemic evictions up in some cities, down in others

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Looking at evictions across American cities and regions after the pandemic shows differences:

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Eviction filings over the past year in a half-dozen cities and surrounding metropolitan areas are up 35% or more compared with pre-2020 norms, according to the Eviction Lab, a research unit at Princeton University.

This includes Las Vegas, Houston, and in Phoenix, where landlords filed more than 8,000 eviction notices in January. That was the most ever in a single month for the county that includes the Arizona capital. Phoenix eviction-court hearings often run for less than a minute. One judge signed off on an eviction after the tenant admitted to missing two rent payments…

Overall, eviction notices were up 15% or more compared with the period before the pandemic for 10 of the 33 cities tracked by the Eviction Lab, which looked at filings over the past 12 months…

Even with the higher eviction rates in several major cities, evictions more broadly have settled to roughly where they were before the pandemic. The first five months of the year had about 422,000 filings for eviction across the 33 cities and an additional 10 states tracked, down slightly from prepandemic norms in those same places. 

In New York City, Philadelphia and some other cities, filings have stayed down due in part to increased protections for renters.

The article does not list all the cities involved but it looks like those with higher evictions post-pandemic are growing Sunbelt cities. The article suggests the differences are due to more protections for renters in some places than others. I wonder if this goes along with several other factors:

  1. These regions are growing at faster rates than some other regions, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest.
  2. Different political regimes in different regions. Are the different levels of renter protections about whether the region (and the state it is in) leans more conservative or liberal?
  3. Different regional histories.
  4. How much did the pandemic affect local eviction policies? It could have led to more protections in some places.

It is cool to now have this data over time. I recommend reading the work – Evicted – that helped make this work possible.

“Stars – They’re Just Like Us!” and reflecting on those experiences

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US Weekly since 2002 has featured normal life moments of celebrities:

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At the daily late-morning editorial meeting, the photo editor brought in images, many taken by paparazzi, that had come in over the wires overnight. He spread the color print-outs of celebrities all over the table: movie premieres, vacations, nights on the town. Bonnie sifted through them and focused on a photo of Drew Barrymore leaning over to fetch a coin off the sidewalk.

“Look at Drew Barrymore picking up a penny,” she said. “It’s like, stars, they’re just like us.”

Drew Barrymore picking up that penny went on to change Us Weekly, tabloid media, the paparazzi economy, and the celebrity ecosystem as a whole. A photo of an actress casually bending over on the street was suddenly interesting to readers and valuable to editors, which incentivized photographers to capture more everyday moments, and ultimately nudged celebrities to become willing participants in the process. A penny shot quickly turned into a money shot.

How do those experiences line up with not being a celebrity? Kevin Bacon recently tried this in Los Angeles:

The 65-year-old actor told the magazine that he wore his custom camouflage getup to The Grove LA, a popular outdoor mall in Los Angeles. Amongst all the visitors, he blended in. 

“Nobody recognized me,” he said.

But, living out his dream wasn’t what he imagined. 

“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,” he recalled. “Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a f––ing coffee or whatever.” 

He swiftly realized he wanted to return to his A-list status. 

“I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous,’” he added. 

This is just one experience. But once you are at some level of social status – whether the leader of a known organization or a Hollywood star or a member of the 1% – how possible is it to live a “normal” life, whether judged from one’s own experiences or by those around you?

Government-developed skyscrapers, World Trade Center edition

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Skyscrapers do not emerge only from private sector. The former World Trade Center in lower Manhattan is one example (with quotes below from pages 198-199 of Cities in the Sky by economist James Barr):

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Despite the destruction on September 11, 2001, the legacy of the Twin Towers remains strong. it was the first time that an American government agency – or likely any government agency the world over – directly developed and managed supertall skyscrapers meant to compete with the private sector. Historically, governments built tall buildings for their own needs. City halls competed with houses of worship to be the tallest in each city. But here was a regional governmental entity producing building space to earn a profit.

More importantly, it showed, over time, that placemaking via record-breaking skyscrapers was a viable option for cities, as the Twin Towers became instant icons of the Manhattan skyline. Just as important was their economic success, which created a new model: Build a record breaker with state support. If need be, fill it up with government agencies (or state-owned businesses outside the United States), give it time for neighborhood growth to kick in, and reap the returns.

This model later spread:

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That it took till 1998 for this strategy to surface in Asia – starting with the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur – was due to the time Asia needed to catch up with its economic development and infrastructure. That it wasn’t replicated in the United States after that was because by the end of the 1970s America’s era of big government-funded urban renewal projects was over, while in Asia government-funded projects were just beginning.

Might this happen again in the future in the United States? Leaders seem quite open to public-private partnerships when it is deemed necessary to boost development and growth.

One small community claims to be at the center of a hemisphere

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If the Earth is roughly a sphere, is one point on its surface more at the center of things than others? One spot in Wisconsin makes note of its particular location:

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Venture west of Wausau, and you’ll find yourself meandering down a country road that leads to a point of global significance—a point where latitude and longitude find harmony at 45 degrees North and 90 degrees West.

Visualize yourself standing at this exact midpoint, not just in a geographical sense between the North Pole and the Equator, but also between the prime meridian and its direct opposite across the globe…

If you pulled out a map, you’d find yourself at the intersection of some of the world’s most important lines of navigation.

Of the four such points globally, Poniatowski’s slice of longitude and latitude is the only one that’s readily accessible.

The others?

They’re either swimming with the fishes in oceanic depths or hiding in landscapes far less hospitable…

The original marker was a humble signpost in a field, but today, thanks to generous community efforts, there stands a clear path, welcoming benches, and an official marker that stakes its claim in the ground.

Hmmm. As Wikipedia notes, “A prime meridian is an arbitrarily-chosen meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°.” And the one prime meridian that won out affects this claim in Wisconsin.

While this claim is based on imposing coordinates on the surface of the planet, I wonder how people around the world would answer this question: “What do you consider to be the center of the world?” Would it be major cities, like New York City or Tokyo? Religious sites? Their homes or land? A natural spot?

Or it might be interesting to investigate which places claim to be at the center of things. A place could be at the geographic or social center of a country. Where are the center points of cities or regions? Is it more important to be at the geographic or social center (see this example from the United States)?

“With America’s golden era of infrastructure construction behind us…”

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Repairing infrastructure and constructing new infrastructure is difficult these days (via the example of the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels on I-70 in Colorado):

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The attention Fox is about to get is a perfect illustration of what researchers refer to as the invisibility of infrastructure. It’s only when infrastructure breaks, whether it’s a closed tunnel, a broken cell phone tower, or a delayed train, that the public seems to notice it exists. “Unfortunately, we usually take for granted when things work, and we don’t value maintenance as much as we probably should,” says Cristina Torres-Machi, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But we also do that in our daily life. We only remember how good the dishwasher is when it’s not working.”

With America’s golden era of infrastructure construction behind us—a period which arguably began with New Deal public works projects in the 1930s and ended with the completion of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System in 1992 just down the road in Glenwood Canyon—there’s been a shift in both academic thought and in practice at various levels of government to elevate infrastructure maintenance in the national consciousness, lest it arrive unbidden. In the Centennial State, there’s no better embodiment of this shift than the EJMT. It cost $262 million to build both bores between 1968 and 1979, or the equivalent of about $1.2 billion today. But calculating the cost of adding a third tunnel bore—something CDOT has identified as essential for alleviating congestion on the I-70 mountain corridor—isn’t as simple as adjusting for inflation. Modern environmental protections, safety standards, and construction techniques all drive up the costs of these massive projects, a serious problem considering the agency’s 2024–’25 budget is only $1.7 billion. When I ask how much a third bore would cost, Fox jokingly throws out a figure: $300 billion. Bob Fifer, CDOT’s deputy director of operations, echoes the sentiment…

The inability to green-light ambitious infrastructure projects is happening all over the country. Most of President Joe Biden’s lauded $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, for example, will go toward repairing or upgrading existing infrastructure instead of funding new projects on the scale of the EJMT. Even that $1.2 trillion is half of what the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates the United States would need to invest over the next decade to simply maintain its ports, electrical grids, bridges, and transportation networks in a “state of good repair.” “There is something kind of nostalgic [about the EJMT]—that they could gather the will and the funding and the common commitment to build these kinds of incredible engineering marvels,” says Steven Jackson, a Cornell University professor whose areas of study include the maintenance of infrastructure systems. “There’s some question if we even remember how to do that or know how to do it together anymore.”

Jackson agrees with Fox and Fifer that escalating expenses are a major reason grand public works like the EJMT aren’t often attempted anymore, but he also believes there could be a deeper, societal issue at play. “[Back then], there was a notion of government being a conduit for collective purpose that could gather and channel resources for projects like the tunnels, but it’s harder to see in our current moment,” he says. “The tunnels almost feel like relics of a bygone bipartisan world.”

So costs plus a lack of collective will means American infrastructure is in danger long-term? The solutions to these two issues would be to pay up and gather support among leaders and the public. Will more things need to break before action is taken?

But I wonder if there might be other options. Imagine new infrastructure that means older systems do not need to be maintained. New cost-saving measures. New needs for daily life.

Some of this is hard to imagine. The tunnels discussed above would no longer be needed because of what, flying cars or a hyperloop? Lead drinking pipes won’t need to be replaced because we will get water how, from personal devices that pull water out of the air?

At some point, the infrastructure issues will force a reckoning. Regular maintenance will help. But at some point, even well-maintained infrastructure might not be worth keeping given what else might be possible.

“We need to make the case for public transit to the general public”

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According to one elected official, hearings held by the Illinois State Senate regarding the possibility of merging multiple Chicago region transit agencies include this task:

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“Our No. 1 priority is we need to make the case for public transit to the general public,” said state Sen. Ram Villivalam, the committee’s chair. “We need to make sure that we’re building a transit system for the year 2050 and not just plugging a hole.”

This could be a difficult sell throughout a metropolitan region for multiple reasons. Here are a few issues suburban residents might raise:

  1. Those with the ability to do so would often choose to drive.
  2. Will mass transit be on time and what happens if it is not?
  3. Does this mean the money that goes to mass transit will be taken away from roadways?
  4. Who will be using mass transit?
  5. Will we see the money we contribute in taxes in services we will use?

These are broad issues on top of the particular issues the Chicago area and Illinois face, including budget issues, residential segregation, a history of separate agencies, and wrangling between different levels of government.

That said, a sustained case made for Chicago area mass transit would be interesting to see and hear. Would suburbanites pay more attention if mass transit could limit traffic and congestion? How about if it provided cost savings compared to driving (time, gas, maintenance, insurance)? How about transit opening up other local amenities (such as transit-oriented development to help address housing concerns)? Efficiencies in government operation? The ways mass transit can enrich the entire region? I do not know if such campaigns have been tried in the past but starting now could help provide for a healthier region decades down the road.

Proximity to population centers means warehouses for rural areas

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If you live in a rural town in the United States that is close to a number of population centers, warehouses may be in your future (if they are not already):

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Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and nearby rural towns like it are being drastically transformed into distribution hotspots for major retailers like Amazon and Walmart – to the dismay of some longtime residents.

With its endless acres of farmland, the tiny town is seemingly the perfect location for huge warehouses – and it is at most a day’s drive away from one-third of the US population and half of Canada‘s, making it the ideal delivery truck epicenter…

P&G, which owns Charmin, Crest, Gillette and Pampers, was one of the first to do so in 2014, followed by Amazon.com, DHL, FedEx, Home Depot, Kohler, Lowe’s, Office Depot, Pepsi, SC Johnson, Staples, Target, Ulta Beauty, Unilever and UPS, among many others…

What’s happening in Shippensburg is similar to what’s already happened to California’s Inland Empire, which used to be a major center of agriculture. Now, this area of southern California is the nation’s warehouse capital, home to Amazon and Walmart facilities.

Take out a map, draw circles around major population centers, and see the places where these circles intersect. That places like Shippensburg could be so close to so many people marks it for these changes.

This could help remind people of the ongoing connections between cities and rural areas. In today’s changing world, it is not just about farming versus commercial and industrial activity; the two spaces are tied together by trade, social networks, and an awareness of each other.