See if this sounds familiar: (1)  A teenage girl becomes involved in sexual activity that most grownups, regardless of their own sexual behaviour as teens, find shocking and horrific. (2)  The girl’s parent or parents learn of the activity and are utterly devastated. (3)  A family crisis ensues, with outcomes that can range from good to horrendous. (4)  In their struggle to process shocking new information about the child they love, the distraught parent or parents construct a frame to explain and cope with this cognitive dissonance. (5)  The frame invariably posits the existence of a large but hitherto unacknowledged social problem that explains how...

16 January, 2014

Doug McCune uses San Francisco Police Dept. crime reports to map crime in that city as altitude. Narcotics: Prostitution: Various criminal activity: What would an altitude map of Halifax crime look like? Or better still, a North American altitude map of multiple sclerosis, a disease that concentrates in northern latitudes (with Nova Scotia a likely mountain range)? Any data-and-graphics-savvy medical researchers out there want to take this on? Hat tip: Flowing Data....

14 June, 2010