Blog0matique

“An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.”

-Dan Rather

• We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.

by Eric Hoffer

This is why I was late to work today. (Ignore the fact that I’m late to work everyday.)

2,000 years of Christianity and what do you end up with? squad-car radios trying to hold rotting shit together, and what else? tons of wars, little air raids, muggers in streets, knifings, so many insane that you forget it, you just let them run the streets in policeman’s uniforms or out of them.

by Charles Bukowski

Apparently, Mr. Strickland isn’t the only one who’s decided to “just say no” to whoring out our students to abstinence only education for the almighty federal dollar.

According to the New York Times:

At least nine states, by one count, have decided to give up the federal matching funds rather than submit to dictates that undermine sensible sex education. Now there is growing evidence that the programs have no effect on children’s sexual behavior.

Hooray for people finally waking up and realizing the morals have nothing to do with knowledge, and usually are quite opposed to it!

I will admit, though, I was surprised about the little snippet below from this article.

Teens in both groups were just as likely to use condoms or birth control, the report found — countering the fears of critics of abstinence-only education, who say children ignorant of how to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will simply have more unprotected sex.

If abstinence only education is at least not preventing kids from using birth control, I must admit that quells my fears substantially. However, I still believe that creating an environment where kids are afraid to talk about their bodies and actions is unhealthy and helps perpetuate the weird relationship our society has with sex. I’m honestly glad, though, that there’s “only” psychological damage at stake, rather than increasing risk of diseases et al that are sometimes impossible to heal.

I particularly liked this quote:

“We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that’s not just bad public health policy, its bad ethics,” added James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.

More from the NYT article after the jump.

Continue reading ‘More on sex ed’

Here’s what I learned about Rob Van Winkle today on Wikipedia. Of course, you posers may know him better as Vanilla Ice. Yeah, dat’s right.

• To The Extreme became the first #1 album in the US without a vinyl counterpart release.
• Van Winkle toured during 1990 with Alanis Morissette as his opening act. ALANIS MORISSETTE!!
• On July 4, 1994, Van Winkle attempted to commit suicide and made another attempt later that same year, citing drug abuse and anxiety surrounding his flagging career. Poor Ice Man.

In the Freakonoimics Blog, they talked about an article that I thought was pretty interesting, called “Does a Politically Incorrect Street Name Affect Home Value?” Of course, I’m a real estate dork, so this could all be taken with a grain of salt.

I performed an MLS search for homes in Shady Hollow that have sold since 2000 which are located on the aforementioned streets with gun related names. There have been 71 sales on those particular streets. The average sales price is $179,677, which equals $98 per square foot. I then searched the rest of Shady Hollow, filtering out homes newer than 1993 since all of the aforementioned homes are built before 1993 and we don’t want to polute the results with more expensive newer homes. There were 606 sales of homes with less overt western names. The average sales price is $225,713, which equals $103 per square foot. It appears that the homes with politically incorrect names do not sell for as much compared to other homes in the same subdivision.

The interesting thing is, however, that the politically incorrect homes sold in an average of 37 days while the others took an average of 50 days to sell. This seems conter-intuitive based on the price gap. The politically incorrect homes were an average of 1811 square feet while the others averaged 2144 square feet, which would account for the sales price gap. But smaller homes, in general, sell for a higher per square foot price, and in this case they don’t, which suggests something is out of balance.

I think this is a really interesting question, but I do have to wonder if there aren’t some other factors at play, especially considering the mention of the gap in “time to sell”. Generally, you’d expect that more attractive homes spend less time on the market. The fact that the seemingly less attractive homes sold faster makes me wonder if perhaps the reason they sold quickly was that their prices were considered to be a bargain compared to the other comparable homes. Or perhaps the sellers were more motivated and more willing to negotiate on their sale prices, especially if the neighborhood conditions on those streets had recently changed.

I also wonder about the condition and average age of the less attractive homes. Perhaps they were smaller and lower priced because they were all located in an older part of the subdivision. Although the writer did try to account for this by screening out all homes built after 1993, they do not mention if the average age for the “good” homes is any different than the “bad” ones. This could also account for the lack of a higher price per square foot in the smaller homes, which is usually expected.

Anyway, I love data and I love real estate, so this kind of stuff is right up my alley.

Okay. Space not your thing? How about berries and cream?