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Sheng-ji Yang posted:NK having a higher HDI than China is pretty loving weird... People considered "enemies of the state" in NK face arrest, detention and possible execution. In prison they face starvation, beatings, murder etc. However it is important to note that NK has several levels of "enemies" with the majority being given fixed sentences which are largely adhered to. In addition, there are several levels of camps, with the concentration camps at the top being real hell holes whilst the reeducation camps aren't quite as bad. In addition, the number of defectors arriving in South Korea has risen sharply since 2000, with 23,000 since then. Prior to then there were less than 1000, and that doesn't take into account the 250,000+ in China, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand etc. It would seem that the NK government have been running a policy of shooting, starving, re-educating or just letting them run away for their political prisoners. Indeed, some satellite images suggest the larger camps are getting far less busy and the smaller camps have been converted into farming co-operatives. The point is that once you've got rid of all your political enemies you can spend a bit more effort educating everyone else, ideally into the way you want them to be educated. Which is what NK does - NGOs and organisations who have managed to get people in have reported ridiculously high levels of literacy and quality of education. School is compulsory for 11 years with the government planning to even make university education compulsory. Life expectancy remains low but this is mainly due to infant mortality, which is rapidly falling. It's already lower than such countries as India, Indonesia, Paraguay and South Africa and is knocking on the door of Brazil. Free, standardised health care helps somewhat. Medicine and trained doctors are obviously scarce; but I live in Cambodia where the majority of doctors received sub-standard medical training (their universities have the highest pass rate in the world, because the exam pass rate is either 85%+ or just give the professor $10) and most people can't afford medicine. I had a tooth out and the dentist gave me a bag of oxycodone 25mg tablets for about US$7; not sure how that compares to the US but it's out of reach of most Cambodians. In North Korea, if the government is paying for it, it's within reach of everyone the government gives access to. Hell, if someone comes in with an infection here they just hook them up to a saline drip and even that gives them a better chance than doing nothing at all. My point is that Cambodian health care - in a capitalist country receiving large amounts of aid and with a lot of charities and NGOs filling in the gaps - is still considered far inferior to North Koreas by just about everyone. I'm not saying NKs system is better and although the statistics err on the side of pessimism they still have to be taken with quite a large grain of salt; but defector statements, statements from NGOs who have managed to get in combined with the official government stats suggest that in terms of education and healthcare they really aren't doing that badly. HDI is calculated using the Education Index (expected years at school and mean years at school; since not going to school is illegal, this is very high), Life Expectancy Index and Income Index. The last is the most controversial as "wages" have little meaning in North Korea, with most trading happening on the black market and across the increasingly porous border with China. Working out average income is not an exact science, or even a science at all, and is really just guesswork. Some sectors (particularly the army) have access to state rationed food meaning the majority of their income is essentially disposable, which bumps up the mean somewhat. Add in Koreas traditional strong family unit and even someone in dire poverty can rely on relatives to keep their income to an almost-survival level. My point is that North Korea does quite well on the Human Development Index, mainly because even a slave driver needs to keep his slaves in decent condition. China doesn't give a gently caress, there's plenty more where they came from. NK continues to be bottom of the pile (well they're squabbling with Eritrea about it) on the Democracy Index, of course.
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Jun 28, 2014 07:58
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Sheng-ji Yang posted:NK having a higher HDI than China is pretty loving weird... North Korea hasn't been included on the HDI since 2008, I'm assuming due to incomplete data. That, or it's part of a conspiracy to hide just how wonderful and developed it is.
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Jun 28, 2014 08:02
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IntricoInutile posted:Institute for Economics and Peace in Australia (I hadn't heard of it either) released its annual Global Peace Index last week: I was trying to figure out how the US could be exactly as peaceful as Thailand, with its ongoing insurgencies and coups; or the Philippines, with its assorted insurgencies and random gun violence. Apparently they include high military spending as a form of violence, so of course the US is gonna be pretty insanely violent by that measure.
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Jun 28, 2014 08:16
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Bloodnose posted:I was trying to figure out how the US could be exactly as peaceful as Thailand, with its ongoing insurgencies and coups; or the Philippines, with its assorted insurgencies and random gun violence. Apparently they include high military spending as a form of violence, so of course the US is gonna be pretty insanely violent by that measure. I thought that it was because as the global hegemon the US is more likely to get involved in international disputes than any other country.
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Jun 28, 2014 08:38
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Looking at the actual interactive map, the U.S. is actually doing fine on the 'military spending' criteria and is mostly brought down by abysmal or bad scores in 'Nuclear and heavy weapons', 'Conflicts fought' and 'Jailed population'.
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Jun 28, 2014 08:42
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It's also the constant mass shootings and domestic terrorism.
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Jun 28, 2014 08:48
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The Gun is Good. Edit: interestingly, America has a lower violent crimes than most of Europe. Only North Korea beats America in terms of Prison population. Kurtofan fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 08:54
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Kurtofan posted:The Gun is Good. Regards violent crimes, it's worth bearing in mind that different countries' violent crime statistics are not always directly comparable because each country defines "violent crime" in a different way. In America, a "violent crime" as defined in their statistics is a murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault. In the UK for example, "violent crime" is essentially any crime with a force component, including all assaults both standard and sexual, such that, say, shoving a person, or groping someone would be a violent crime here where it is not in the US. I'm not sure if that holds true for the rest of Europe, but I'd hazard a guess that EU countries would have generally similar definitions of such things.
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Jun 28, 2014 10:33
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khwarezm posted:Could you.. show me?
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Jun 28, 2014 11:15
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Ethiser posted:What makes the UK worse than the rest of western Europe? David Cameron
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Jun 28, 2014 11:41
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duckmaster posted:statements from NGOs who have managed to get in combined with the official government stats suggest that in terms of education and healthcare they really aren't doing that badly. No, not really http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/north-koreas-crumbling-health-system-dire-need-aid-2010-07-14 I'd say maybe it's different for the privileged living in Pyongyang, but more google leads to a story from last year where a hospital in the city couldn't even keep on its heat.
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Jun 28, 2014 13:41
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Kurtofan posted:The Gun is Good. Echoing what Reveilled said, I think there's a difference in definition happening as the US has a higher homicide rate, but a lower violent crime rate. That, or Europeans have bad aim.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:26
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Reveilled posted:Regards violent crimes, it's worth bearing in mind that different countries' violent crime statistics are not always directly comparable because each country defines "violent crime" in a different way. In America, a "violent crime" as defined in their statistics is a murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault. In the UK for example, "violent crime" is essentially any crime with a force component, including all assaults both standard and sexual, such that, say, shoving a person, or groping someone would be a violent crime here where it is not in the US. It also varies over time as nations change their record keeping. Notably the UK undertook a reform in classifying crime at the same time as they introduced strict gun control, which led to an apparent spike in criminal activity successfully used by gun advocates as a proof that gun control is harmful.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:58
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ClearAirTurbulence posted:There are a lot of stunted South Koreans, mostly in their late thirties and older, because South Korea was poorer than North Korea until the 1980s. People keep saying this, but do you have a source? I looked it up and in terms of GDP per capita South Korea has apparently never been significantly poorer than the North. It also seems that the two countries already started diverging in the mid-seventies. 
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Jun 28, 2014 17:28
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IntricoInutile posted:Institute for Economics and Peace in Australia (I hadn't heard of it either) released its annual Global Peace Index last week: If Libya's peace rating is "medium" then your scale is broken. Egypt's should be lower as well, they are literally fighting a civil war in the Sinai, and recently sentenced en masse hundreds of people to death. Interesting data though.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:54
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Couldn't find the original article which just mentioned it offhand, but this one covers the basics of the "Hobbit Wars" pretty well I think. The tl;dr version is basically that the people who found those "hobbits" exaggerated how short the specimens were, compared them to Europeans instead of the local population, and ignored the fact that their primary specimen was deformed as gently caress. This is an awfully old article, since then cladistical analysis has lent support to the idea that Homo Floresiensis really is a distinct species, there's more support for this based on new discoveries, especially of more wrist-bones while the idea that the specimens just a stunted regular human has come under fire. Those are just some studies I found but I think they're mostly locked behind a pay-wall if you're not on a college system.
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Jun 28, 2014 18:55
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khwarezm posted:This is an awfully old article, since then cladistical analysis has lent support to the idea that Homo Floresiensis really is a distinct species, there's more support for this based on new discoveries, especially of more wrist-bones while the idea that the specimens just a stunted regular human has come under fire.  ). I can't help but notice that the last one uses the 1.06m height for LB1, where the dude in the article I linked put it at around 1.25m. Since you seem to know more than me about the topic, is that addressed anywhere? Or the whole thing with them mislabeling a left femur as a right femur. Is that just bullshit from envious rivals, or did the people who found the bones originally rush poo poo in their hurry to get noticed? I suppose it's not impossible that the original findings could be bullshit made up by people trying to get famous, AND for the remains to actually be a genuinely new species of tiny humans.
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Jun 28, 2014 19:49
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Phlegmish posted:People keep saying this, but do you have a source? I looked it up and in terms of GDP per capita South Korea has apparently never been significantly poorer than the North. It also seems that the two countries already started diverging in the mid-seventies. The average may have diverged in the 1970s, but for a long time after that most South Koreans were not seeing an improvement of their living conditions, the increase in wealth was not seen by everyone. It wasn't until the establishment of the Sixth Republic in 1987 that South Korea became the modern industrialized nation it is today. Though North and South Korea had a rough parity in average GDP for a long time, North Korea had better distribution of the wealth they had to the population as a whole. Kind of like how the USA can have a higher average GDP than a lot of countries that provide free housing, education, and medical care.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:03
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Asian and Hispanic people might just tend to be shorter due to bad nutrition though, and as I recall, the study I linked shows the heights of different races in the US converging over time as everyone starts eating the same lovely food. The average height of Chinese children has increased by 2.4 inches in the last 30 years, despite China still having a significant population of rural poor people obscuring the gains in the quickly developing coastal cities. I'm not aware of any genetic evidence showing that Asians are genetically determined to be short, nor the same for Hispanics. Hell, the latter group consists of people from every continent except Australia and Antarctica, so saying anything definite there is probably a fool's errand. I had a chat with a guy that sort of claimed this too and which had done research on this, he claims the difference between populations are mostly due to living circumstances/environment, while about 80% of the differences between individuals are due to genetic factors. He also claims his research indicate that the height difference between a swedish and a korean population would be mostly due to environmental factors. But he is a social scientist and when I read a couple of papers of his I saw that he was apparently not too hot on biology as he never discuss or actively considers the genetic factors in his studies and he compares the the height differences between subpopulations (socioeconomic classes) of a genetically homogenous population (Swedish males registered for military service 1818-1968). The layout of his study falsify his interpretation that environmental factors should be the cause of the biggest difference in height between two genetically diverse populations.
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Jun 29, 2014 01:16
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Here is a fun one. Have you used cat treats in the last six months?
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Jun 29, 2014 02:16
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Silver Nitrate posted:Here is a fun one. Have you used cat treats in the last six months? The south literally is terrible at everything isn't it?
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Jun 29, 2014 02:18
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That map is pretty close to being whiteamericans.jpg.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:30
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Fojar38 posted:The south literally is terrible at everything isn't it? That escalated quickly.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:30
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Phlegmish posted:That map is pretty close to being whiteamericans.jpg. That seems about right, but every major population center is blue on that map regardless of how white they are (see SLC, Portland).
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Jun 29, 2014 02:36
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Seems like it has a strong component of population_density.jpg included.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:37
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That map would tell us more if the index was the number of households that consume cat treats compared to the number of cat-owning households rather than the number of households that consume cat treats compared to population.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:41
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Phlegmish posted:That map is pretty close to being whiteamericans.jpg. Somehow also seems to roughly be inverse population density (at least in North East)?
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Jun 29, 2014 02:46
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Since we're back on the topic of height...Lord Tywin posted:That is just anecdotal evidence which means nothing, do you have any sources that show that Asian and Latino people are genetically disposed to be shorter than black and white people? Yes I do. Though I was talking about black and white people vs. Latino and Asian people in America specifically, particularly those nationalities with a sizable presence in the US. My anecdotal evidence apparently does hold true for the most part for the rest of the world though. Numbers: http://www.averageheight.co/average-male-height-by-country http://www.averageheight.co/average-female-height-by-country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#Average_height_around_the_world As you can see, nations dominated by Europeans are the tallest. Looking at male heights Senegal is up there too with the European nations (as are Chad and Burkina Faso for females, no data for males though), and I have a feeling a few more African countries would listed among the taller nations if they had stats available (Sudan, for example). There are plenty of African countries on the shorter side too though. But males in Hispanic countries (except Spain), and Asian countries are all shorter than males in European ones. The difference is less pronounced for females but everything still leans in the same general direction. Unfortunately, the only map i can find on this is lovely and lacking detail/data. OddObserver posted:Somehow also seems to roughly be inverse population density (at least in North East)? Yeah, and interestingly enough, that brings us right back to whiteamericans.jpg You know, white flight to the suburbs, and white-dominated rural areas.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:04
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Phlegmish posted:People keep saying this, but do you have a source? I looked it up and in terms of GDP per capita South Korea has apparently never been significantly poorer than the North. It also seems that the two countries already started diverging in the mid-seventies. The Agnus Maddison data is from the extraordinarily general "Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2006 AD" set which is pretty suspect at the best of times -- note e.g. the strange straight line for North Korea. With the DPRK the data simply doesn't exist and is based on highly divergent estimates, e.g. according to Eberstadt (Korea Approaches Reunification p. 5) estimates for North Korea's GDP per capita in 1985 vary by a factor of 2.5, which is actually pretty good compared to the data for, say, the 1960s. So instead of the Maddison set which covers the entire world for the past two millennia it's more worthwhile to look at studies dealing specifically with the economic development of North and South Korea in the past seventy years. Eberstadt in particular has written a number of these which are widely accepted, such as his book Policy and Economic Performance in Divided Korea During the Cold War Era, which concludes that based on physical indicators of material wealth North Korea appears to have been substantially better off than South Korea c. 1960, with the situation being reversed by 1980. Part of the intellectual basis of Park Chung-hee's programme of industrialisation was a desire to imitate the apparent success of the North, so it was certainly felt at the time.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:26
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Phlegmish posted:That map is pretty close to being whiteamericans.jpg. Hmm, I thought that mostly black people lived in that big blue arc in the South, though?
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Jun 29, 2014 03:33
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 Sorry for the terrible cellphone photo, but I don't have a scanner and I don't think this map exists online. Long story short, the Dungans or Tungans or Hui are ethnically Chinese (whatever that means) people who speak Mandarin but sometimes write it in Cyrillic, and are mostly Muslim. In the 1930s the Hui-led KMT 36th Division invaded Xinjiang, which was/is a part of China filled with ethnic Turkic (Uyghur) Muslims and was ruled by an also Republican governor, because that governor had signed some military treaties with the bordering Soviet Union, for the sake of putting down a revolt of aforementioned Uyghurs. Said governor is taken out in a coup and replaced with a different Republican military leader, Sheng Shicai, who had in fact been sent by the Republic years ago, but the 36th Division doesn't stop because hey why would they. The Republican government in Nanjing sends a "pacification commissioner" to sort this out; Shicai immediately claims he is plotting a coup and has him put under house arrest, while he goes to the Soviets for more aid. The pacification commissioner is released after he wires Nanjing recommending Shicai be put in as official governor, which happens. 36th Division is not impressed. Meanwhile the Uyghur rebels have set up an attempt at a state called the Turkic Islamic Republic of Eastern Turkestan, because they don't like China and they don't like the Hui invaders and they don't like the Soviets. Draw up a constitution and everything, based on Sharia. It existed in about the area labeled "Tunganistan" plus Kashgar. The British diplomatic rep in Kashgar suggests to his bosses that they prop up this "TIRET" because they hate the Soviets and supporting theocratic rebels always works. Shicai is successful enough at kissing the Soviets asses' that several thousand GPU (yet another Soviet secret police organization) invade the country and gently caress up the 36th with artillery and mustard gas which are normal things for police to have. The 36th moves away from the northern capital and down into the TIRET, which folds easy. However they need support, for which they ask the Brits, who are "sympathetic" but would hardly march an army through the Pamirs, and then the Soviets, because... because. Their leader goes to the Soviet Union to talk and is never seen again. A few of Shicai's people manage to take over Kashgar peacefully, but they don't want to move against the still huge 36th, which in turn sits still. They sign an armistice. The 36th sets up a dictatorship in the south, depicted in the map, which a few foreign travelers call "Tunganistan" because they are racist idiots I guess. Meanwhile Shicai sets up his dictatorship in the north. Point is, Chiang Kai-shek's job must have been pretty depressing.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:44
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DrSunshine posted:Hmm, I thought that mostly black people lived in that big blue arc in the South, though? And black people don't own cats.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:49
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Syritta posted:people who speak Mandarin but sometimes write it in Cyrillic Do you have any examples of this? The only time I've ever seen that is in Russian tourist or Chinese language learning resources.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:59
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Bloodnose posted:Do you have any examples of this? The only time I've ever seen that is in Russian tourist or Chinese language learning resources. I think it's the Hui people outside of China who do it, since the whole rest of the area was Soviet dominated. Wikipedia has a photo of a few books from the Kirghiz SSR.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:08
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Silver Nitrate posted:Here is a fun one. Have you used cat treats in the last six months? Ummm, no one lives in northwestern Maine so I don't know who's buying all those cat treats. It's literally just loggers and moose. 
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Jun 29, 2014 06:29
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Amused to Death posted:No, not really Right... but again, by third world standards "not cleaning needles" and "the sheets are dirty" means they aren't actually doing that bad. Dirty needles and sheets are better than no needles and sheets. The standard cure for heart attacks in Cambodia is to turn the patient around three times, clockwise. If that doesn't work, do it anti-clockwise. Broken bones can apparently be fixed using Tiger Balm and when I first tried to teach my students the basics of CPR I spent half the lesson explaining the concept of breathing. There are hospitals here for whom the idea of heat or air conditioning is unheard of and what they'd really like is a candle and a roof. Oh well, at least it's (sort of but not really) a free country.
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Jun 29, 2014 08:19
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GodlessCommie posted:Ummm, no one lives in northwestern Maine so I don't know who's buying all those cat treats. It's literally just loggers and moose. Is that a real picture? The light patterns seem really grid-like in the middle there, seems odd to me. Though maybe there's just a bunch of intersecting grid-like roads in those states, and towns formed at the intersections? EDIT: Also why do there appear to be lights in the gulf of mexico? Oil rigs?
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Jun 29, 2014 08:23
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duckmaster posted:Right... but again, by third world standards "not cleaning needles" and "the sheets are dirty" means they aren't actually doing that bad. Dirty needles and sheets are better than no needles and sheets. The Khmer Rouge have certainly left their mark.
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Jun 29, 2014 08:31
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:The light patterns seem really grid-like in the middle there, seems odd to me. Though maybe there's just a bunch of intersecting grid-like roads in those states, and towns formed at the intersections? Yes. Those are mostly farms, which are laid out roughly in huge grids. Towns arise at intersections/railroad junctions. Parallel Paraplegic posted:EDIT: Also why do there appear to be lights in the gulf of mexico? Oil rigs? Oil rigs and fishing boats.
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Jun 29, 2014 08:32
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Is that a real picture? The light patterns seem really grid-like in the middle there, seems odd to me. Though maybe there's just a bunch of intersecting grid-like roads in those states, and towns formed at the intersections? Take it from someone who spent his formative years in Gridcountry, USA: navigating the east coast and worse, France, was extraordinarily jarring at first.
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Jun 29, 2014 08:41
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