American Community Survey

From the Census Bureau:
The U.S. Census Bureau will release data from the 2008 American Community Survey on Tuesday, Sept. 22. This release will include all one-year estimates from data collected in 2008 — including income and poverty estimates. In addition to the full complement of social, economic and housing data, this release will also include estimates on health insurance coverage, marital history and veterans’ service-connected disability ratings for the first time. These estimates will be available for the nation, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, every congressional district and all counties, places and metropolitan areas with populations of 65,000 or more. The data will be available Sept. 17 on an embargoed basis for media use.

Crime in the United States

The FBI has just released a group of statistics on crime for 2008.  The data is sorted by offense, region, state, and by local agency.

This is just one set of data:
NC State total murders 586
Total firearms 362
Handguns 261
Rifles 22
Shotguns 25
Firearms (type unknown) 54
Knives or cutting instruments 54
Other weapons 102
Hands, fists, feet, etc. 68

Other type of data:  Crime by type - violent, property; trends rates and weapons used; Data on the persons arrested - age, gender, race - for 29 separated offenses, including murder; Police employee data: Includes data about sworn officers and civilian employees.

Law enforcement officers killed and assaulted data will be available in mid October.

The 2008 edition of the annual report Hate Crime Statistics is tentatively scheduled for release on November 23, 2009.

Our e-archive

Of course everyone in the newsroom is using our e-archive (with Mozilla Firefox), but if not, message IT to download Firefox and I will send you the web link to the archive. Your DTI log-on and password work with this version too. The e-archive IS DTI, just a web version of it, so wire stories are there too.

E-Archive does have some quirks. I recently discovered it will not search special characters, such as the apostrophe (') . I was searching the name "Clyde O'Ferrell" but the story was not returned. Alina, in IT did some digging and discovered that our e-archive version doesn't like special characters. So instead of using the apostrophe, use a question mark -- like this "Clyde O?Ferrell".

Google Squared

This tip from Mary Ellen Bates @Bates Information Services Inc.: Google Squared is a search engine that tries to provide answers instead of web sites. It builds a database of answers. For example, type in Blue Dog Democrats and you get pictures, names, birthdates, latest news. Or try one of Google's predefined subjects, such as US presidents or roller coasters.


Some tweaking is still needed - when you add North Carolina to roller coasters, you get Carowinds - good, but also the Miky Way galaxy and the Gemini constellation. Still -- way cool.

update: you can also add to the database yourself!

Infant Mortality and other health statistics

North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics has links to the 2008 Infant Mortality Statistics

The Census Bureau has put together some statistics, reports and related links on health insurance, including some historical tables.

Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center has created an interactive map detailing the whereabouts of over 900 hate groups in the U.S. Here is the map with locations for 30 hate groups in North Carolina.

Free PACER

Ars Technica tells us about a new Firefox extension created by the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton aims to tear down the federal judiciary's PACER paywall. It uploads legal documents to a freely accessible mirror that is hosted by the Internet Archive.