The poll last week on St. Louis’ birthday was a dud, not getting many responses:
ABOVE: On Feb 14th/15th next year St. Louis will celebrate turning 250 years old.Q: Do you think St. Louis was founded on February 14th or 15th on 1764?
Either is OK 30 [45.45%]
15th 15 [22.73%]
14th 10 [15.15%]
Unsure/no opinion 7 [10.61%]
Other: 4 [6.06%]
Here are the “other” responses submitted:
Don’t care
founded in 1904 and downhill ever since
who cares
Show us a copy of the manuscript so that we can make an intelligent guess!
I’ll try to get a copy of the original document so we can see if we think the date was the 14th or 15th.
You thought drones were just for warfare in far away lands? Thank again. As I watched the CBS Sunday Morning report Drones: Eyes in the sky (w/video) I liked the idea of using a personal drone to get good aerial photos to use here.
ABOVE: A $299 personal drone from Amazon shoots 720p video
Suppose you’ve got a dangerous hostage situation; an unmanned aircraft can track the gunman. It can evaluate flooding, or help firefighters cheaply and safely without endangering lives, the argument goes.
(snip)
But today, you or I could go online, order a drone kit for a few hundred dollars, and fly the thing anywhere, legally.
Terry Kilby, a smartphone app designer, and his wife, Belinda, an art teacher, use theirs to take bird’s-eye view photographs of Baltimore.
“We can get something that is a totally unique and fresh perspective on images that you would ordinarily think that you’ve already seen before, but now it’s a completely new take on it,” said Belinda.(CBS Sunday Morning)
Their photos shown in the CBS report forced me to imagine the possibilities, although the cost is too steep for my purposes:
Now they shoot with a custom hexicopter, an approximately $3,000 flying photography studio that can climb as high as 400 feet. It’s outfitted with two cameras, GPS to lock and hold an altitude, and a gyroscope to keep it level. There are goggles Kilby can strap on to see exactly what the drone is seeing. (Baltimore Sun)
But Amazon has one for $299 that I could control from my iPhone (pictured). But I also thought I’d be concerned about someone controlling a drone outside my 4th floor windows. In December a bill was introduced in the Missouri House regarding drone use:
The bill proposed by State Rep. Casey Guernsey, R-Bethany, would require law enforcement officers to get a warrant before using drones to gather evidence or other information about criminal activities. It also would ban people, organizations and state agencies from using unmanned aircraft to conduct surveillance of people, farms or agricultural operations without the owner’s permission. (KMOX)
The poll this week seeks your thoughts on drones. Would this bill protect your privacy or infringe your rights to use a drone? The poll is in the right sidebar, mobile users need to switch to the full layout.
Last week St. Louis turned 249 years old but some celebrated on the 14th while others noted the occasion on the 15th. Others celebrated both days rather than taking sides.
February 14, 1764 has been the accepted date for many years but some are saying Auguste Chouteau’s notes indicate the 15th:
The party was premature, says a history professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied Chouteau’s original manuscript for a new book on the city’s founding. Fred Fausz, a professor at UMSL since 1991, says Chouteau’s “5” isn’t the best example of penmanship but is clear enough. Fausz says the 15 in Chouteau’s manuscript has a 5 that looks just like other 5s elsewhere in the paper, and nothing like the 4 that marks Page 4. Fausz also says Chouteau cited Feb. 15 in transcribed testimony for a land case in 1825, four years before he died. (recommended — stltoday)
Chouteau was just 14 or 15 when St. Louis was founded. The above article from 2/14/2010 also presents evidence the date is the 14th.
The poll question is which date do you think St. Louis was founded? Or maybe we should just make next year’s 250th anniversary a two-day affair, embracing the controversy. The poll is located in the right sidebar.
Fewer and fewer people are identifying themselves as being part of a recognized religion:
More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether. (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life)
Men are significantly more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13% of women.
Among people who are married, nearly four-in-ten (37%) are married to a spouse with a different religious affiliation. (This figure includes Protestants who are married to another Protestant from a different denominational family, such as a Baptist who is married to a Methodist.) Hindus and Mormons are the most likely to be married (78% and 71%, respectively) and to be married to someone of the same religion (90% and 83%, respectively).
Mormons and Muslims are the groups with the largest families; more than one-in-five Mormon adults and 15% of Muslim adults in the U.S. have three or more children living at home.
The Midwest most closely resembles the religious makeup of the overall population. The South, by a wide margin, has the heaviest concentration of members of evangelical Protestant churches. The Northeast has the greatest concentration of Catholics, and the West has the largest proportion of unaffiliated people, including the largest proportion of atheists and agnostics.
Of all the major racial and ethnic groups in the United States, black Americans are the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation. Even among those blacks who are unaffiliated, three-in-four belong to the “religious unaffiliated” category (that is, they say that religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives), compared with slightly more than one-third of the unaffiliated population overall.
Nearly half of Hindus in the U.S., one-third of Jews and a quarter of Buddhists have obtained post-graduate education, compared with only about one-in-ten of the adult population overall. Hindus and Jews are also much more likely than other groups to report high income levels.
People not affiliated with any particular religion stand out for their relative youth compared with other religious traditions. Among the unaffiliated, 31% are under age 30 and 71% are under age 50. Comparable numbers for the overall adult population are 20% and 59%, respectively.
By contrast, members of mainline Protestant churches and Jews are older, on average, than members of other groups. Roughly half of Jews and members of mainline churches are age 50 and older, compared with approximately four-in-ten American adults overall.
In sharp contrast to Islam and Hinduism, Buddhism in the U.S. is primarily made up of native-born adherents, whites and converts. Only one-in-three American Buddhists describe their race as Asian, while nearly three-in-four Buddhists say they are converts to Buddhism.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious tradition. Only 37% of all those who say they were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses still identify themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Members of Baptist churches account for one-third of all Protestants and close to one-fifth of the total U.S. adult population. Baptists also account for nearly two-thirds of members of historically black Protestant churches.
This changing religious landscape, along with a huge drop in population, has left St. Louis with many vacant & underutilized churches. More on this on Wednesday February 20th when I present the results of this week’s poll.
“Really get a life!” was a comment left on a imagine I posted to this blog’s Facebook page Monday afternoon, I was complaining at the offices of St. Louis Parking about them pushing snow off their private parking lot and subsequently blocking the public sidewalk. The photo got 19+ likes by Monday evening but “Yippee Skippee” felt differently:
ABOVE: Comment left on Facebook
I get such a comment every so often when I’m speaking out about what I feel is an injustice. What is the meaning of such a comment?
“Get a life” is an idiom and catch phrase usually intended as a taunt, to indicate that the person being so addressed is devoting an inordinate amount of time to trivial or hopeless matters. (Wikipedia)
So basically Yippee is a bully that’s unwilling to use his real name on social media. Here is the pic he commented on.
ABOVE: This is the image he commented on, I’d said I was complaining about then pushing snow onto the sidewalk .ABOVE: I’d posted this image an hour or so earlier of snow blocking the 11th street sidewalk
AARP Livibility Index
The Livability Index scores neighborhoods and communities across the U.S. for the services and amenities that impact your life the most
Built St. Louis
historic architecture of St. Louis, Missouri – mourning the losses, celebrating the survivors.
Geo St. Louis
a guide to geospatial data about the City of St. Louis
