In the past few weeks, 130 light poles have disappeared from the streets of Baltimore. Standing 30 feet tall, weighing 250 pounds, and being located conspicuously on the side of roads, these things don’t just walk away. Or, as a transportation department spokesman sums it, “It’s not like you can stick one in a grocery cart and get rolling.”
Apparently, aluminum scrap metal goes for thirty-five cents a pound, which is a number so low that I decided to check it against the weight of the poles. For a 30 foot tall, 250 pound light post, the thieves receive a whopping $87.50. I imagine that there is more than one person involved, so that reduces the take even more. This seems like a pretty bad deal to me. On the citizen-loss side, each light fixture costs about $156,000 to replace.
In the course of my research for noted UCLA Professor Mark A. R. Kleiman, I came across some other interesting figures of crime payoffs. The average drug dealer, while being exposed to physical harm and incarceration, doesn’t even make minimum wage. Worse still, the average take from a burglary is around $300 dollars, while the average time spent in jail per burglary is 36 days. This roughly means that for every $10 you earn from a burglary, you spend one day behind bars. By comparison, a McJob looks likes a get rich quick scheme.
Why didn’t the reporter do the payoff calculation in the article? It seems like a pretty salient piece of information to me. And on a sideone, I’ve never been, but Baltimore really doesn’t seem like a place I’d like to visit: “Last year … with a population about one-twelfth that of New York City’s, [Baltimore] had a homicide rate more than five times as high.”
As Ben Franklin tells it, Thanksgiving was originally slated to be a day of fasting and beseeching the Lord to help carry the Pilgrims through these difficult times. Instead, one farmer suggested that things were indeed getting better, and perhaps we ought to show our thanks for the Lord’s help with a feast.
Once again, Thanksgiving finds me alone. However, just as with the original pilgrims, things have been getting better, and it’s time to show my thanks at the introduction of new foods into my diet. Thanksgiving has, over the past three years, become my favorite holiday. In general, Russian food sucks, and Thanksgiving food is truly amazing, especially the side dishes. In October, before I came back here for another year, a friend’s family made me a Thanksgiving dinner. The food was fantastic, and it was the best going-away present I have ever recieved. There is supposed to be a Thanksgiving dinner at one of the bars in town, but I’m feeling rather under the weather, it’s a two hour round-trip trek, and the temperature is -2 Celsius (with humidity and wind, -7).
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The snow has settled in, and it’s not going anywhere for the next four to five months. Last year I posted about a tree that was holding on against the prevailing currents around it, and this year, during the first blizzard of the season I found another brave such soul:
He lasted a few weeks longer than most, but unfortunately, even his leaves are gone now.
Erotic Thriller
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You’ve made your own rules in life - and sometimes that catches up with you.
Winding a web of deceit comes naturally, and no one really knows the true you.
Your best movie matches: Swimming Pool, Unfaithful, The Crush
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You Are Balanced - Realist - Empowered
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You feel your life is controlled both externally and internally.
You have a good sense of what you can control and what you should let go.
Depending on the situation, you sometimes try to exert more control.
Other times, you accept things for what they are and go with the flow.
You are a realist when it comes to luck.
You don’t attribute everything to luck, but you do know some things are random.
You don’t beat yourself up when bad things happen to you…
But you do your best to try to make your own luck.
You have a good deal of power, but you also know the pecking order.
You realize that working the system does get you further.
You know who to defer to and who to control.
When it comes to the game of life, you play things flawlessly.
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I stumbled upon this masterpiece the other night. If you’ll look at the left tubes, you can see that they’ve been used as a trash receptacle. This is actually quite considerate of whoever put their refuse there, most people would have just thrown it on the ground:
I find this quite repugnant, and a prime example of waste in government. Why do the Brits keep the aristocracy around? They’re idle and wasteful, and not even a good laugh. Perhaps I’m overreacting a bit. But seriously, 50 dresses for a weekend trip?
They arrive in Washington today loaded down with a wardrobe of 50 dresses (for her) and double-breasted tweeds, ties and tux (for him); 20 servants; makeup artists; and an entourage of 50 members of the British press at an estimated cost of close to a half-million dollars.
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The goodwill trip is being paid for by British taxpayers
