Revelation 21:1-6
Psalm 148
Acts 11:1-18
During my years in the corporate world, at the intersection of technology and design, I worked with Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, governmental and non-governmental organizations. I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement when I was consulting with Hasbro, for they were developing toys for Star Wars films that had not yet been released,. I went out to lunch at “interesting†places with United Auto Workers members in Detroit, not the sort of places I would regularly eat lunch. I walked the streets of San Francisco. But most of my clients were right there in the Big Apple, and among them was the New York Police Department’s CompStat Unit.
Comp and Stat are the giveaways. This is the department’s big data team, before we were using the term big data. Today you can find CompStat online at the NYPD’s website. You will see, at least as of Wednesday, that crime is down again this year in almost every category, with the exception of sex crimes, and that category is always challenging because of variables and delays in reporting.
You wouldn’t know it by listening to the 24-hour news cycle, which feeds on hysteria, nor by listening to politicians, for fear has reliably been the best tool for manipulating and deceiving voters, but the simple truth is that like illegal immigration, crime has been going down for years. It has been going down for so long and there is so much data, that there is now a serious scientific debate about the factors that led to the decline Continue reading “Tipping Point: May 19, 2019”