An interesting representation of flu pandemics (full size found here) throughout history.
The US National Archives has a wonderful set of images (like the one below) related to The Influenza Epidemic of 1918.
Another example of hair removal and standards of female beauty. Not at all subtle encouragement for women in the new ad from Schick/Wilkinson Sword razors for women. Shaving apparently makes you happy enough to sing songs with obvious innuendo.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/rfed1DT1PGA[/youtube]
From the Pew Center on the States report, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, “Adding up all probationers and parolees, prisoners and jail inmates, you’ll find America now has more than 7.3 million adults under some form of correctional control. That whopping figure is more than the populations of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas put together, and larger than the populations of 38 states and the District of Columbia. During Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, 1 in every 77 adults was under the control of the correctional system in the United States. Now, 25 years later, it is 1 in 31, or 3.2 percent of all adults.”
See the press release for a quick summary and the full report for much more data.
“Polls have always shown that the vast majority of Americans believe religion is “an important part of their daily lives” — 65% in a recent Gallup poll versus just 34% who said it wasn’t.
But that national average obscures a stunning variety by region.”
More precise data can be found at Gallup. In the comments, Jay pointed out work by John Sides at The Monkey Cage, that re-maps the data using absolute levels and accounts for a full range of responses, showing that “even in the least religious states, there’s plenty of that old-time religion.”
Given that the dot-plot and map use the same data, it could make for an interesting debate on how to present data and the implications of differing analytic categories.
I stumbled across a blog posting with the provocative title, As an Athiest, I Prefer Hockey that contained the following image.
I realized I had watched the Super Bowl and likely seen this a similar image. I have probably seen images of athletes gathered in prayer hundreds of times, to the point where they have become a taken-for-granted aspect of sport. It could be an interesting start to a discussion of religion and sport. Is this concentrated on sports that are primarily played in the US? Or only particular team sports? I don’t recall ever seen such prayer groups in basketball. Are such sights common in soccer or cricket?
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has a new column, The Data, in Esquire. In his innaugural article, he revisits how Obama won the election, looking specifically at rural/suburban/urban voters.
Immigration and migration are a modern-reality of global social transformation. I don’t often see as much discussion of refugees however. A nice infographic via Good Magazine.
Found via Digg. Though I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the letter (found here), it is rather interesting.
Text:
Miss Mary T. Ford
Searcy,
ArkansasDear Miss Ford,
Your letter of recent date has been received in the Inking and Painting Department for reply.
Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.
The only work open to women consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to the directions.
In order to apply for a position as “Inker” or “Painter” it is necessary that one appear at the Studio, bringing samples of pen and ink and water color work. It would not be advisable to come to Hollywood with the above specifically in view, as there are really very few openings in comparison with the number of girls who apply.
Yours very truly,
WALT DISNEY PRODUCTIONS, LTD.