Should Antoine Walker Be Arrested for Bouncing Checks? (Should You?)
I’m troubled by news reports that Antoine Walker was arrested for writing $1,000,000 in bad checks. The ex N.B.A. star — Employee Number 8 — was forced to do a perp walk as he apparently was led out of Harrah’s Tahoe in handcuffs. The criminal complaint alleges that from July 27 to January 19, he wrote 10 separate $100,000 checks with insufficient funds to Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood, and Red Rock Resort. Read More »
Where Have All the Criminals Gone?
When the crime statistics for 2006 were released, the news media had no trouble declaring that the next big crime wave had hit (even though violent crime had just ticked up 2 percent; property crime fell by the same amount). So what’s happened since? Read More »
When Data Tell the Story
This morning, my paper copy of The Times included a replica of the paper’s special section on the moon landing from July 21, 1969. You’ve probably seen the iconic main headline: “MEN WALK ON MOON.” The lead article is by John Noble Wilford (who’s still going strong, btw), and includes one of the most elegant little uses of data I can recall seeing in a news article: Read More »
Trash Stalking
Researchers at M.I.T.’s Senseable City Lab have asked volunteers in New York and Seattle to affix electronic tracking tags to their trash this summer so that they can track, in real-time, where each piece travels. Read More »
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