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Posted on Architizer this morning.
 
I'm having a problem with Google Maps. I've stopped working on my MBTA map becuase if I right clicked on a point in my line to remove it, it zooms out. Every time I make a right click (not double, just single!) it zooms out. I have no way of removing points unless I delete entire lines. I thought maybe it was just because my map was getting too big and bulky, causing glitches. But I just started working on a highway consolidation project and it's doing the same thing.

Anyone know what to do?
 
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Just for the hell of it today took the commuter boat from Rowes Wharf to Hingham Shipyard and back. Had a few drinks at Beer Works and Alma Nova in the Hingham Shipyard. Lots of sunbathing cougars at the Alma patio (if you like that sort of thing.)
$12 bucks round trip. They have bars on the boats too.

Nice views of the harbor and skyline.
 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...45553135009870.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

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Hard Times, Fewer Crimes

The economic downturn has not led to more crime?contrary to the experts' predictions. So what explains the disconnect? Big changes in American culture, says James Q. Wilson.



By JAMES Q. WILSON

RV-AD044_CRIME4_G_20110527175011.jpg
Getty Images A NEW YORK CITY police officer stands outside Grand Central Terminal on May 2. Policing has become more disciplined, focused and data-driven over the past two decades.



When the FBI announced last week that violent crime in the U.S. had reached a 40-year low in 2010, many criminologists were perplexed. It had been a dismal year economically, and the standard view in the field, echoed for decades by the media, is that unemployment and poverty are strongly linked to crime. The argument is straightforward: When less legal work is available, more illegal "work" takes place.
The economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate, gave the standard view its classic formulation in the 1960s. He argued that crime is a rational act, committed when the criminal's "expected utility" exceeds that of using his time and other resources in pursuit of alternative activities, such as leisure or legitimate work. Observation may appear to bear this theory out. After all, neighborhoods with elevated crime rates tend to be those where poverty and unemployment are high as well.
But there have long been difficulties with the notion that unemployment causes crime. For one thing, the 1960s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when crime fell. And during the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25%, the crime rate in many cities went down. Among the explanations offered for this puzzle is that unemployment and poverty were so common during the Great Depression that families became closer, devoted themselves to mutual support, and kept young people, who might be more inclined to criminal behavior, under constant adult supervision. These days, because many families are weaker and children are more independent, we would not see the same effect, so certain criminologists continue to suggest that a 1% increase in the unemployment rate should produce as much as a 2% increase in property-crime rates.
Yet when the recent recession struck, that didn't happen. As the national unemployment rate doubled from around 5% to nearly 10%, the property-crime rate, far from spiking, fell significantly. For 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported an 8% drop in the nationwide robbery rate and a 17% reduction in the auto-theft rate from the previous year. Big-city reports show the same thing. Between 2008 and 2010, New York City experienced a 4% decline in the robbery rate and a 10% fall in the burglary rate. Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines.
RV-AD033_PRISON_D_20110527015737.jpg

ZUMAPRESS.com AN INMATE in his bunk in Santa Ana, Calif. Some researchers say that higher rates of imprisonment can explain a quarter or more of the drop in crime.

Some scholars argue that the unemployment rate is too crude a measure of economic frustration to prove the connection between unemployment and crime, since it estimates only the percentage of the labor force that is looking for work and hasn't found it. But other economic indicators tell much the same story. The labor-force participation rate lets us determine the percentage of the labor force that is neither working nor looking for work?individuals who are, in effect, detached from the labor force. These people should be especially vulnerable to criminal inclinations, if the bad-economy-leads-to-crime theory holds. In 2008, though, even as crime was falling, only about half of men aged 16 to 24 (who are disproportionately likely to commit crimes) were in the labor force, down from over two-thirds in 1988, and a comparable decline took place among African-American men (who are also disproportionately likely to commit crimes).
The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index offers another way to assess the link between the economy and crime. This measure rests on thousands of interviews asking people how their financial situations have changed over the last year, how they think the economy will do during the next year, and about their plans for buying durable goods. The index measures the way people feel, rather than the objective conditions they face. It has proved to be a very good predictor of stock-market behavior and, for a while, of the crime rate, which tended to climb when people lost confidence. When the index collapsed in 2009 and 2010, the stock market predictably went down with it?but this time, the crime rate went down, too.
So we have little reason to ascribe the recent crime decline to jobs, the labor market or consumer sentiment. The question remains: Why is the crime rate falling?

One obvious answer is that many more people are in prison than in the past. Experts differ on the size of the effect, but I think that William Spelman and Steven Levitt have it about right in believing that greater incarceration can explain about one-quarter or more of the crime decline. Yes, many thoughtful observers think that we put too many offenders in prison for too long. For some criminals, such as low-level drug dealers and former inmates returned to prison for parole violations, that may be so. But it's true nevertheless that when prisoners are kept off the street, they can attack only one another, not you or your family.
Imprisonment's crime-reduction effect helps to explain why the burglary, car-theft and robbery rates are lower in the U.S. than in England. The difference results not from the willingness to send convicted offenders to prison, which is about the same in both countries, but in how long America keeps them behind bars. For the same offense, you will spend more time in prison here than in England. Still, prison can't be the sole reason for the recent crime drop in this country: Canada has seen roughly the same decline in crime, but its imprisonment rate has been relatively flat for at least two decades.
Another possible reason for reduced crime is that potential victims may have become better at protecting themselves by equipping their homes with burglar alarms, putting extra locks on their cars and moving into safer buildings or even safer neighborhoods. We have only the faintest idea, however, about how common these trends are or what effects on crime they may have.
Policing has become more disciplined over the last two decades; these days, it tends to be driven by the desire to reduce crime, rather than simply to maximize arrests, and that shift has reduced crime rates. One of the most important innovations is what has been called hot-spot policing. The great majority of crimes tend to occur in the same places. Put active police resources in those areas instead of telling officers to drive around waiting for 911 calls, and you can bring down crime. The hot-spot idea helped to increase the effectiveness of the New York Police Department's Compstat program, which uses computerized maps to pinpoint where crime is taking place and enables police chiefs to hold precinct captains responsible for targeting those areas.
Researchers continue to test and refine hot-spot policing. After analyzing data from over 7,000 police arrivals at various locations in Minneapolis, the criminologists Lawrence Sherman and David Weisburd showed that for every minute an officer spent at a spot, the length of time without a crime there after the officer departed went up?until the officer had been gone for more than 15 minutes. After that, the crime rate went up. The police can make the best use of their time by staying at a hot spot for a while, moving on, and returning after 15 minutes.
Some cities now use a computer-based system for mapping traffic accidents and crime rates. They have noticed that the two measures tend to coincide: Where there are more accidents, there is more crime. In Shawnee, Kan., the police spent a lot more time in the 4% of the city where one-third of the crime occurred: Burglaries fell there by 60% (even though in the city as a whole they fell by only 8%), and traffic accidents went down by 17%.
There may also be a medical reason for the decline in crime. For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent. In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency required oil companies to stop putting lead in gasoline. At the same time, lead in paint was banned for any new home (though old buildings still have lead paint, which children can absorb).
Tests have shown that the amount of lead in Americans' blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991. A 2007 study by the economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes contended that the reduction in gasoline lead produced more than half of the decline in violent crime during the 1990s in the U.S. and might bring about greater declines in the future. Another economist, Rick Nevin, has made the same argument for other nations.
Another shift that has probably helped to bring down crime is the decrease in heavy cocaine use in many states. Measuring cocaine use is no easy matter; one has to infer it from interviews or from hospital-admission rates. Between 1992 and 2009, the number of admissions for cocaine or crack use fell by nearly two-thirds. In 1999, 9.8% of 12th-grade students said that they had tried cocaine; by 2010, that figure had fallen to 5.5%.
What we really need to know, though, is not how many people tried coke but how many are heavy users. Casual users who regard coke as a party drug are probably less likely to commit serious crimes than heavy users who may resort to theft and violence to feed their craving. But a study by Jonathan Caulkins at Carnegie Mellon University found that the total demand for cocaine dropped between 1988 and 2010, with a sharp decline among both light and heavy users.
Blacks still constitute the core of America's crime problem. But the African-American crime rate, too, has been falling, probably because of the same non-economic factors behind falling crime in general: imprisonment, policing, environmental changes and less cocaine abuse.


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Knowing the exact crime rate of any ethnic or racial group isn't easy, since most crimes don't result in arrest or conviction, and those that do may be an unrepresentative fraction of all crimes. Nevertheless, we do know the racial characteristics of those who have been arrested for crimes, and they show that the number of blacks arrested has been falling. Barry Latzer of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice has demonstrated that between 1980 and 2005, arrests of blacks for homicide and other violent crimes fell by about half nationwide.
It's also suggestive that in the five New York City precincts where the population is at least 80% black, the murder rate fell by 78% between 1990 and 2000. In the black neighborhoods of Chicago, burglary fell by 52%, robbery by 62%, and homicide by 33% between 1991 and 2003. A skeptic might retort that all these seeming gains were merely the result of police officers' giving up and no longer recording crimes in black neighborhoods. But opinion surveys in Chicago show that, among blacks, fear of crime was cut in half during the same period.
One can cite further evidence of a turnaround in black crime. Researchers at the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that in 1980, arrests of young blacks outnumbered arrests of whites more than six to one. By 2002, the gap had been closed to just under four to one.
Drug use among blacks has changed even more dramatically than it has among the population as a whole. As Mr. Latzer points out?and his argument is confirmed by a study by Bruce D. Johnson, Andrew Golub and Eloise Dunlap?among 13,000 people arrested in Manhattan between 1987 and 1997, a disproportionate number of whom were black, those born between 1948 and 1969 were heavily involved with crack cocaine, but those born after 1969 used very little crack and instead smoked marijuana.
The reason was simple: The younger African-Americans had known many people who used crack and other hard drugs and wound up in prisons, hospitals and morgues. The risks of using marijuana were far less serious. This shift in drug use, if the New York City experience is borne out in other locations, can help to explain the fall in black inner-city crime rates after the early 1990s.
John Donohue and Steven Levitt have advanced an additional explanation for the reduction in black crime: the legalization of abortion, which resulted in black children's never being born into circumstances that would have made them likelier to become criminals. I have ignored that explanation because it remains a strongly contested finding, challenged by two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and by various academics.
At the deepest level, many of these shifts, taken together, suggest that crime in the United States is falling?even through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression?because of a big improvement in the culture. The cultural argument may strike some as vague, but writers have relied on it in the past to explain both the Great Depression's fall in crime and the explosion of crime during the sixties. In the first period, on this view, people took self-control seriously; in the second, self-expression?at society's cost?became more prevalent. It is a plausible case.
Culture creates a problem for social scientists like me, however. We do not know how to study it in a way that produces hard numbers and testable theories. Culture is the realm of novelists and biographers, not of data-driven social scientists. But we can take some comfort, perhaps, in reflecting that identifying the likely causes of the crime decline is even more important than precisely measuring it.
?Mr. Wilson is a senior fellow at the Clough Center at Boston College and taught previously at Harvard, UCLA and Pepperdine. His many books include "The Moral Sense," "Bureaucracy," and "Thinking About Crime." This essay is adapted from the forthcoming issue of City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute.


Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
 
BostonUrbEx said:
I'm having a problem with Google Maps. I've stopped working on my MBTA map becuase if I right clicked on a point in my line to remove it, it zooms out. Every time I make a right click (not double, just single!) it zooms out. I have no way of removing points unless I delete entire lines. I thought maybe it was just because my map was getting too big and bulky, causing glitches. But I just started working on a highway consolidation project and it's doing the same thing.

Anyone know what to do?
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They recently cut a bunch of features, so I alsos topped work on my map. You can no longer search for maps, and you can no longer overlay maps on top of each other. So before, you could check "MBTA Map" and have those lines appear, and then click "Highway map" and have that ALSO appear. Now? One at a time.

Its major BS.
 
jass said:
They recently cut a bunch of features, so I alsos topped work on my map. You can no longer search for maps, and you can no longer overlay maps on top of each other. So before, you could check "MBTA Map" and have those lines appear, and then click "Highway map" and have that ALSO appear. Now? One at a time.

Its major BS.
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Yeah, I remember when you could do that, too... It was kind of annoying that they did that...

I sure hope they didn't remove the feature to delete a point on a line, ugh...

EDIT: I just tried using Google Chrome. A single right click zooms out with Chrome too. They removed the right click menu?! -.- Ugh... maps are too much a pain in the ass to do now...
 
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BostonUrbEx said:
Yeah, I remember when you could do that, too... It was kind of annoying that they did that...

I sure hope they didn't remove the feature to delete a point on a line, ugh...

EDIT: I just tried using Google Chrome. A single right click zooms out with Chrome too. They removed the right click menu?! -.- Ugh... maps are too much a pain in the ass to do now...
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Yeah, same happens to me. Right click on the map opens the menu, but on a line, it zooms out.
 
The WSJ column, above, was very educational.

In a nutshell, "experts" believe that crime continues to fall, even in a bad economy, because of one or more of these:

* Better technology available to police departments
* Many criminals already locked up
* Reduction in usage of crack and cocaine
* Better crime prevention methods (burglar alarms, car security systems)
* No more lead in household paint

The last one was right out of left field, for me. WTF?

Here's the explanation:

There may also be a medical reason for the decline in crime. For decades, doctors have known that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent. In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency required oil companies to stop putting lead in gasoline. At the same time, lead in paint was banned for any new home (though old buildings still have lead paint, which children can absorb).

Tests have shown that the amount of lead in Americans' blood fell by four-fifths between 1975 and 1991. A 2007 study by the economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes contended that the reduction in gasoline lead produced more than half of the decline in violent crime during the 1990s in the U.S. and might bring about greater declines in the future.
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I have to say, I'm a little surprised this story of rather extreme community hysterics never found its way to archBoston, then again there's probably some asshole here who sympathizes with these low-rent crackpots.

Police arrest 3, abruptly end Whole Foods' first meeting with Jamaica Plain residents

By Matt Rocheleau, Town Correspondent

The heated debate over Whole Foods? plans to move in to Jamaica Plain reached an unprecedented peak Thursday night when three people were arrested at a community meeting, prompting police to end the forum nearly a half-hour earlier than planned.

It was the first time Whole Foods officials met face-to-face with the neighborhood that has been divided over the issue -- despite some more recent signs of unity -- since plans for a store in Hyde Square were first announced nearly five months ago.

The crowd of more than 300 listened to company executives calmly at the start before repeated outbursts began. Neighbors shouted down one another and Whole Foods officials alike, at times with name-calling and personal attacks.

Opponents to the national grocer?s arrival donned light blue T-shirts reading ?I support an affordable and diverse JP? and waved blue-colored flyers passed out by leaders of the Whose Foods grassroots group beforehand. Supporters of the Whole Foods store countered with yellow-colored flyers.

Several police officers on detail were active from the meeting's start, ushering all attendees standing in the aisles to find a seat in packed the auditorium at the Curley K-8 School, a few blocks from where Whole Foods plans to open a store in late fall, replacing the former Hi-Lo Foods.

The Latino-specialty grocer closed after four decades when its owners, Newton-based Knapp Foods, leased the building to Whole Foods.

After hanging an anti-Whole Foods banner that said: ?Displacement: What is Whole Foods going to do about it?? from a balcony seating area, two attendees and neighborhood residents, Chloe Frankel, 27, and Andrew Murray, 22, were arrested.

The banner unveiling led to an eruption of chants against the supermarket company?s intentions and dozens of others then headed for the exits in apparent disgust. On their way out, some stopped to shake the hands of Whole Foods representatives who sat facing the crowd in a row of chairs set up at the front of the auditorium.

Police said the balcony area had been cordoned off and people were advised specifically not to venture up there. Boston police spokesman Officer Eddy Chrispin said that when police then asked the duo to leave the building, they refused to cooperate and were arrested on charges of disrupting a public assembly and trespassing.

Later, another activist attempted to hold up a second banner in the middle of the auditorium?s main seating area. The sign was not fully unveiled, but activists later said it read ?One meeting is not enough.? After a brief tug-of-war between several audience members and police officers, who attempted to confiscate the banner, Peter Blaiklock, 49, of Jamaica Plain was arrested on a charge of disrupting a public assembly.

Several moments later, police shut down the meeting as around one dozen officers stood outside the school's front entrance to help disperse the crowd. Several cruisers lined Centre Street with their lights flashing.

"Ultimately officers deemed it appropriate to discontinue the meeting concerned about the ability to maintain a peaceful environment for the safety of all in attendance," police said in a statement Friday.

A small group of residents then journeyed to the District E-13 police station and marched in a circular pattern on the sidewalk outside to protest the arrests. The three arrested at the forum were released one after the other to applause, hugs and megaphone chants around two hours after the meeting had been cut short. Each of those arrested will later be summonsed to West Roxbury District Court, police said.

When asked if she felt she did anything to warrant her arrest, Frankel said: ?Of course not.?

?We were just exercising our right to free speech,? she continued.

Blailock declined to comment on the specifics of his arrest other than confirming he was charged and saying he felt the meeting was productive overall. Murray declined to comment.

Each of the arrestees wore one of the light-blue T-shirts handed out by the Whose Foods group before the meeting.

?It was unfortunate that the meeting had to end the way it did,? said Whole Foods spokeswoman Heather McCready by phone after the meeting ended. ?We thought there was a good, healthy dialogue going on,? but also noted that police said they felt there was sufficient safety concern to abruptly empty the auditorium.

The spokeswoman said the company plans to meet with the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC), which in early March passed, by one vote, a measure to publicly oppose Whole Foods? plans and shortly thereafter formed an ad hoc committee to explore the issue.

?We received a lot of information and feedback that we plan to closely consider,? she added.

The JPNC ad-hoc committee is expected to issue a report along with recommendations that are expected to include asking Whole Foods to sign a community benefits agreement. McCready said the company would need to first see and review such a potential agreement before commenting on the matter.

As the auditorium was being vacated, Helen Matthews, a spokeswoman for the Whose Foods group, said the presentation by Whole Foods officials was underwhelming, and of the arrests: ?I?m in shock ? There never was any intention for anything illegal to be done, and nothing illegal was done.?

Whose Foods member Martha Rodriguez, a 25-year-old Jamaica Plain resident of 14 years, waited outside the District E-13 police station with her 5-year-old son, Abraham.

?I knew there was a lot of tension in the neighborhood over this issue, but I never expected this kind intensity,? said Rodriguez, one of several residents who had a chance to speak before the meeting ended. ?It wasn?t fair. They were just holding signs ? I think the police were a little too aggressive and defensive.?

On the school?s front steps moments after the forum had been shut down, District 6 Councilor Matt O?Malley expressed dismay at the way the crowd interrupted one another and said he was surprised there were arrests.

?It?s certainly been a contentious issue,? he said, but also noted that there were also moments in between when the crowd was respectful and listened to one another: ?I hope for more of that the next time we meet over this issue. I still feel people can come together to find some common ground here.?

Standing beside O?Malley, another attendee, Susan, said she?s lived in the neighborhood for 35 years and was taken aback at how the meeting went and ended.

?I?ve never seen anything like this at any community meeting in Jamaica Plain,? she said, noting that while the discussions grew chaotic at times, ?there was nothing dangerous or violent that happened.?

On Friday, JP for All, a grassroots group that supports Whole Foods' plans for JP released this statement: "There were a great number of us in the room tonight that were excited to hear that issues such as parking, traffic, public transportation, after-hours parking, providing healthy foods to children, and product availability are being addressed by Whole Foods. It?s unfortunate that a community meeting designed to address neighborhood concerns and solutions to address those concerns was hijacked by a group of people who have no other plan than to cause a distraction. We look forward to hearing more about Whole Foods plans and how we can work together to build a long-term partnership that will benefit Hyde Square and Jamaica Plain."

Before the forum was dismissed, Whole Foods officials had presented the company?s general vision and practices and introduced some of the JP store?s management. Each audience member was welcomed with a reusable shopping bag placed on each seat that contained informational flyers, a copy of the company?s spring magazine and post cards for residents to provide the company with product suggestions for the Hyde Square store.

Residents then lined up behind microphones set up in the two different aisles and spoke both in opposition and support ? with frequent interruptions from fellow crowd members. Comments were directed to company representatives both in support and opposition to the store?s plans.

Some asked why Whole Foods had not held such a meeting sooner with the community. Company officials said that news of their impending arrival broke sooner than they had anticipated and before a lease had been signed.

After the 20-year lease was inked and their plans for a store were confirmed through an announcement, officials explained that the company followed its usual protocol for store openings by waiting until store management and other concrete details about the supermarket were finalized before meeting directly with the neighborhood.

Whole Foods also addressed traffic and parking related concerns saying that while the store and its parking lot are both relatively small, they have secured 20 additional overflow parking spaces at a lot at the adjacent MSPCA-Angell headquarters.

Once the store has a chance to gauge its sales volume, it may allow its parking lot to be shared by area business during non-peak hours and when the store's closed.

The company said the store?s location makes it particularly appealing for both shoppers and workers who can walk, bike or take public-transit there. Additionally, the store will offer home delivery service.

While officials said the Centre Street building?s interior will be overhauled, the building?s exterior will remain almost entirely the same as it looks now, with the exception of installing Whole Foods? name and logo, which will be displayed across a set of non-contiguous rectangular signs reminiscent of the former Hi-Lo.
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http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/jamaica_plain/2011/06/police_arrest_3_shut_down_whol.html
 
If you had lived in the South End during the 80s and 90s you would have seen the same stupidity. There's some nutjobs that really want a neighborhood to stay a shithole for the benefit of cheap rent or simply because they like it that way. Many of the anti-gentrification people in my area preferred waist deep trash in the alley and half the buildings being boarded up simply because it kept their cheap rooming house residences in operation and drugs readily available.

In J.P. the scenario is playing itself all over again, though it's even worse: People on government subsidy want to tell private property owners how they want the neighborhood run because of an entitlement culture. Then there are these stupid rich kids that want to pretend they're "slumming it" and want the neighborhood to stay "edgy" or "gritty" simply to have something to gloat about in conversations with fellow assholes. Lot's of brain dead "anarchists" that don't understand what an "anarchist" are also taking the opportunity to make trouble out of a sense of playing revolutionary.
 
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