One in NINE?!

According to a Times article on a recent Pew report (PDF), more than 1% of US adults are incarcerated. That's disturbing, but 1 is a small number, so it's easy to shrug off. This, however, is harder:

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

More than 10% of black male young adults in the US are in jail?! Good lord, what does that say about race in our society? It certainly seems to help explain all of those fatherless black children that Bill Cosby likes to talk about. I think we have larger problems than the war in Iraq or the mortgage crisis...

I'll Take the Incandescent, Thank You Very Much

There's been a lot of hoopla about Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs recently, first about how they're going to save the world, then a reaction about how their mercury content may be a problem, and then a reaction to the reaction, downplaying the risks of the mercury. Of course, most of the "don't worry about the mercury" arguments assume that we'll all be good eco-citizens and recycle our dead CFLs instead of throwing them in the trash. Good luck with that. Once again, we find that as much as the government and media want one, there's simply no magic solution to most of our problems.

Personally, I'm going to stick with the technology whose broken-bulb cleanup procedures have fewer than 5 steps. My favorite part is this one:

"As a precaution, consider discarding throw rugs or the area of carpet where the breakage occurred"