Unemployment Update

Back in March, I posted some maps about unemployment in the US. While for the most part it looked good, several states showed a worrying "double-dip" trend. It appears that these concerns were unfounded as March and April turned out to be very good months for employment figures.


Now 37 states are showing improvement, while only 4 show unemployment getting worse. While there are 3 states double-dipping, they are totally different from the ones that appeared to double-dip earlier indicating that it's probably just a temporary set back.

I decided to do another type of map for this update. I was curious to see how much better states have gotten since the peak in unemployment to see if some are doing better than others. However, to give it more context, I had to see how bad they got in the first place. So for each state I compared their lowest unemployment rate prior to the recession to their highest unemployment during the recession.


The scale is done by multiples, so Florida, Idaho, and Nevada had an unemployment more than 3.5 times higher than prior to the recession while Alaska's unemployment increased by less than 1.5 times or 50%. Florida saw the most dramatic increase, going from 3.3% unemployment in 2006 to 12% in 2010.

Since then though, conditions have improved in every state but Louisiana, so comparing their pre-recession best to their current, the map looks like this:


So none of the states are doing better than they were prior to the recession, but Alaska, New Hampshire, and North Dakota are getting closer. Nevada and Illinois have shown a lot of improvement, having changed two ranks.

Peace Corps

Since I don't know where I'm going yet I decided to do some speculating. Based on my qualifications, out of the 70 "countries" Peace Corps sends volunteers to, there are 32 that I'm likely to end up. I say "countries" because they list Eastern Caribbean as one entity as well as Micronesia and Palau. The count also includes 3 countries where there are currently no volunteers.

Many countries only have education and health programs, which I am not qualified for. Also much of the Americas is off limits as I don't speak Spanish.

Dark Gray-Countries I'm not qualified for
Light Blue-Countries I'm likely to go to
Dark Blue-The 10 countries with the most volunteers that I'm likely to go to


Based on the current level of volunteers, my estimate for where I'll end up:
Ukraine (the country with the most volunteers) 11%
Africa 53%
Vanuatu 2%
Any Pacific island 4%
Any island nation 10%

How Azerbaijan Won

There has been a lot of discussion lately about how Azerbaijan won the recent Eurovision Song Contest. It seems that the general opinion was that it was a bland, forgettable song. So who voted for it? Actually, not all that many people.

Eurovision voting rules are a perfect example of one of the problems of first-pass-the-post voting. It makes it possible that a minority choice ends up winning. In the Eurovision Final there are 25 choices. This theoretically makes it possible that an entry could win the coveted 12 points with just over 4% of the overall vote.

Eurovision's scoring system also distorts the results. The winning song in a country could receive 20% of the vote while the second place song got 10%. Even though the second place song got half as many votes, it will receive 10 points while the winning song got 12. This makes the contest more competitive by handicapping the best performers. Now consider that Azerbaijan averaged 6th place and its easy to see that they could have received a lot of points while not actually receiving all that many votes.

Statistics on ESC Chat reveal more. Azerbaijan won with smallest amount of possible votes of any winning act under the current voting system, which has been in place since 1975. Overall, Azerbaijan won only 9% of the points assigned while back in 2009 Norway won with a landslide of 16%. That might not seem like a big difference, but the thing to consider is that Norway won first place in 16 countries while Azerbaijan only won in 3. Since the scoring system effectively handicaps entries that do really well by limiting the number of points it can get to a maximum of 12, Norway likely did much better its 16% would imply while Azerbaijan did worse than its 9% implies.

What does this all mean? When there isn't a clear favorite like in 2009 and 2010, the winner of Eurovision is really just a matter of chance. A relatively small number of votes can drastically change the outcome. It will be interesting to see the separated jury and televote scores once they become available as it's completely possible that Azerbaijan could have won the combined scores without actually winning the jury vote or the televote.

More Demographics

Interactive Map of Census Data from the New York Times

I was browsing Census data, as I'm wont to do, and notice something kind of interesting. I've made some earlier posts about how non-Hispanic Whites (for brevity, simply referred to as "White" from here on out) will not longer be the majority in the not so distant future, so I expect the population growth of minorities to outpace the growth of the White population. What I didn't expect though was to find that the white population is actually declining in a number states.

States with a declining White population:
California
Connecticut
Illinois
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Mississippi
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island

This got me wondering, with so many states seeing a declining white population, where is population growth coming from?

Population change 2000-2010
Total: 27.3 million
Hispanic: 15.2 million
Asian: 4.3 million
Black: 3.7 million
White: 2.3 million
Multiple: 1.4 million
Others: 0.4 million

Hispanics made up 55.5% of population change while representing only 16.3% of the total population. Whites only made up 8.3% of population change despite representing 63.7% of the total population. Even the Black and Asian populations saw a greater absolute increase in population.

Overall, the population of the US increased by 9.7%. The Hispanic population increased by 43%, followed closely by the Asian population which grew by 42.9%. The White population only grew by 1.2%. It seems that without migration, US population trends would more closely match those of most European states.

Address Bar Guesses

Like so many things these days, the Firefox address bar attempts to guess what sites I want to visit based on what I start typing. I decided to see what sites are the ones that come up first with each letter of the alphabet.

A - APDC Interpreters Bank I'm currently working on a project with them

B - Blackboard School stuff

C - CBC Canadian election news

D - Dominosa Puzzle game I no longer play

E - Etymonline.com Etymology dictionary

F - Facebook

G - Gmail

H - Hack Slash Crawl Flash game I no longer play

I - Institutional Research Board School stuff

J - Jay is Games Causal gaming site

K - Kayak Flight finder

L - Slither Link Puzzle game

M - Mu Cow Self-referential!

N - Nurikabe Puzzle game

O - Orisinal Flash games

P - Penrose Library Campus library

Q - Quest Diagnostics From when I was being medically cleared for the Peace Corps

R - RTE Irish election news

S - Sporcle Quiz games

T - The Cinema Snob Videos of reviews of bad movies

U - US Election Atlas Information on past US elections

V - Valmyndigheten Information on past Swedish elections

W - Wachovia

X - Google Reader The Local's RSS feed

Y - YouTube

Z - Google Account Logout Warning, this link will cause you to log out of your Google account.

I'm personally entertained that four of these deal with elections.

Mu Cow vs. IMDb

It turns out that IMDb has a Criticker account. It's just movie rankings from IMDb put into a Criticker account. What makes it interesting though is that it allows me to compare my movie opinions to the general public and not just my peers. That said, It appears I agree with the general public a lot as IMDb is ranked as the 22nd account that I agree with the most. However there are a few exceptions.

Movies IMDb likes but I don't:
2001: A Space Odyssey - Yes, it's a groundbreaking film, but it's also painfully boring.

Sin City - I felt the graphic nature of the film distracted too much from the stories, or in some cases, was the story.

Frankenstein - Once again, it's really not that good of a movie even by 1930's standards.

Planet of the Apes - Sure it's a classic, but it's still kind of silly.

Crash - Too heavy-handed.

The Ten Commandments - This is a movie I should probably rewatch, but won't because it's incredibly long.

The Last of the Mohicans - I must have really missed something in this movie because I don't understand what makes it so special.

Star Wars Episode III - Really? People like this movie?

Watership Down - It's kind of a downer.

Forbidden Planet - Was probably good for the 1950's, but I don't think it has aged well.

Gattaca - Another movie I should rewatch, I thought it was boring the first time I saw it.

Dancer in the Dark - No amount of arguing will convince me this is a good movie.

Sweeney Todd - Boring, forgettable songs which is unforgivable for a movie touted as a musical.

Bambi - It still has no plot!

Movies I like that IMDb doesn't:
Batman (1966) - The makers of this movie knew exactly what they were making and it was campy brilliance.

Death to Smoochy - I'm still surprised to know so many people dislike this movie.

Young Einstein - It's such a fun movie, how can people not like it?

Eurovision 2011

Eurovision

Eurovision starts in two weeks! You can watch it live online. You just have to install Octoshape, which we discovered last year might not work with Apple computers.

The dates are:
1st semi-final: May 10th
2nd semi-final: May 12th
Final: May 14th

They start at 21:00 CET or 3pm EST and 1pm MST.

This year, I don't have any stand-out favorites, but I'm much more pleased with this year's entries than last year. Even the UK managed to put together a decent act after finally dispensing with a national competition and going with an internal selection. I firmly hold that the reason the UK has done so poorly lately is because they let Brits choose their entry, so it's nice to see that the BBC has caught on.

Other big news for this year, Italy and Austria are back in the game! While Austria last competed in 2007, Italy hasn't competed in 14 years. Because of Italy's contributions to the EBU, which organizes Eurovision, it gets automatic entry to the final alongside France, Germany, Spain, and the UK.

It was really difficult for me to narrow down my list of the most interesting songs to only 10, so instead here are 11.

11. Portugal Something sorely missing from last year, poorly sung protest songs.
10. Belgium Walloon's turn to pick an entry. Guess what their gimmick is this time.
9. Finland The preachiest Eurovision song ever.
8. Belarus It will be interesting to see if anyone outside Belarus agrees with this singer's sentiments.
7. Romania Starts out strong, but doesn't keep it up.
6. Italy Returns with a great entry.
5. GermanyShe looks familiar...
4. Moldova That's... unique.
3. France Stay classy, France.
2. Ireland Ireland, I love you.
1. Bosnia This song has really grown on me after repeat listenings.

If you want to see more, all entries are on this YouTube playlist.

There are two last things I want to share. First, my favorite song to come out of this year's national competition, sadly, didn't make it to Eurovision, it came in 3rd in Sweden's competition, but here it is for your enjoyment, Oh My God. Second, in case Ireland's entry wasn't ridiculous enough for you, one of the singers hurt his ankle and has been performing in a wheelchair. No word if he'll be better in 2 weeks, but here's a video.