Mapping America: Every City, Every Block

I was doing my NY Times perusing and I discovered a fascinating feature, for knowledge's sake. This is census information compiled from 2005-2009. You have the ability to put in your zip code and see the population distribution along with smaller radius'. If you just had the thought, "Eh that's cool but I'll keep going", do both of us a favor and just take a peek at it and you'll be intrigued by something. For instance I looked at the disparity between the opposite sides of hollowed 8Mile Road:


NY TIMES: MAPPING AMERICA

8Mile is the horizontal line that separates the coagulated blue dots from the liberated green dots, with a few other colors finding space amidst the open suburban range. I'm sure every region has its own idiosynchrisies, check your own out.

PLEASE check this out!

http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map?ref=nyregion

I humbly beg you to check this out. Many of you know i like to peruse the NYTimes.com for multiple reasons, but i digress. This is one of the coolest features i've seen in a while from a news site. There is an interactive map that plots homicide points on the map via blue dot, as information trickles in daily. You can view the results by all years, specific years, or past 30 days. You can also view results by race of perpatrator/victim, gender, age, sex and other options to inform you on exactly what is taking place as far as homicides in NY. If you hover over the dot it tells you all the info, please check it out.

Not So Friendly Fire

I don’t want to put it like this but…another NY police officer fatally shot by one of his own. “The slain officer, Omar J. Edwards, 25, who was assigned to patrol housing projects and was wearing plain clothes, was shot in the arm and chest after a team of three other plainclothes officers in a car saw him chasing a man on East 125th Street between First and Second Avenues with his gun drawn” , states Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Alright, Im about to map out some important details and we are going to break this occurrence on down.
-Officer Edwards was chasing a man, which usually indicates one has been done wrong by the person they are chasing, except extreme cases of senseless violence. The man he was chasing had broken his driver side car window and was rummaging through his car.
-Three officers got out of their vehicle and confronted Edwards (off duty officer), according to the NYTimes article.
-Two of the six shots fired solely by Andrew Dunton hit Edwards: one in the arm and one in the chest, as stated above.

Lets extrapolate from what we know. If there are three officers and two men running, it should be relatively easy for them to apprehend both. If they did obtain both men, which appears to be the case as the potential thief has been questioned as well, I find it hard to believe Edwards didn’t tell them that he was an off-duty officer. Also why did all three officers confront Edwards, as if he was the only person involved, its not logical and really doesn’t even sound symmetrical. They did give the details in chronological order but if all three approached Edwards how did capture the other man…did he wait around? I find this last detail to be the most intriguing, why did Officer Dunton fire SIX shots and the other two officers did not fire a single shot. These officers are trained and all it takes is one shot to impale someone. It is also hard to imagine him in a great deal of danger, if none of his fellow officers fired a shot but he had time to fire six.

I don’t know the up to the second latest but this investigation should yield some results, fast. The motives and/or details don’t line up to me and I’m sure that I am not the only one. I am not a cynic nor am I a conspiracy theorist, but Edwards was black, and if you recall, 25 yrs old. Officer Andrew Dunton is…you know it…white. We shall see how the details iron out but these NYPD officers have got to get better at diagnosing situations. I understand the vastly meticulous and highly pressurized nature of the job, but this one seems like a stretch. Particularly if they are labeling this an accident, as Mayor Bloomberg reassures "The only thing that can come out of this is to improve procedures so perhaps it doesn’t happen again," the mayor said. "We all know policing is a dangerous job and accidents happen when people have guns in their hands, even legal guns in this case which they are authorized and trained to use." I wholeheartedly agree with that first sentence if it turns out to be accidental. But im wincing and scrunching my face right now and for good reason.

Technology Dependence

This is an article that i found pretty interesting. The article talks about the development of children from the time they are born through their ascension in age and their compatibility with technology. In the digital realm that we have created where children use cell phones and technology holds a special place in their heart, it is imperative that this society understands how children develop in an attempt to keep them stimulated and not stymie their development so that when they become individuals on their own they are not mentally inept.

So it was from the New York Times and the link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/technology/personaltech/12basics.html