Four years ago (four!), the New Yorker also ran a story dealing with the military's care of their fallen.
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 11:10 AM on May 1, 2008

Colleges don't admit legacies to reward their parents. They do it because they're afraid of pissing them off. Colleges must have long known what this study discovered last year: alums give more each year as their children approach college age, give even more if their kids gets in, but stop almost all donations if their kids is denied. Denying admission to legacies means pissing off the parent alum who, in his 40s or 50s, is at his peak earning power.

A parent who... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 11:11 PM on April 7, 2008

Dame, about the second paragraph of your post, which you recently asked Ynoxas to re-read:

You wrote the "half-hearted voter who hauls her ass to the polls and pulls the lever but does no more: she won't volunteer for the campaign, she won't try to convince her friends and family, she will do nothing but the minumum."

Don't you see this "minimum" is all people like Ynoxas is asking for? This... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 6:32 PM on June 24, 2004

In regards to the joke that MLK Avenues tend to be shitty places to live, the NYT article on the subject points to the fact that efforts to rename major thoroughfares or streets in (gasp!) white neighborhoods tend to get shot down early, so the only streets a municipality can manage to rename after MLK are in black neighborhoods, places where Chris Rock (and more than a few Mefites, apparently) feel free to malign as crime-ridden ghettos.

From the Times link:... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 10:06 AM on May 12, 2004

This is a wonderful. For New Yorkers interested in seeing a Gutenberg Bible in person (though you can't flip the pages, either by hand or digitally), head over to the New York Public Library's main branch, where there's one on quiet display outside the 3d floor main reading room.

The NYPL gets a kick out of pointing out that the man who brought the bible to the U.S., James Lenox, told U.S. Customs Inspectors that were to remove their hats on seeing it, privileged as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 7:17 PM on May 5, 2004

I wonder how many women have died of heart attacks precisely because the medical community didn't realize that "men women are very different." There's a long history of medical researchers excluding women from medical studies, especially in cardiovascular disease. Hopefully this study will encourage more research in the future into effective therapies for women.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 11:39 AM on April 14, 2004

I don't see anything patently misleading about the statistics. Every time numbers are used, they are identified clearly as PER CAPITA. Jacquilynne points out that "at $14 per capita versus Wyoming's $61, California still got a whole shitload more money than Wyoming in total" as if the article were ignoring the fact that California, in aggregate, got more than Wyoming.

But the article would be misleading only if it failed to note that the dollar amounts were... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 12:17 PM on March 23, 2004

Jacquilynne, the newspaper article bemoaning the 100 percent increase in murders is misleading, b/c it disregards the more pertinent fact that there were still merely 6 murders. But what if in your town, there were only 12 residents? Would it be misleading to write that the murder rate was 2 murders per capita?

The whole thrust of the FFP article was that the funding schemes, when considered per capita, make little sense. That's the pertinent fact.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 9:51 PM on March 23, 2004

Mischief, the savagery described in the article might not fit into your definition of prostitution, but the end result -- a man pays money to have sex with a female -- certainly does. I phrased the FPP not b/c I intended this thread to be read by johns, but to ask whether, since the end result of prostitution and sex slavery is largely the same -- or in any case, any differences might not be apparent to the john -- some adjustment in our attitudes about prostitution, such as greater moral... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 10:30 AM on January 24, 2004

No, GhostintheMachine, you've got it backwards. It's not that "admitting their progeny = more cash," it's that "rejecting their progeny = no more cash." If a college alumn with a history of giving has an 18-year-old child, chances are good that alumn is reaching his peak earning years. Denying that kid admission might that pissed off donor-parent doesn't let you tap his wealth. I know parents who have cut a school out of their wills because their son... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 5:54 PM on January 12, 2004

I read the New Yorker every week, but only occassionally do I ever find a piece as remarkable as Brockmeier's. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I read it last week.
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 12:37 PM on September 7, 2003

The more I read that article the NYT published this morning, the more it seems to me that Blair had a serious personal problem (drugs? booze? illness, mental or physical?) that was affecting his ability to report, write, and goddamn, to just get out of Brooklyn, and so he spun lie after lie to cover up his impairment.

His improprieties are so profound that it would be wrong to cite, as the root of Blair's problem, incompetence that might result from AA promoting an... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 3:01 PM on May 10, 2003

Insuglass, feel free to contribute your viewpoint on Metafilter. You should know, however, that if you write things like, "Many groups, primarily minorities, travel to many precincts late in the afternoon and look for names of voters who have not yet shown up, voting in their place - and then travel on to the next precinct," you will be called a racist. By whom? By me.

Yours was not a conservative viewpoint; yours was not the voice of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 3:13 PM on December 16, 2002

bshort, you beat me to it. I guess I should refresh my page before posting. But I don't think your useful analysis dims my other points.
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 3:14 PM on December 16, 2002

When I worked as a reporter, I'd interview Pierce from time to time for stories on neo-Nazis or on his thoughts about the McVeigh trial (over the telephone, that is -- I'd never seen the man face to face).

Pierce was a smart guy who let racism take over his life. If he taught me one thing, it was how insidious racism could be, how simple the slide was from idly wondering about (or assuming) the race of a criminal suspect mentioned in the newspaper to fantasizing and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 7:41 PM on July 23, 2002

As much as Sturges' essay makes for a good read and a compelling portrait of one person's faith, its central thesis isn't supported by the facts. Evangelical Christianity (including the Church of LDS) is growing much faster than mainline Christianity (consisting mostly of the Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian [U.S.A.] churches), especially in the South, where many sunbelt So. Bap. churches have membership in the thousands and must conduct 4 to 5 services... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hhc5 at 5:06 PM on May 14, 2002