States data

I've put together an updated dataset for use in my winter state/local politics class.  It's based on the data available at the Practical Researcher, but some of those numbers are getting a bit long in the tooth so I've updated them with more recent figures.  I've also added some recent elections data and a few economic indicators, including unemployment rates and per capita income for the past three years.  I also found some education indicators, including eighth grade proficiency scores on standardized tests.

At any rate, feel free to use it.  It's available in Stata format and .csv format.  The codebook is here.

The right of the people's butts to be unphotographed

Josh Marshall says he doesn't understand folks who are fine with surrendering the privacy of their phone calls, abandoning habeas corpus, and launching preemptive wars in the name of their own security but draw the line at airport body scanners that might catch a glimpse of their genitalia.

To me, it makes perfect sense.  Most folks willing to make those trades for their security don't think they're making a tradeoff at all. After all, they don't speak with terrorists over the phone.  They don't expect to find themselves accused of a crime.  And they, for the most part, don't serve in the military.  But they do fly on airplanes.

Liberty for me, not for thee.

Hot in herre

I'm just updating my old chart of annual average temperatures in the United States from 1895-2008.  Yeah, 2008 was relatively cool, but don't lose the steaming forest for the cold tree.

You can make that chart in under five minutes using Stata and downloading the data from the National Climatic Data Center.  They actually have their own graph generator, but the result is shockingly ugly:

I mean, you can sort of detect the trend, and you can see that the last decade was relatively hot, but all those red lines connecting the dots are meaningless, and it really doesn't give you a sense of the magnitude of the shift since the mid-20th century.

Questions about Iran

In a particularly good post, Marc asks a number of questions about Iran that seem quite relevant for anyone wishing to report on or pontificate about the current civil unrest there.  Here are some of them:

Does Iran manufacture its own small arms?

Does Iran manufacture its own electronic equipment?

If not, who provides the small arms and electronic equipment most essential to the success of the current crackdown?

What is the relationship of the Iranian Army to the Iranian police? Are they separate bodies? Do they have complementary motivations? What are the factions inside the Iranian police and military structure? Are there cracks?

Why are militias active? Does the Iranian government feel it necessary to distance themselves from the crackdown in this way? If not, what is the relationship of the militias to the uniformed security forces?

How many police are there and how heavily armed are they?

How hard is it to get a gun in Iran? Has the opposition made any statements regarding its opinions on force or violence?

Is the Iranian military clearly loyal to the current government?

[...]

How does health care work in Iran? Is a person involved in the crisis likely to go to a hospital if injured or ill, or avoid it to avoid authorities?

How are Iranian Kurds responding? Iraqi Kurds?

If electronic communication is unavailable is there evidence of efforts to communicate by traditional means like telephones or physically delivering information across borders?

Who, other than Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, is important in this story?

Marc admits he doesn't know the answers to these questions, but we begin to understand things by first knowing what questions to ask.  These seem like a good starting place.  Before the armchair warriors start issuing their own simplistic demands for what the U.S. should be doing, they might try asking and answering some questions along these lines.

Dragonfruit

I saw this at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market last week. Never seen
it before. Kinda cool.

Buy local, eat like a Russian

Good magazine wants to encourage people to buy foods grown locally, and they've produced this handy chart to help:

There are lots of good reasons to be a locavore, especially if you live in California.  If you live in Colorado, however, the only edible crop during the winter appears to be potatoes.  In the spring you can make a lovely potato and peach salad.  Woo hoo!

At least, I assume they're talking about Colorado.  It's hard to tell, since they've highlighted Wyoming on the map.

(h/t Ezra)

Selection effect

Please tell me that Denver's corrections officials aren't using these sorts of stats as evidence of the effectiveness of the Making Choices program in reducing the recidivism rate:

Over the past 10 years, the program has proven highly effective for the 450 women who have taken the training.

Prison officials say the recidivism rate is 54 percent for Colorado's prison population in general, but for women who graduated from Making Choices, it is just 12 percent. It drops to 8 percent for those who take a follow-up booster program, which 122 women have done.

"When I heard that, it blew me away," said warden Travis Trani, who arrived here months ago from a job as warden of Limon Correctional Facility.

One important, but unstated, piece of data would be the recidivism rate among female inmates as a whole.  (This study suggests that recidivism rates among female inmates are much lower than those of male inmates.)  But beyond that, how are inmates selected into the Making Choices program?  It may be that those who choose to enroll are already much more motivated than the average inmate to improve their behavior.  Unless they're being selected at random and forced to attend, we really have no idea whether it's an effective program from the evidence presented in this article.