Natilo sends in: Did we talk about this already in ought-nine? 'Cause man, you could illustrate the new edition of "how to lie with statistics" with this chart alone.

Heebie's take: I'm not saying the chart is dumb. I'm just saying it listens to TI. (Be sure to scroll down for the extra-comprehensive version of the chart.)

Kevin Drum has cancer. All the best to him and his wife. But, as I mentioned to him via email, it could be worse, he could have become allergic to cats.

This is pretty great.

Boxill was directly involved in sending students' work for the classes, Wainstein's report said, and went so far as to suggest the grades her players should receive.

In one email exchange Wainstein uncovered, Deborah Crowder, the department secretary and mastermind of the scheme to set up the no-show classes, responded when Boxill forwarded a paper for a women's basketball player in 2008.

"Did you say a D will do for (the basketball player)?" Crowder wrote to Boxill. "I'm only asking because 1. no sources, 2, it has absolutely nothing to do with the assignments for that class and 3. it seems to be a recycled paper. She took (another class) in spring of 2007 and that was likely for that class."

According to the report, Boxill replied: "Yes, a D will be fine; that's all she needs. I didn't look at the paper but figured it was a recycled one as well, but I couldn't figure out from where."

This is very great.

Boxill is a senior lecturer in the philosophy department and was chair of the faculty from 2011 to earlier this year. She directs the university's Parr Center for Ethics.

Minivet writes: I had heard of some of these behaviors before, but as things individual abusers do as aspects of their assholishness, not connecting the dots to see comprehensive, deliberate schemes to force dependency on a partner.

Heebie's take: It really is a powerful framing - that alongside physical or verbal abuse, economic abuse should get its own recognition. That you can control and terrify someone by continually making them financially unsteady to the point of abuse. The article details four common ways for an abuser to do so.

This says California will survive a megadrought. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but this was news to me.

But agricultural production and associated industries such as food processing make up only about 4% of California's overall economy

I would have guessed four or five times as much. But maybe it won't matter anyway.

Sections of the Hayward, Rodgers Creek and Green Valley faults are nearing or past their average earthquake recurrence intervals, according to the study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

The faults appear to be locked, unable to accommodate the inexorable movement of the Pacific Plate past the North American Plate, and that means it's only a matter of time before one of those stuck segments gives way, producing a large earthquake, says the study's lead author, Jim Lienkaemper, a research geophysicist at the U. S. Geological Survey.

In fact, there's a nearly 70 percent chance that one of them will rupture within the next 30 years, Lienkaemper says.

I think the news here is that the faults are "locked," and we're not just blindly waiting for plates to slide. Whatever it means, California, if I can't have you, no one can.

We used to have a dinky keyboard that did not even have a full 88 keys on it. My mom was horrified that Hawaii was practicing piano on something with such awful quality, and wanted to buy us a piano. I balked at both the price and size of something that she considered to have sufficient quality sound, and so we compromised on a nice digital piano. (I know, we're reverse-compromising on a gift she's giving us. It's a routine that's been in place for most of my life. It plays to my reverse-snobbery and lets Mom feel like she won't be exploited if she pampers me.)

Anyway, the piano came with a book of 50 Greatest Hits, and so I've been dabbling in playing real music for the first time in twenty years. (As opposed to my own dinky creations.) First I discovered that they had Jagerlied, by Mendelssohn, which I played in high school. Here's my point: muscle memory is amazing. Within a few tries, I can more-or-less play it smoothly again. (Nowhere near as fast as in the link, though.) Whereas working out a new song is pretty awkward. I have an instinct for what notes to play, but if I have to stop and work it out, I'm incredibly slow.

It's really fun to dabble in that space where you have an instinct for how to move your body (or fingers), and it's faster than your thinking brain can think. In this case, it's because my thinking brain is so rusted shut, but it's still fun.

Totally unrelated except that it's music, enjoy some of my very basic taste under the jump. You can always win my heart with a Blackstreet-esque ballad of heartbreak.

A family friend writes about her experience having an abortion in New York in the fifties. It's a particular type of story I'm really glad to see -- her reason was that she did not want to be pregnant at that time. There's nothing for the sanctimonious moralists who want to judge whether there is really enough objective hardship in a given situation to justify an abortion; she decided what she was going to do with her body based on what her plans were for her own life.

It's a good story, and she's an amazing person.

Listen: All Blues.

Listen again: All Blues.

If you had announced that you were releasing a note-for-note remake of Kind of Blue, and had fomented thereby (and by your use of "Pierre Menard" as your liner notes) all sorts of high-brow thinkin', and endangered, too, the lives of many oysters, whose closely held treasures many were mad to get their hands on, wouldn't you want to make sure that the difference between your version and the original wasn't obvious, within seconds, from the drumming? It's one thing to claim that the part of the point is the demonstration that style will out or differences will peep through or that note-for-note recreation isn't really possible (or is possible but doesn't encompass everything)—none of these things being, I would have thought, very interesting anyway—but if you do that you have to at least make a good solid effort at it. You can't just half-ass it.

Anyway, this is a good review of their efforts.

I bet it would be relatively easy to study people texting while driving, and determine exactly what is so dangerous about it, and develop a short training that would greatly increase the safety of texting-while-driving. I'm picturing tips like "One letter at a time, look up and around between each letter" and "The following situations are safer to text during. Absolutely avoid [X] and take advantage of [Y]" and "Visualize the location of the key you're going to type next".

I've had a similar thought about drunk driving - you could probably train people to drive much, much safer when they're drunk, by training them to techniques specifically designed for the pitfalls of being wasted.

If I were really going to troll, I would call our approach to texting- and drunk-driving something along the lines of "abstinence only". "Why don't we acknowledge that it's going to happen regardless," I'd implore, "and thus provide prophylactics to at least make it safe?" But I'd obviously know why not.

Renee Zellweger stepped out the other day with a drastically different face. (Catching you up in case you were under a rock yesterday.) The thing is, it does not look like botched plastic surgery - just an entirely different person all together.

The whole thing seems incredibly sad to me - she received such intense cruel mockery of her old face that she decided to drastically change the whole thing. I bet being in the public eye sucks a lot.

Why yes, I have nothing else in the queue to post.

White women are like this, white men are like this.

"'Basic'" Is Just Another Word For Class Anxiety"

According to our current definition of "basic" -- a shortening of "basic bitch" -- a "basic" is a millennial who is inescapably predictable. She (and it is always a she) cherishes uninspired brands -- a mix of Target products, Ugg boots over leggings, and Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes (the ultimate signifier of basicness) -- and lives a banal existence, obsessed with Instagramming photos of things that themselves betray their basicness (other basic friends, pumpkin patches, falling leaves), tagging them #blessed and #thankful, and then reposting them to the basic breeding grounds of Facebook and Pinterest.

They credit Kreayshawn with putting the term into the mainstream.

The douchebag is someone -- overwhelmingly white, rich, heterosexual males -- who insists upon, nay, demand their white male privilege in every possible set and setting. The douchebag is equally douchey (that's the adjectival version of the term) in public as in private. He is a douchebag waiting in line for coffee as well as in the bedroom. This definition marks him, like the atavistic, dusty rubber douchebags of our grandmothers' generation, as a useless, sexist tool. Armed with this refined definition, I believe the term "douchebag" is the white racial slur we have all been waiting for. We have only to realize this. White privilege itself has blinded us to the true nature of the douchebag's identity. But it's been there all along.

I know tons and tons of women who fit the above definition of basic, but only one man (off the top of my head) who fits the above definition of douchebag. (I know many conservative men, but you can be conservative without being douchey.) And I also note that the definition of basic is much more mean-spirited and sexist than the corresponding definition douchebag.

(Douchebag link via k-sky elsewhere)

Sir Kraab requests a Halloween costume thread: Because I am fresh out of interesting ideas.

Heebie's take: It seems like costumes split into two categories, according to whether there is a visual pun/riddle/joke or not. For myself, I am solidly in the latter camp, but I understand the former is quite popular.

W. Breeze writes: Myself, Mrs Breeze, Gusty the Younger, and young Gusty the Older will be blowing into Seattle on the 25th, on a business / holiday organised on rather short notice. In-between emergency trip to renew a passport, piles of work, etc. we don't have a great deal of time to browse the Internets for stuff to do to amuse two boys ~5 years old. You can see where this is going...

If the wise and good folk of Unfogged, or just the regulars, have suggestions for things to see and do in Seattle that would amuse the small ones that would be most appreciated. Also, if anyone wants to meet up at kid friendly times that would be awesome. The Sunday or during the week would be best for us. With the jet lag I don't imagine we'll last long into the afternoon on Sunday, though.

Heebie has no take! But take it away, mineshaft.

I know electoral-vote is not a secret site or anything, but it is easily my favorite election website. Something about his deadpan, robotic delivery of facts just entertains me to no end.

Also, the whole Rick Scott vs. Charlie Crist's fan thing is fantastic, albeit no longer breaking news. I would be so happy if Scott loses and it's attributed to that gaff.

Megan and her honey have just welcomed little Steadfast From-The-Archives (sadly, not his real name) after a great deal of difficulty and worry. Mother and baby are recovering well, but are probably too busy at the moment to spend much time chatting online. Picture below the fold.

For anyone who has been worrying about the anonymous poster who told us about her pregnancy difficulties as 'anon for now', she has also just had a healthy baby, the same baby pictured above. Myself, I'm so happy for them that I cannot get the stupid grin off my face.

This article about the autistic boy who is BFFs with Siri is just very sweet. But also, it's remarkable how perfect Siri is for someone who is struggling to learn the cadences and subtleties of conversation, and yet yearns for some connection and to ramble on for hours about the dullest of technical subjects.

It's reminiscent - and even explicitly cites - the dad who wrote about his autistic son's connection with Disney characters.

Did the pro-life movement lead to more single moms? I have long since thought so, for sure. That, when teenagers get pregnant, the young parents have three choices: abortion, shotgun wedding, or raise the child as separate, single parents. (With varying degrees of absenteeism by the teenage fathers, but I'm always reminded of that article that profiled teen dads, and found that the vast majority are present in their kids' lives, but as an ice-cream-and-playground good times dad, as opposed to being the parent who arranges who will stay home with the sick child.) Anyway, anecdotally I see almost no stigma attached to the last of those three choices, although what do I really know because teen moms are not exactly choosing me as a confidante.

A few weeks ago, I met a pair of black, lesbian Brooklyn moms whose son was trying out Hawaii's dance class. About a year ago, they had moved to the Texas countryside, and now they were about to move to Heebie town. They said they loved Texas, mostly because everything was so comparatively cheap. The chattier one also said that she'd noticed that families have a lot more kids here than they had in Brooklyn, which I didn't quite know what to make of, partly because I have no idea what her comparison group is, in Brooklyn. It's got to be more based in class, economic status, maybe ethnicity, and access to birth control, and I'd think only the last of those reasons would have a strong regional connection. But what do I know.