as i reluctantly trundled a decade of sociology journals to the free shelf, my mind raced and ricocheted to all manner of worst-case scenarios. what if everybody dumped their paper journals but electronic access was sharply restricted? just because we have cheap or free electronic access today doesn’t mean that we’ll always have it, does it?

i quickly spun an(other) orwellian movie treatment in which all sociological knowledge was lost, save for the brave efforts of a rag-tag crew of grad students uploading pirate scans of ajs and asr, just one step ahead of the information police. in a cave. with a generator. more seriously, we all act as if services such as jstor or google will be around throughout our careers, and that we will be able to access such information — as well as the great libraries of books being scanned — for free or for cheap. maybe this is the case, maybe not.

i started a blog last year, in part, because i sensed that freedom this good is too good to last. i don’t keep pace with efforts to regulate blogs or net content, but reports like this sometimes give me pause. unfortunately, i don’t know what netcasting is either, just that my president is calling to regulate it.

in the end, i made the same stability assumptions as everyone else and gave away my old journals. that said, i suspect there’s a non-zero probability that what’s free is gonna cost, and it probably won’t be long before the doors start closing.

as i reluctantly trundled a decade of sociology journals to the free shelf, my mind raced and ricocheted to all manner of worst-case scenarios. what if everybody dumped their paper journals but electronic access was sharply restricted? just because we have cheap or free electronic access today doesn’t mean that we’ll always have it, does it?

i quickly spun an(other) orwellian movie treatment in which all sociological knowledge was lost, save for the brave efforts of a rag-tag crew of grad students uploading pirate scans of ajs and asr, just one step ahead of the information police. in a cave. with a generator. more seriously, we all act as if services such as jstor or google will be around throughout our careers, and that we will be able to access such information — as well as the great libraries of books being scanned — for free or for cheap. maybe this is the case, maybe not.

i started a blog last year, in part, because i sensed that freedom this good is too good to last. i don’t keep pace with efforts to regulate blogs or net content, but reports like this sometimes give me pause. unfortunately, i don’t know what netcasting is either, just that my president is calling to regulate it.

in the end, i made the same stability assumptions as everyone else and gave away my old journals. that said, i suspect there’s a non-zero probability that what’s free is gonna cost, and it probably won’t be long before the doors start closing.

the tacoma news tribune recently ran a couple of interesting stories essentially showing a before-and-after look at life in gangs. the before story features four young teenage boys discussing the allure and glamour of gangs. all of them have friends and family members who are in gangs; two of them are hoping to join soon, the other two are doing their best to avoid the gang life.

the boys anxious to join gangs anticipate proving their worth: “They talk ecstatically about getting jumped-in, a gang initiation ritual that involves beating the newcomer for several minutes. They contemplate the crimes they’ll commit to gain status. Attack someone? Knock over a store?”

the boys hoping to avoid gangs offer a different perspective: “’I’m going to go to school and do what I have to do,’ is the message they send to friends who’ll listen. Both said they are upfront about telling friends they think gangs are a waste of time.”

this literally hits close to home for me because i have a 14-year-old nephew growing up in this neighborhood and starting a new school next month. he’s fortunate to have two loving parents (and a criminologist aunt), but peer pressure is absolutely crushing at that age, so i think there’s reason for concern.

the second story, published the next day, details the life of Diamond Laurice Boyd, co-founder of the hilltop crips. it’s an interesting and thoughtful account of a life that went wrong. boyd, 33-years-old, is currently serving nearly 30 years at mcneil island corrections center; his story is one of regret. “To today’s young gangsters, he sends a message: Get out of the life. There is no glory in it – only a road where freedom ends…his legacy is a lesson: It’s not that hard to fall. One step, then another and another – soon, all the chances are gone.”

boyd has seen his friends and family members killed; his brother, who co-founded the gang with him, is serving 24 years in a california prison. boyd blames himself for his choices–he had love and opportunities throughout his childhood–and he claims that he was the black sheep of his family. there is no happy ending to his story. at earliest, he’ll be nearly 50 when he gets out of prison. his five children are growing up in his old neighborhood; they see their father maybe twice a month. boyd worries about his sons, knowing the kind of pressure they’ll face, the decisions they’ll soon have to make. “He has a nightmare, a vision of torment: his sons, locked up with him. He will not permit it. He will block it with his own life. He will tell them how things happen. ‘My boys, they really listen to me,’ he says. ‘They really listen to me.’”

his sons may listen to him now, but they will soon be teenagers facing peer pressure and tempted by the glamour of gangs. will his story and his regret be enough to deter them from following in his footsteps and his legacy? will his sons be strong enough to break the cycle? what, if anything, can the community do to help?

the tacoma news tribune recently ran a couple of interesting stories essentially showing a before-and-after look at life in gangs. the before story features four young teenage boys discussing the allure and glamour of gangs. all of them have friends and family members who are in gangs; two of them are hoping to join soon, the other two are doing their best to avoid the gang life.

the boys anxious to join gangs anticipate proving their worth: “They talk ecstatically about getting jumped-in, a gang initiation ritual that involves beating the newcomer for several minutes. They contemplate the crimes they’ll commit to gain status. Attack someone? Knock over a store?”

the boys hoping to avoid gangs offer a different perspective: “’I’m going to go to school and do what I have to do,’ is the message they send to friends who’ll listen. Both said they are upfront about telling friends they think gangs are a waste of time.”

this literally hits close to home for me because i have a 14-year-old nephew growing up in this neighborhood and starting a new school next month. he’s fortunate to have two loving parents (and a criminologist aunt), but peer pressure is absolutely crushing at that age, so i think there’s reason for concern.

the second story, published the next day, details the life of Diamond Laurice Boyd, co-founder of the hilltop crips. it’s an interesting and thoughtful account of a life that went wrong. boyd, 33-years-old, is currently serving nearly 30 years at mcneil island corrections center; his story is one of regret. “To today’s young gangsters, he sends a message: Get out of the life. There is no glory in it – only a road where freedom ends…his legacy is a lesson: It’s not that hard to fall. One step, then another and another – soon, all the chances are gone.”

boyd has seen his friends and family members killed; his brother, who co-founded the gang with him, is serving 24 years in a california prison. boyd blames himself for his choices–he had love and opportunities throughout his childhood–and he claims that he was the black sheep of his family. there is no happy ending to his story. at earliest, he’ll be nearly 50 when he gets out of prison. his five children are growing up in his old neighborhood; they see their father maybe twice a month. boyd worries about his sons, knowing the kind of pressure they’ll face, the decisions they’ll soon have to make. “He has a nightmare, a vision of torment: his sons, locked up with him. He will not permit it. He will block it with his own life. He will tell them how things happen. ‘My boys, they really listen to me,’ he says. ‘They really listen to me.’”

his sons may listen to him now, but they will soon be teenagers facing peer pressure and tempted by the glamour of gangs. will his story and his regret be enough to deter them from following in his footsteps and his legacy? will his sons be strong enough to break the cycle? what, if anything, can the community do to help?

when i moaned that my new office wasn’t air conditioned on sundays, my medsoc friend elaine sent me this twenty-author piece from international journal of obesity, as summarized in slate.

the authors, s. w. keith, d. t. redden, p. t. katzmarzyk, m. m. boggiano, e. c. hanlon, r. m. benca, d. ruden, a. pietrobelli, j. l. barger, k. r. fontaine, c. wang, l. j. aronne, s. m. wright, m. baskin, n. v. dhurandhar, m. c. lijoi, c. m. grilo, m. deluca, a. o. westfall and d. b. allison (do you think professors lijoi and grilo fought over the coveted 16th author position?) suggest some non-obvious contributors to the secular increase in obesity, including diminished sleep, chemicals that mess up our hormones, declining tobacco use, and antidepressants.

perhaps most intriguingly, they point to heating and air conditioning as a potential culprit. if ambient temperatures are a stable 70ish degrees year round, we needn’t expend energy to maintain our body temperature. plus, when the temp hits triple digits in minnesota, we really shouldn’t be all that hungry, right? i’m hedging my bets, so i made sure to fix the office AC.

when i moaned that my new office wasn’t air conditioned on sundays, my medsoc friend elaine sent me this twenty-author piece from international journal of obesity, as summarized in slate.

the authors, s. w. keith, d. t. redden, p. t. katzmarzyk, m. m. boggiano, e. c. hanlon, r. m. benca, d. ruden, a. pietrobelli, j. l. barger, k. r. fontaine, c. wang, l. j. aronne, s. m. wright, m. baskin, n. v. dhurandhar, m. c. lijoi, c. m. grilo, m. deluca, a. o. westfall and d. b. allison (do you think professors lijoi and grilo fought over the coveted 16th author position?) suggest some non-obvious contributors to the secular increase in obesity, including diminished sleep, chemicals that mess up our hormones, declining tobacco use, and antidepressants.

perhaps most intriguingly, they point to heating and air conditioning as a potential culprit. if ambient temperatures are a stable 70ish degrees year round, we needn’t expend energy to maintain our body temperature. plus, when the temp hits triple digits in minnesota, we really shouldn’t be all that hungry, right? i’m hedging my bets, so i made sure to fix the office AC.

this looks like a nice opportunity. the minnesota judicial center has a job opening that might fit a very talented recent grad with good quantitative skills. the deadline is 7/31/06.

JUD RESEARCH ANALYST 1
$ 18.73-$ 29.02 hourly, $ 39,108-$ 60,593 annually

this looks like a nice opportunity. the minnesota judicial center has a job opening that might fit a very talented recent grad with good quantitative skills. the deadline is 7/31/06.

JUD RESEARCH ANALYST 1
$ 18.73-$ 29.02 hourly, $ 39,108-$ 60,593 annually

as a social scientist, i sometimes get frustrated when i hear academics lament that “nothing ever changes” when they have good data in front of them screaming that lots of things change. i recently heard the argument that racial discrimination at the polls is “as bad or worse” than it had been during passage of the voting rights act of 1965. i’m no expert in this area, but hasn’t there been a significant narrowing of the white / african american turnout gap from 1964 to 2004? things might not change as we want them to and they might not change as quickly as we would prefer, but they do change.

so, here is some good news about a crime of great concern. after seeing a washington post article on the long-term decline in rape in the united states, i thought i’d take a closer look at the data. according to the best available victimization data, rates of rape have dropped from 2.5 per thousand in 1973 to .4 per thousand in 2004. although 40 rapes per 100,000 persons age 12 and over is still way too many, an 84 percent drop in a terrible crime is good news indeed.

although reporting rates have increased over the years, most rapes still go unreported. that’s why the national crime victimization survey data shown above are a better indicator than the fbi’s uniform crime reports, which are based on calls to police. the ucr shows an increase in reports of forcible rape during the 1980s but a steady decline since the early 1990s, from a peak of 43 per 100,000 total population in 1992 to a rate of approximately 32 per 100,000 since 2000.

though the long-term downward trend is more pronounced in the ncvs, by either measure rape has dropped precipitously in the past fifteen years. when i teach differential association and social learning theories of crime, i often ask students whether they encounter “definitions favorable to rape” (many can relate such experiences) or how rapists might employ techniques of neutralization based upon the tacit approval of rape in the larger culture (there are no shortage of examples here, either). as rape has become statistically more rare in the united states, my sense is that it has also become more deviant in a normative sense.

although rape can and should be reduced further, i’d hope that there will be some downward rigidity to this trend. i don’t see an end to rape anywhere in sight, but i’d like to think some more-or-less durable changes in u.s. gender relations over the past few generations will keep rates from rising again. but then i realize that characterizing social change as more-or-less durable ain’t that far from the stability assumptions of those who say “nothing ever changes.” so, i’ll just admit that i don’t know what the future holds, report the good news, and suggest there’s cause for vigilance as well as recognition.

the minneapolis civil rights department is calling for participation on two important civil rights boards:

I am sending out this email to encourage those in the Minneapolis community interested in Civil Rights and the police accountability issues to apply for the open positions with the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission and the Minneapolis Civilian Police Review Authority. Both of these organizations are in need of individuals of color!!! If you are interested in these opportunities, please visit the links or feel free to contact the Minneapolis Civil Rights Department at 612.673.2031!!! Applications are due on July 28, 2006. Please forward this email on to anyone interested in the opportunity.

Thank you,

Michael K. Browne
Interim Director
Mpls. Civil Rights Dep’t