http://chartsbin.com/view/2338

Basically, there is one woman for each man in the US. And 106 men for every woman in China. And 92 men for every woman in Russia.

And 127 males for every female in Saudi Arabia!

What does it mean?  IMHO…

Lots of unhappy men in Saudi Arabia, this is only important because that culture also provides money and boys to terrorists.

Although the % if lower, the sheer quantity of unhappy men in China will cause geopolitical angst.

Happy, choosy, men in Russia, as woman compete for a declining pool of available men.  Similar behavior happens at colleges in the US now.

The 2010’s could be the decade of the Russian Bride.

We did, alas, get very creative with our fiat money and derivatives.

Hint… the basic problem is unproductive investments with too much focus on healthcare services, more expensive ways to provide worse educations, and a focus on innovation in things that please the senses.

I wonder how long before the Federal government goes after these homeowners for screwing with “wetlands”?

http://deltabravo.net/custody/stats.php

61% of all child abuse is committed by biological mothers
25% of all child abuse is committed by natural fathers
Statistical Source: Current DHHS report on nationwide Child Abuse

79.6% of custodial mothers receive a support award
29.9% of custodial fathers receive a support award

46.9% of non-custodial mothers totally default on support
26.9% of non-custodial fathers totally default on support

20.0% of non-custodial mothers pay support at some level
61.0% of non-custodial fathers pay support at some level

Lots more at the link above.  Sure, they are cherry-picked to highlight how poorly the courts treat men, and how bad the result often is for the kids.   But cherry-picked, or not, they do paint a pretty bad picture of how we handle breakups and kids.

Personally…. I’d make divorce a lot harder when there are kids.  And I’d never make divorce an automatic payday.  As much as I love her, my wife hasn’t run the software companies that made our wealth.  Nor does a wife really earn 1/2 a firefighters pension.

The current divorce and custody rules seem more set to harm our culture and our country than help kids.  Yet another thing that is ass backwards.

I found this article, on the King James Bible, pretty interesting.

When it appeared, moreover, it was already familiar, in the sense that it borrowed freely from William Tyndale’s great translation of a century before. Deliberately, and with commendable modesty, the members of King James’s translation committees said they did not seek “to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, but to make a good one better”. What exactly they borrowed and where they improved is a detective job for scholars, not for this piece. So where it mentions “translators” Tyndale is included among them, the original and probably the best; for this book still breathes him, as much as them.

The author maintains it was a perfect vehicle for its time and intended audience:

Everywhere modern translations are more specific, doubtless more accurate, but always less melodious. The King James, deeply scholarly as it is, displaying the best learning of the day, never forgets that the word of God must be heard, understood and retained by the simple. For them—children repeating after the teacher, workers fidgeting in their best clothes, Tyndale’s own whistling ploughboy—rhythm and music are the best aids to remembering. This is language not for silent study but for reading and declaiming aloud. It needs to work like poetry, and poetry it is.

That is an interesting paradox.  “Accurate” versus “Readable” or “Preachable”. 

I presume by “accurate” she means a more literal translation of the original language using interpretations of the time of writing, versus translation.  But I don’t know, for sure, if that is what she means.

Anyway, I found the piece interesting, if just from taking a view of the King James Bible as a document translated for a purpose – spreading a faith to a particular audience.  That it remains so widely used today suggests that not everything done by committee need be shoddy.

I wish I’d met you Lavoid

I like to read obituaries. I often read them in papers of towns I’m traveling in. Some are sad, describing life ended too early. And some inspire. Or make me smile.

As did today’s obituary of Lavoid Leavitt, a long time resident of St. George. I was struck by this paragraph:

In order to achieve the dream of a college education, Leavitt walked from Bunkerville, Nev., to St. George so he could attend Dixie College. While at Dixie he would participate in football and drama. It would be here that Leavitt would meet Harriett Anderson, his future wife, the two of them marrying in Reno, Nev., on June 14, 1942.

Sometimes we forget what folks still walking amidst us did to achieve what we take for granted now. 

Lavoid walked 50 miles to go to college.

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Color me impressed. I’m sure I’d have enjoyed meeting and talking with Lavoid. I’m sorry I never got the chance.

You always have to be careful linking to articles, but especially on April 1.  I think this one is legit…

“Nobody wants that job,” said Brett Allen, an instructor at Cuesta College who heads a PG&E training program. “It’s like a lifeguard specializing in 100-foot-wave rescues. You may not live as long.” Officially they are known as nozzle dam technicians, but to those in the industry, they are the “jumpers.”

It doesn’t say what the job pays. Not enough probably.

A 12 year old is taking on the Big Bang theory:

"Because of that," he continued, "that means that the world would have never been created because none of the carbon would have been given 7 billion years to fuse together. We’d have to be 21 billion years old . . . and that would just screw everything up."

So, we had to ask.

If not the big bang, then how did the universe come about?

"I’m still working on that," he said. "I have an idea, but . . . I’m still working out the details."

Read the article.  It is interesting on many levels. And watch his YouTube videos teaching Calculus with integration by parts and trig substitution. Not so much to get calculus, but to get a sense of how otherwise normal he is.

He had thousands to pick from in Detroit.

Here it shows that in 2008 quite a few people left my home county. Mostly moving to Salt Lake City and Phoenix, I’d presume for economic reasons.  The inflow is, I presume, retirees from Southern California.

The only bad part of this is that the IRS provided the data.

For a really depressing show, click on Los Angeles or Detroit.

Megan, a student at Michigan State, is drinking a cup of coffee a week with someone (anyone), and writing about it.

I randomly selected “Cup 26”. Here, after a visit with H&H automotive repair, she reflects on what she learned:

My neglected, winter-worn car was in dire need of an oil change. I could have had H&H do it, but old habits dies hard. Without second thought, I headed down the road to the franchise service shop I’ve been to at least a dozen times. When I walked up to the counter, the man asked if I’d been in before.

This happens every time. Never has anyone there remembered my name, offered me a ride, or asked about my family. They know me as a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee, not Megan.

That’s when it hit me, the moment Cup 26 made sense. As the characters in Cheers know, it’s nice to have a place where everybody—or at least somebody—knows your name. Especially in today’s increasingly technological world with self-checkout, pay at the pump, online banking, online shopping, email, etc.

Life is faster than ever, but it can also be isolating.

Nice project Megan!   I love the concept. I subscribe to the “never eat alone” concept and regularly break bread with all sorts of folks, just to learn something.

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And for just St. George:

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El Paso is the “safest” large city in the U.S.  And it highlights why we have to control immigration – El Paso had 4 murders, across the river, 2700 in Ciudad Juarez.

Meanwhile, St. Louis beat out Camden, NJ as the unsafest city.

Interestingly, El Paso has only 15% Non-Hispanic Whites, and 80% Latino, and 3% Black. Some might say this invalidates my immigration point, but I’d point out that El Paso lives as an Hispanic dot in a sea called Texas, which has Republican, small government tendencies.  They can’t be corrupt, the rest of Texas won’t let them.  It is key we don’t’ let unchecked immigration, in turn, unleash the corruption here that is so prevalent in Mexico.

But… let’s go to the stats….  St. Louis has 51% black. And Camden 50% black.  Continuing on in this mornings “insult culture” theme, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the the unsafe cities list correlates highly to black population ratios.  Black culture, with incredibly high single mother birth rates, does not have effective controls over its adolescent  male youth populations, and in many ways (rap music, for instance) eggs on bad or criminal behavior.

Informal sampling of the 2009 list shows that having > 10% black population is a great way to move up the list.

Should I mention this?  Is it racist?  No. I think this link to violence is culturally not racially driven. I’ve known many spectacular African Americans – of high achievement and unblemished honesty and kindness.   But, frankly, I do not think it an accident that our first black President was raised in white culture.   If not, he would statistically be in prison.

Culture matters. A lot. We may all be human, and “equal”, but how we band together affects so much, and it is a shame more people do not feel safe discussing it.

Checkj out this interesting infographic:

What jumped out at me…. 542 eHarmony.com members get married every day.  And… Spark.com has a very high ratio of employees to performance (155 employees, 17,577 ranking on Alexa.com).   PlentyofFish.com seems to have the best racket… one employee, very high Alexa ranking and $10 million in revenue a year.  And why does Chemistry.com need 3200 employees?  That is an astounding amount of people.

Astronomers have found what they claim might be a habitable planet….

My initial response… funding running low?  My second response… cool. My thoughts after reading the article…. habitable in the sense that Detroit is habitable. Sure, I could “live” there, but no in any way I’d recognize as ‘living’.

I think it much more likely we will live in large space stations,  or hollowed out asteroids than find a planet we can live on.  If we ever get off this planet that is.

Of course… none of that will happen unless we defund NASA and let private ventures blossom to make money on space travel, exploration and, YES, exploitation.  That’s right… let people make money off space and they will get there.  Here is a simple one…. all profit made from space is TAX FREE. Sit back and watch the space race begin. With zip, nada, zero, government cost.  Simple isn’t it.

NASA, and specifically our manned space program, has been a colossal waste of time and resources. Tang was cool, but we could have had it for less than the trillions NASA has spent over the decades.