The Best Map Ever Made of America’s Racial Segregation | Design Last year, a pair of researchers from Duke University published a report with a bold title: “The End of the Segregated Century.” U.S. cities, the authors concluded, were less segregated in 2012 than they had been at any point since 1910. But less segregated does not necessarily mean integrated–something this incredible map makes clear in vivd color. The map, created by Dustin Cable at University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, is stunningly comprehensive. This is the most comprehensive map of race in America ever created. White people are shown with blue dots; African-Americans with green; Asians with red; and Latinos with orange, with all other race categories from the Census represented by brown. “There are a lot of moving parts in this process, so this can cause different shades of color to appear at different zoom levels in really dense areas, like you see in NYC,” Cable explains. Looking at the map, every city tells a different story. Go Back to Top.
Hillary Clinton email scandal: Explained. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images This post is being updated with more information as it becomes available. New questions will be marked with the date that they are added. What’s the latest with Hillary and the whole email thing? Josh Voorhees is a Slate senior writer. Hillary Clinton brought a press conference to an abrupt end on Tuesday after yet another combative exchange about her use of a private email server while secretary of state. I probably wouldn’t talk to her about it either, mostly because this story has been dragging on for so long I don’t even remember how it started. For the four years she was secretary of state, Clinton never used an official state.gov email address. After a specific request from the State Department—that came nearly two years after she had left office—Clinton turned over 30,490 messages to the agency that she and her team deemed to be possibly work-related. And how did everyone else find this out? That probably depends on where you’re sitting. Hold up.
The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnations of homosexuals. They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school. They appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats. They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country’s salvation. They are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch. They are joined by religious rationalizers—fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrases and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s words. This is no longer a matter of personal or private faith. See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows Moses carries the ten commandment tablets. Playing Telephone with the Word of God No television preacher has ever read the Bible.
The New Totalitarians Are Here There’s a basic difference in the traditions of political science between “authoritarians” and “totalitaritarians.” People throw both of these words around, but as is so often the case, they’re using words they may not always understand. They have real meaning, however, and the difference between them is important. Simply put, authoritarians merely want obedience, while totalitarians, whose rule is rooted in an ideology, want obedience and conversion. Totalitarians are a different breed. They want obedience, of course. Authoritarians merely want obedience, while totalitarians, whose rule is rooted in an ideology, want obedience and conversion. This is what George Orwell understood so well in his landmark novel “1984.” Americans Are Getting Too Comfortable With Thought Control I’ve gone down this road of literary and academic exposition because I fear an increasing number of my fellow Americans are, at heart, becoming totalitarians. Love Your Terror You, too, must love Big Brother.
How World War III became possible: A nuclear conflict with Russia is likelier than you think It was in August 2014 that the real danger began, and that we heard the first warnings of war. That month, unmarked Russian troops covertly invaded eastern Ukraine, where the separatist conflict had grown out of its control. The Russian air force began harassing the neighboring Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which are members of NATO. The US pledged that it would uphold its commitment to defend those countries as if they were American soil, and later staged military exercises a few hundred yards from Russia's border. Both sides came to believe that the other had more drastic intentions. Fearing the worst of one another, the US and Russia have pledged to go to war, if necessary, to defend their interests in the Eastern European borderlands. Europe today looks disturbingly similar to the Europe of just over 100 years ago, on the eve of World War I. If you take a walk around Washington or a Western European capital today, there is no feeling of looming catastrophe. I. V.
This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time - The Washington Post Yesterday, I asked readers how they felt about setting up independent commissions to handle redistricting in each state. Commenter Mitch Beales wrote: "It seems to me that an 'independent panel' is about as likely as politicians redistricting themselves out of office. This is the twenty-first century. How hard can it be to create an algorithm to draw legislative districts after each census?" They're right. You can see for yourself how his boundaries look. Here's Maryland, currently the least-compact state in the nation: And here's North Carolina, the second-least compact: Huge differences, yes? Now, some argue that compactness isn't a very good measure of district quality. And therein lies the problem: You can define a "community of interest" pretty much however you want. A word, also, about the Voting Rights Act. But here's the thing: Packing a state's minority voters into a small number of districts has the effect of diminishing their clout everywhere else.
This is what America would look like without gerrymandering We've written about gerrymandering here on Vox — we've described some of the worst examples, and potential reforms that might prevent it. But what would a world without gerrymandering look like? Check out the map above, in which each colored district has a roughly equal population, for a glimpse. Their map of North Carolina is quite different from Our ludicrously gerrymandered one The map was created by the Center for Range Voting, which was founded by math PhD Warren Smith and engineer Jan Kok to float innovative election reform proposals. The map above crosses state borders, which is, of course, impossible in our current system. But the site also features maps for each individual state. Top: NationalAtlas.gov. The drawbacks of nice-looking maps Districts drawn this way would solve one of the main objections to gerrymandering — that politicians rig the process to benefit themselves or their parties. For instance, they don't try to keep historical neighborhoods or regions intact.
20 Questions You’re Not Supposed To Ask In America Today - John Hawkins 1) If Islam is really a religion of peace, as opposed to a particularly violent religion, then why do so many people and organizations across the world refuse to show Muhammad cartoons out of fear that they'll be murdered by devout Muslims for doing it? 2) If illegal immigrants are supposed to help our economy, then why weren’t they helping the economies of the poor nations they fled? 3) Given that Hillary Clinton’s nearly accomplishment-free political career has been based on riding the coattails of a serial adulterer who has humiliated and cheated on her over and over, isn’t Hillary Clinton a terrible role model for young women? 4) If Barack Obama can directly contradict the laws on the books by refusing to deport millions of illegal aliens because of “prosecutorial discretion,” couldn’t a Republican President use the same precedent and refuse to prosecute people who don’t pay a capital gains tax or who violate EPA rules?
Shut Up, Have a Cheeseburger | National Review Online So you say you want the best solution? I have heard it argued that the San Francisco Bay Area is not only the nation’s but the world’s most desirable metropolis. I don’t buy that for a minute, but it’s not entirely implausible. Let’s assume that the Bay Area partisans are correct in their high estimation of the metropolis. Once we’ve decided where everybody should live, we can move on to the question of what they should eat. Perhaps that’s not the way to go. The Bay Area has a pretty good mass-transit infrastructure, but we’re probably still going to want some cars, the obvious leading candidate here being the Toyota Prius — it’s already popular in the area, gets great mileage, is consistently rated one of the most reliable cars, doesn’t take up too much parking space, etc. It is easy to see that these results are absurd. “How should we do x?” Some policies must, by their nature, be implemented at the national level. And have a cheeseburger. — Kevin D.
Transcript of the Constitution of the United States - Official Text The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription Note: The following text is a transcription of the Constitution as it was inscribed by Jacob Shallus on parchment (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) Items that are hyperlinked have since been amended or superseded. The authenticated text of the Constitution can be found on the website of the Government Printing Office. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Article. Section. 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. Section. 2. Section. 3. The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. G°.
Bernie Sanders’s Dark Age Economics | National Review Online As of yesterday afternoon, a nonstop round-trip flight from New York City to Los Angeles on Independence Day weekend cost $484. That the price is so low is an incredible story in itself, one that is more important than most of what our children are taught in their history classes and one that we should not fail to appreciate, but it is a subject for another day. Consider, though, that that $484 is a messy number; it isn’t an even $500 or rounded to $480 or $485. Messy numbers are a sign of real calculation, and they are the opposite of political numbers: the first 100 days in office, the five-year plan, the $15 minimum wage. That $484 is easily expressed in non-U.S. dollar contexts: €445.08, £ 314.56, ¥ 5,9573.87, 2.0349 Bitcoin. There is no reason, in theory, that one could not buy a Picasso masterpiece and pay for it in coffee, or in coffee futures, or in barrels of West Texas Intermediate crude. Money is a medium of exchange, and prices are a form of communication. — Kevin D.
Heads Christians Win, Tails They Lose So, a Canadian Christian jeweler custom-made a pair of engagement rings for a lesbian couple, Nicole White and Pam Renouf, at their request. Later, when they found out that the jeweler personally opposes same-sex marriage, they went to pieces and demanded their money back. From the CBC’s report: “They were great to work with. They seemed to have no issues. The couple now believes the rings they ordered will have been tainted by having been fashioned by jeweler Esau Jardon’s hands, given what impure thoughts he holds in his mind. Jardon said he won’t apologize for his beliefs. But, after dealing with online bullying and threats, Jardon decided this week to refund the deposit to the couple: “One of the reasons my family chose to move to Canada was the rights that it offered, the freedom of religion and freedom of speech, both of which at the time seemed to be very limited in Mexico,” he said. Let’s understand what happened here.
Men and mass murder: What gender tells us about America's epidemic of gun violence Another week (or day) in America, another mass shooting. Another mass shooting, another flood of liberal attacks on gun culture, the Second Amendment, and the NRA. And another round of conservative pushback asserting some version of "guns don't kill people; people kill people." And another Barack Obama press conference railing at our failure to "do something" to stop the violence. And on and on and on. Not long ago, I made my own contribution to the conversation, expressing despair that anything can significantly change this horrifying facet of our national life and culture. But realism (or fatalism) doesn't preclude trying to understand why it keeps happening. More Perspectives James Poulos How TPP cements Obama's corporatist legacy Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry China's tyrannical new 'credit score' is a warning to America Murder is an overwhelmingly male act, with the offender proving to be a man 90 percent of the time the person's gender is known. We don't lack for explanations.