"'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment." Mother Jones is profiling "America's 10 Worst Prisons." Facilities were chosen for the list based on "...three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with reform advocates."
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 14, 2013 -
87 comments
"Them and Them." "Rockland County, New York's East Ramapo school district is a taxpayer-funded system fighting financial insolvency. It is also bitterly divided between the mostly black and Hispanic children and families who use the schools and the Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jewish majority who run the Board of Education and send their children to private, religious schools." Also see:
A District Divided.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Apr 24, 2013 -
168 comments
Brad Pitt's
Make It Right foundation has committed millions to try and revitalize New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward by building 150 affordable, green, storm-resistant homes from designs by the likes of
Gehry Partners,
Morphosis,
Kieran Timberlake, and
McDonough + Partners. Thing is, the ward doesn't have enough residents to attract stores and services, so no one wants to live there. Meanwhile, the city continues to follow through on millions in commitments to rebuild roads on streets where no one now lives, and to erect police stations and schools for a lonely, "barren moonscape" of a neighborhood.
About 90 households, primarily elderly people, are living in futuristic homes that most Americans would covet, and yet there’s not a supermarket--or even a fast food restaurant--for miles.
posted by DirtyOldTown
on Mar 20, 2013 -
36 comments
In 1962, fifty years ago this month, striking union printers shut down four New York City newspapers in resistance to computerized, automated technologies that were being introduced in newsrooms across the country. Five other area papers shut down voluntarily. The strike lasted 114 days and sounded the death knell for four newspapers. For a brief period, New York was a laboratory that demonstrated what can happen when newspapers vanish. Today, new technology is again shaking American newspapers as the Internet drains away more and more advertising revenue. Is this
The Long Good Bye? [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 30, 2012 -
25 comments
Here are some old New Jersey maps, available online. Take a look at this map of southern New Jersey made by Dutch settlers in
1669. The Dutch labeled Cape May "Cabo May." Take a look at Delaware Bay. The Dutch called it Godyn's Bay. This
1709 map shows a division between east and west New Jersey. Probably most interesting of all is
this map from 1795. Here, you can see archaic names of towns. What is now Pennington was once called "Pennytown." Lawrenceville was once called "Maidenhead." What is today called Hightstown was once called "Hiatstown." How about that little island off the southwestern New Jersey coast, Egg Island? Is that even there anymore?
posted by candasartan
on Feb 10, 2012 -
26 comments
I come from Bankers and Businessmen, New Jersey. The dividing line between north and south New Jersey is the
Driscoll Bridge according to one theory. The
Sports Fan rule applies a hypothetical line between where NY Giant fandom ends and Philadelphia Eagle fanaticism begins. Under the
Sandwhich conjecture, South Jersey's northern border is where people stop eating hoagies for lunch and start eating subs.
New Jersey is too nuanced for simple binary categorization. Rigorous tests of the competing theories produce contradictory results (
Monmouth County is part of South Jersey under the Driscoll theory and North Jersey using Sports Fan methodology.) Throwing out the ineffectiveness of northern and southern classifications, a recent Rutgers graduate and current state employee has produced a controversial and
highly accurate visualization of a new Jersey, though some may be offended.
posted by otto42
on Dec 8, 2011 -
73 comments
They’d met in the psychology department at U.C.L.A., where Gonzaga was conducting a study on married couples. Setrakian, who had a master’s in clinical psychology, was the project coördinator. To test their procedures, they needed a man and a woman to impersonate a married couple for multiple sessions. Gonzaga and Setrakian became the impersonators, and fell in love.
An article about
online dating from the New Yorker.
posted by wittgenstein
on Jul 3, 2011 -
18 comments
Have you always longed for a comprehensive list of the shit Kiwis are really into? No, neither have we. Here it is anyway. Kiwianarama
posted by midnightbarber
on May 25, 2011 -
25 comments
