Guns, Youth, and New York City

The crime rate in new York City has long been on the decline but in the last year or two there has been a trend upward. The recent economic downturn has caused the city to reduce the number of police in the NYPD to levels that have not been seen since the early 1990's. The current plan is to lower the number of cops to about 31,000 which is a decrease from 36,000 just two years ago. With this decrease there has been an increase in the number of violent crimes in the city committed with handguns especially among youthful offenders. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reports that there were 4043 guns that were confiscated by the police in NYC in 2007. From that figure 277 of those guns were taken from individuals who were under the age of 17. Another 814 were taken from suspects between 18-21 years old. 524 were taken from 22-24 year old's and an additional 780 were taken from people between the ages of 25-30.

Plastic Surgery Among Teen Girls On The Rise

In the past the idea of plastic surgery used to be the domain of men and women who had reached middle age almost exclusivly but not anymore it seems. In a society where more and more one's appearance counts for more even girls as young as 15 are expressing an interest in having a nip or a tuck in order to correct some real or imagined imperfection in their bodies. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery the number of patients for these procedures who are in their teen years has gone up sharply in the last year. They also report that usually the patient is female but there have been males as well and that the cosmetic procedures that are the most in demand are breast augmentation and liposuction. In 2007 a total of 7882 of these surgeries were performed on American Teenagers. That total represents a 55% increase from 2006. A total of 47% of these were performed merely for aesthetic preference. Usually they were breast enlargements. The remaining percentage were performed to correct deformaties that existed or to correct asymmetries.

Women And Power

It has been a long standing reality that despite the fact that women make up half the human population living on this planet they are seriously under represented in the corridors of power in governments all around the world. In some countiries they still are not represented at all. Countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore have no official government positions or ministerial positions that are occupied by women. While progress on this front continues to be made there is still a long way to go. In some countries there is a lot shorter way to go than in others. In Spain currently there are more women serving in the cabinet than men including a Defense Minister who is currently pregnant. Below is a list of the top five countries in the world who have currently the most number of women serving as ministers followed by a list of the countries who have the fewest: (Source: Inter Parliamentary Union)

Most Female Ministers:
1. Finland -- 57.9%
2. Norway -- 55.6%
3. Spain ---- 52.9%
4. Grenada - 50%
5. Sweden -- 47.6%

Fewest female Ministers:
1. Iran --------- 3.2%
2 New Guina -- 3.6%
3. Pakistan ----3.6%
4. Afganistan - 3.7%
5. Turkey ------4.2%

Your Carbon Footprint And You

How quickly the world has changed in only one generation. Counting carbon emissions has now become something that everyone thinks about and many have become somewhat adept at doing. It all has to do with what you do and how you do it. Many of the worlds modern machines spew out the stuff but of course some do it more than others. Here are some examples of our modern day gadgets and things and how much carbon they emit in pounds in just one year. An I-Pod puts out about 6lbs. of carbon a year. One 60 watt Lightbulb puts out about 100lbs. If you switched to a more efficient flourescent light of the same wattage it would put out only about 25lbs and it would last years longer so you would not have to replace it nearly as often. A new high definition digital tv would put out about 550lbs. of carbon in a year. An S.U.V. about 15,300lbs. A 747 jetliner would, as you would expect, do the most damage in this regard. It spits out about 2600lbs. per passenger for every 5000 miles flown.
It is true however that you can lighten your carbon footprint by changing over to more modern and energy efficient appliances in a significant way. The earlier example of the flourescent lightbulb is one. An even greater example would be a new fridge. There are refridgerators on the market now that can run on as little as 250-300 kilowatt hours a year. That is less than 1 a day. Older outdated models usually run on about 12-20 kilowatts hours a day depending on how you set the temperature controls. A switch like that over time would be a huge savings on your energy bill.

Airlines Now flying Planes Slower To Save Fuel

The cost of fuel seems to be hitting the economy very hard these days and the airline industry is no exception to this of course. With the cost of fuel set to hit and likely exceed the $4 a gallon level this summer it is even more expensive to buy jet fuel in fact. It is set to be up around $6-$7 for that precious stuff this summer as well. With these increasing costs the airline industry is scrambling to find ways to cut it expenses in order to avoid further having to raise fares and thereby alienating the flying public. One of the more interesting ways the airline industry is trying to save on fuel is by slowing down the speed at which it flies its jets from place to place. Southwest Airlines for example is estimating that it will save somewhere in the neighborhood of 42 million dollars this year by simply reducing the speed of its jets in flight by 1 to 3 M.P.H. a trip. Northwest Airlines figures that it will add about 10 minutes to the length of a transatlantic flight by slowing its planes down by 10 M.P.H. thereby saving about 160 gallons of fuel on a trip over the Atlantic. Desperate times call for somewhat desperate measures it seems.

Murder In The U.S.A.

It is widely known that the murder rates in the United States over the last 2 decades have been dropping sharply. It was continuing to drop until the turn of the century when it reached its modern lows but since 1999 it has been rising however. Listed below is a chart of the total number of murders committed in the United States since 1991, which was the worst year for murders in the country in history. The source for these figures is The Federal Bureau Of Investigations:

1991 -- 24,703
1992 -- 23,760
1993 -- 24,526
1994 -- 23,326
1995 -- 21,606
1996 -- 19,645
1997 -- 18,208
1998 -- 16,974
1999 -- 15,522
2000 -- 15,586
2001 -- 16,037
2002 -- 16,204
2003 -- 16,528
2004 -- 16,148
2005 -- 16,692

U.S. Population By Race, Sex, and Age.

The population of the United States is changing. This of course is no surprise to anyone but how exactly does the population break down these days? Here is a quick look. These figures come from the United States Census Bureau for the year 2005 which is the most recent year for official stats on the subject. In 2005 there were estimated to be about 298,000,000 Americans living in the country. 237,855,000 were white or caucasian. 37,909,000 were black or African American. 20,646,000 were considered to be "other." Other refers to groups such as Asians, American Indians, and those who are considered to belong to two or more races.
As far as sex goes it has long been known that there are more women living in the United States than men. In other words women make up the majority of the population. In 2005 there were 150,411,000 women in America compared to 146,000,000 men.
The median age or average age of an American was 36 years and 2 months.
Since 2005 the American population has grown to over 300,000,000. There is no way to get an exact count of the number of people living in the country because the number literally changes from one second to the next as older people die and new people are born. The actual exact number changes from second to second but there is no doubt that it always goes up overall. The current population in 2008 is considered to be at or about 304,000,000. It is also estimated that about 80% of the U.S. population lives in an urban enviornment and about 20% are rural. It is also known that about half of the countries population lives within 50 miles of either the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans. In other words about 75,000,000 Americans live within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of the country and about 75,000,000 live within 50 miles of the Pacific Ocean on the west coast.

Bush Approval Rating is Low but Not Lowest in History Yet

It is no secret to anyone who is paying attention that George Bush is going to end his presidency with one of the lowest approval ratings in history barring any kind of miracle. His approval rating is currently at 28% and it has been stuck there for a while. Believe it or not it is not the lowest in history. The lowest was President Harry Truman who became president upon the death of F.D.R. in April of 1945. He was President until 1953 and when he left office his rating was 22%. This low rating was likely due to the way he handled the Korean war. He fired General Douglas MacArthur, who was a leading general during World War 2 in the Pacific theatre of battle and was a most beloved military figure in the eyes of the American public. Truman and MacArthur had a serious disagreement during the Korean war. The general wanted to use nuclear weapons in Korea and Truman was dead set against it. MacArthur got so boisterous about it that Truman ended up having to relieve him of his command in Korea. As soon as he did Trumans numbers began to sink like a stone.
While George Bush's ratings are not as low as Truman's were when he left office they are lower than his father's numbers were when he left in 1993. George Herbert Walker Bush, who was president from 1989-1993 left office with a 29% approval rating. So you see good old George W. is a chip off the old block. It was the recession in the early 1990's that doomed Bush's father from successfully being re-elected despite his historic success in the Gulf War. George Herbert Walker Bush's foreign policy is widely regarded as brilliant. This due in large part to his chief advisor James Baker who's service in his administration was key. His domestic policies however were regarded as lacking and when the economy went south it robbed him of a second term.
The Current President Bush's approval ratings are tied with another former president who had a hard time in office, President Jimmy Carter. Carter was another one term president who served from 1977-1981. In Jimmy Carter's case it was both his foreign policies and his domestic policies that failed him largely through no fault of his own however. When he was in office the arab oil countries decided to inflict upon the United States their famous oil embargo. It crippled the economy and sent the price of gas skyrocketing. Carter was largely blamed and his numbers started to suffer. Carter was also blamed for the failed attempt to rescue the American Hostages that were being held in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran. 52 American employees of the embassy were taken hostage in the fall of 1979 by militant Iranian college students. In 1980 Carter ordered The Marines to attempt a rescue of the hostages utilizing various military helecoptors and transport planes. The failed attempt ended disasterously in the middle of the night in the Iranian desert. Carter was blamed for this as well and by the time he left office his ratings were at 28%. The American hostages were finally released by the Iranians unharmed. They did so on the day Carter left office on January 20th, 1981 after 444 days of holding them captive and on the same day Carter gave over his office to incoming President Ronald Reagan.

Why Baldness Can Never Be Cured

If you are among the many Americans who are a little thin on top or have lost a good amount of your hair outright you are familiar with the trauma that it can bring to you on an emotional level. It can absolutely devastate some people if they let it. There is an industry in the United States that knows that there are some people who would be willing to try anything and pay anything to attempt to regain their hair back. They have over the last 20 years come up with baldness remedies that they have been promoting to the public every chance they get. You have no doubt heard of "Rogaine" which is advertised as being able to regrow your hair back. You just rub some of this magic stuff on to your scalp and after a few months you will be back to looking like you did when you were 19 years old again with a thick full head of hair. Here is the problem with Rogaine and why it does not work. The reason people start to lose their hair is because the individual hair follicles on top of their heads, which produce the hairs, just start dying. They die the same way a plant dies or a flower in a pot. Over time the follicle begins to produce a thinner and thinner strand of hair until it just stops all together. The average human being has about 100,000 individual hair follicles on the top of his head. If you begin to lose your hair your not going to really notice anything is thinning usually until you have lost about 30,000 to 40,000 of those follicles with several thousand of the remaining ones beginning to go too. This is especially the case if you start losing your hair in the back of your head which you are not looking at every morning when you look in the mirror and you really dont notice until its too far gone usually. So if the reason that people suffer hair loss is because their individual hair follicles die is there anything that can be done to get those follicles back and get them to again produce hair growth? The answer is no. When something that was once alive dies you can be sure that it is going to stay dead. Nothing comes back from dying and Rogaine cant do anything about bringing dead hair follicles back to life either. Even in the ads for the stuff they say (in very fine print) "your results may vary." The reason they put that little phrase in the advertisments is a legal one. They put it in there so that they cant get sued by individuals who buy the product and use it and then discover that it does not work. The company can then go into court and say---well we told you that the results vary---It didn't work for you Mr. consumer? Oh well, too bad for you guy---and then THEY get to keep the money you spent on the snake oil they sold you. They make millions of dollars off the stuff annually selling people this empty promose that they can regrow their hair back. The only 2 things that work for hair loss are Hair transplants or wigs.