St. Charles the #1 city according to Family Circle

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Chicago’s western suburbs have received awards in the past. For example, Wheaton was named an All-American city in 1968 and in the 2000s, Naperville was named a top 5 community several times by Money. Now St. Charles, roughly 35 miles west of Chicago, can join the party:

After hearing St. Charles had been named the No. 1 city in the country to raise a family by Family Circle magazine, Ray Ochromowicz said he just wanted to throw his hands in the air…

St. Charles was the only city in the state that made Family Circle’s list.

The magazine chose St. Charles for its “friendly neighborhoods, innovative schools and beautiful parks” according to a news release. The conditions considered were “affordable housing, good neighbors, green spaces, strong public school systems and giving spirits.”…

To get to No. 1, Family Circle selected 2,500 cities and towns with populations between 15,000 and 150,000. It narrowed the list to 1,000, and each town had to have a median income between $55,000 and $95,000. After being graded on criteria, the 10 winners were chosen to be featured in Family Circle, which publishes 15 times a year and has 20 million readers.

See Family Circle‘s top 10 list here. The description of St. Charles is what you would expect from such awards: it has good schools, nice but affordable homes, and there is “community spirit.” (I wonder if it has any problems…)

Based on what other suburban communities have done with these awards, here is what we can expect: St. Charles will feature this award for years and civic leaders can show “proof” of the greatness of their community. Family Circle may not be a big name magazine but it has a monthly circulation of 3.8 million and it appeals to families, exactly the kind of people a place like St. Charles might hope to attract.

Of course, these lists are affected by their criteria. For this Family Circle list, why limit incomes to between $55,000 and $95,000 or set the lower population limit at 15,000? There are certain value judgments present here that might reflect what might motivate a typical American suburban adult to live in a certain community but they might not exactly fit the bill.

The effect of the economic crisis on the black middle class

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There has a lot of research in recent decades about the black middle class. Some new numbers suggest the black middle class has been hit harder by the economic crisis than the white middle class:

In 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median net worth for black households had fallen 83 percent to $2,170, according to the institute.

Austin described the wealth gap this way: “In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.”

Austin thinks more black people than ever before could fall out of the middle class because the unemployment rate for college-educated blacks recently peaked and blacks are overrepresented in state and local government jobs. Those are jobs that are being eliminated because of massive budget shortfalls.

Since the end of the recession, which lasted from 2007 to 2009, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor. Last April, black male unemployment hit the highest rate since the government began keeping track in 1972. Only 56.9 percent of black men over 20 were working, compared with 68.1 percent of white men.

Even though more blacks may have joined the middle class in recent decades, this data suggests they are more vulnerable than their white counterparts. And, of course, this is all related to the still present large gap in wealth.

It would be interesting to see data on how the economic crisis has affected other minority groups.

David Brooks: keep government funding for social science research

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Last Thursday, David Brooks made a case for retaining government money for social science research:

Fortunately, today we are in the middle of a golden age of behavioral research. Thousands of researchers are studying the way actual behavior differs from the way we assume people behave. They are coming up with more accurate theories of who we are, and scores of real-world applications. Here’s one simple example:

When you renew your driver’s license, you have a chance to enroll in an organ donation program. In countries like Germany and the U.S., you have to check a box if you want to opt in. Roughly 14 percent of people do. But behavioral scientists have discovered that how you set the defaults is really important. So in other countries, like Poland or France, you have to check a box if you want to opt out. In these countries, more than 90 percent of people participate.

This is a gigantic behavior difference cued by one tiny and costless change in procedure.

Yet in the middle of this golden age of behavioral research, there is a bill working through Congress that would eliminate the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. This is exactly how budgets should not be balanced — by cutting cheap things that produce enormous future benefits.

Here is what I think works in this column:

1. The examples are interesting and address important issues. I wish there were more people highlighting interesting research in such large venues.

2. The idea that a small research investment can have large results.

3. The reminder in the last paragraph: “People are complicated.”

Here is where I think this column could use some more work: why exactly should the government, as opposed to other organizations or sources, provide this money? (See a counterargument here.) Brooks could have made this case more clearly: there are a lot of social problems that affect our country and the government has the resources and clout to promote research. In certain areas, like poverty or public health, the government has a compelling interest in tackling these concerns as there are few other bodies that could handle the scope of these issues. Of course, many of these issues are politicized but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the government shouldn’t address these issues at all.

How suburban design may contribute to a lack of union organization

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As part of a larger article about why the large number of unemployed Americans “became invisible,” the suburbs may be part of the problem:

Workers have also become suburbanized. Back in the 1960s or even the 1980s, the unemployed organized around welfare or unemployment offices. It was a fertile environment: people were anxious and tired and waiting for hours in line.

“We stood outside of these offices, with their huge lines, and passed out leaflets that said things like: ‘If you’re upset about what’s happening to you, come to this meeting at this church basement in two weeks. We’ll get together and do something about this,’ ” recalls Barney Oursler, a longtime community organizer and co-founder of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee in the early 1980s. “The response just made your heart get big. ‘Oh, my God,’ they’d say, ‘I thought I was alone.’ ”

The Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, which is based in Pittsburgh, helped organize workers in 26 cities across five states, simply by hanging around outside unemployment offices and harnessing the frustration.

Today, though, many unemployment offices have closed. Jobless benefits are often handled by phone or online rather than in person. An unemployment call center near Mr. Oursler, for instance, now sits behind two sets of locked doors and frosted windows.

More broadly, this could be attributed to a decrease in geographically-based relationships. With decentralized residences and workplaces, people gather around different features than the neighborhood block.

Interestingly, the next paragraph of the story talks about how workers in other countries have tried to mobilize online. If you don’t live near your former co-workers or if you do but don’t really interact with them, perhaps you would be willing to join a Facebook group or sign an online petition to further your collective interests.

Nevada opens path to driverless cars

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Even though driverless cars are not a common product yet, Nevada has opened a legal path for driverless cars on the road:

Assembly Bill 511, the first such legislation in the country, allows the state’s Department of Transportation to draw up rules that would authorize driverless cars. The regulations would include safety standards, insurance requirements and testing sites.

A driverless car is defined by the bill as using “artificial intelligence, sensors and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself without the active intervention of a human operator.” That includes technology such as lasers, cameras and radar…

Stanford University robotics professor Sebastian Thrun, a project leader on Google’s effort, said that nearly all driving accidents are due to human error rather than mistakes by machines.

“Do you realize that we could change the capacity of highways by a factor of two or three if we didn’t rely on human precision on staying in the lane but on robotic precision, and thereby drive a little bit closer together on a little bit narrower lanes and do away with all traffic jams on highways,” he said in a speech at the TED 2011 conference this spring.

So how long until this becomes a reality? It seems like we have been hearing about these possibilities for years. Here are a few things that could be holding up the process:

1. The legal side of things. Perhaps Nevada is really a pioneer here and will get the ball rolling.

2. The technology is not quite ready yet. It doesn’t sound like this is the issue.

3. We were waiting for a few companies to really push this. It is interesting that Google seems to be getting a lot of the attention. Obviously, their main business is not driverless cars but they had the resources and interest.

4. The cultural side: are people ready to see driverless cars on the road? Even if they are proven to be safer, will people accept them quickly or will it take some time?

“Hedonistic sustainability”

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Perhaps going green doesn’t require having to give up much if one subscribes to “hedonistic sustainability:”

Award-winning architect Bjarke Ingels of BIG seems to think so. He believes the way towards sustainability is not by inconveniencing people, but rather by re-engineering the structures of society to make them less wasteful.

From the Guardian:

I work with the idea of hedonistic sustainability, which is sustainability that improves the quality of life and human enjoyment. The fact that Copenhagen is so clean you can actually jump in the harbour [water] in the city centre is almost a miracle. The city is sustainable but doesn’t become synonymous with making lots of sacrifices.

–Bjarke Ingels

Ingels’ latest project is a giant waste-to-energy plant that doubles as a ski slope. The incinerator will be Copenhagen’s tallest building and will send a giant smoke ring into the sky every time a ton of CO2 is released, in order to remind the city’s residents of greenhouse gas emissions…

I agree that revamping infrastructure, city planning and government projects do more than market-based solutions like buying organic cola or putting solar panels on your McMansion. But the idea that we can carry on consuming and enjoying in the rich world without consequence – believing that scientists, engineers and architects will solve the Earth’s problems for us – seems a bit optimistic and kind of reminiscent of what got us in into our current eco-mess in the first place.

I’ve asked this question before: could McMansions be made “acceptable” if they were green? Making a trash incinerator into a ski slope sounds pretty good.

I’ll be curious to see if this term catches on and who wants to use it.

A sociological view of science

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A while back, I had a conversation with friends about how undergraduate students understand and use the word “proof” when talking about knowing about the world. Echoing some of our conversation, a sociologist describes science:

I am a sociologist and read philosophy guardedly. As a social scientist, I tell my students again and again that while a theory or a sparkling generalization may be beautiful, the real test is always an “appeal to the empirical.” A proposition may be very appealing and may seem to provide powerful and enticing descriptions and understandings. However, until we gather evidence that shows that the proposition can be supported by information confirmed by the senses we must hold any proposition as one possibility among other competing explanations. Further, even when a theory or a set of ideas has been measured repeatedly against the empirical world, science never leads to certainty. Rather, science is always a modest enterprise. Even at its best and most rigorous, science is inherently “probabilistic” — we can have varying degrees of confidence in a finding, but certainty is not possible. As humans, our knowing is contingent and limited. Even the best designed scientific tests carry with them the possibility of disconfirmation in later tests. Science at its best offers acceptable levels of persuasiveness but cannot offer final conclusions.

Several things stand out to me in this explanation:

1. The appeal to data and weighing information versus existing explanations.

2. The lack of certainty in science and a probabilistic view of the world. Certainty here might be defined as “100% knowledge.” I think we can be functionally certain about some things. But the last bit about persausiveness is interesting.

3. Human knowledge is limited. There are always new things to learn, particularly about people and societies.

4. Scientific tests are undertaken to test existing theories and discover new information.

This sounds like a reasonable sociological perspective on science.

Sociologist makes academic action figures

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Is it ironic for a sociologist to create action figures of academics?

Very few universities have had realistic “action figures” made of their faculties and staff. One exception is the University of the Ozarks in Arkansas, where Dr. Jesse Weiss (Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies) has produced a collection of them.

The professor hatched the idea via his hobby of customizing action figure models from manufacturer Jakks Pacific. Classics so far include Ozarks President Dr. Rick Niece [pictured below], along with Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Sean Coleman, and Assistant Professor of English Dr. Brian Hardman.

“All it takes is a dremel tool, model paint, and Sculpey modeling compound for the hair, beards, glasses – and time,” explains the artist. (Unfortunately Jakks Pacific no longer make the requisite base figures, but the professor has a large plastic bin and drawers filled with spare parts.)

Does the action figure come with a small explanation of the cultural importance of action figures along with commentary on the gender stereotypes such figures promote? (Check out the muscles on those academics!)

Another thought: what are the most common curios academics keep on their desk or in their offices?

World rankings of sociology departments

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If ranking sociology departments in the United States is not enough (see here and here regarding the NRC rankings), now one can look at world rankings. Seven of the top ten programs are in the United States as are eleven of the top twenty. It also appears there is quite a bit of variation in the “employer” score for schools in the top ten with a range of 41.7 to 100.0

At the bottom of the page: “Since 2004 QS has produced the leading and most trusted world university rankings. Focusing globally and locally, we deliver world university rankings for students and academics alike.” Does anyone pay any attention to these world rankings?

Lynched Mexicans in the United States between 1880 and 1930

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In reading this piece which highlights the demographic change taking place in the United States, I was intrigued to read this passage from Wikipedia:

The lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest has long been overlooked in American history. This may be because most historical records categorized Mexican, Chinese, and Native American lynching victims as white. Statistics of reported lynching in the United States indicate that, between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 persons were lynched, of whom 1,293 were white and 3,437 were black.The actual known amount of Mexicans lynched is unknown. It is estimated that at least 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928 (this is a conservative estimate due to lack of records in many reported lynchings).Mexicans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic is second only to that of the African American community during that period, which suffered an average of 37.1 per 100,000 population.Between 1848 to 1879, Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population. These lynchings cannot be excused as merely “frontier justice”–of the 597 total victims, only 64 were lynched in areas which lacked a formal judicial system.

This is one of those little-known stories, like that of northern sundown towns, that is a reminder of America’s troubled past. Additionally, these lynchings took place in the same period of the expansion of sundown towns, suggesting the lynchings were part of a larger American turn against non-whites during this period.

Read the academic article behind the Wikipedia figures here.