Eideard

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How do you combine an obsession with Zombie movies and data analysis of Google Maps?

Simple, you produce the map, above. It was created by Oxford University’s Internet Institute – and the guys behind the fantastic dataviz site, Floating sheep: Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton, Matthew Zook and Monica Stephens.

Using a keyword search for “zombies”, it visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database.

The map reveals two important spatial patterns. First, much of the world lacks any content mentioning “zombies” whatsoever. Second, and related, the highest concentrations of zombies in the Geoweb are located in the Anglophone world, especially in large cities…

Graham, whose favourite Zombie movie is the original Romero Dawn of the Dead (“the classic of the genre”) says of the map:

The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse.

Actually zombie movies bore the hell out of me. I much prefer to be scared by extraterrestrial aliens.

More than 400 people accused of having ties to trafficking for Mexican drug cartels were arrested in 16 U.S. states this week.

As part of the latest sweep, 429 people were arrested and nearly 3,000 pounds of marijuana, 247 pounds of cocaine, $5.8 million in U.S. currency and 141 weapons were seized, the Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration said.

The suspects were charged with various offenses, including conspiracy and distribution of illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines.

The sweep is the latest effort by Mexico and the Obama administration to try to clamp down on drug trafficking along the border where violence has escalated. Pressure has grown on the two governments to tackle the problems…

“There is a bond that exists between Mexico and the United States,” Eric Holder told reporters during a news conference to announce the drug arrests. “We have shared interests and I think that is what we focus on and that is what will keep this relationship strong…”

With the escalating violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, President Barack Obama plans to seek an additional $500 million for security and to send up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the border.

Thirty-nine of the arrests were in New Mexico – mostly up in the Española Valley north of Santa Fe. No one was surprised. Probably least of all the junkies and drug dealers.

They’re been there for decades. Once in a while there is a wave of arrests. It keeps the newspapers and TV happy and, after all, elections are coming, this autumn.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Mexican drug gangs have expanded their activities in the US with heroin production doubling in 2008, the US justice department says in a report. Despite US funding for the war on drugs, trade in marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine also grew, the National Drug Threat Assessment said.

The report found that Mexican groups were active in every region of the US.

Gangs were moving an estimated $40 billion in cash back into Mexico across the border each year, it added.

Mexico has long been the main conduit for illicit drugs smuggled into the US but this report suggests that the efforts to halt the flow on both sides of the border have had only a limited impact.

In 2007 the US pledged $1.4 billion over three years to fight the drugs cartels but the following year heroin production in Mexico rose from 17 to 38 metric tonnes. This, the report says, led to lower heroin prices and more overdose deaths in the US…

The assessment says that Mexican drug suppliers have increased their co-operation with American street and prison gangs to expand their distribution networks.

Decriminalizing drugs – even hard drugs – permits regulation of everything from purity to price, diminishes overdoses and related crime.

Way too sensible – even for reactionaries confused by new tax revenue sources.

I have to chuckle over how many supposedly knowledgeable pundits from the geek world think this is something unheard of. Remind me to ignore their stock tips.

Google won approval from U.S. energy regulators to act as a power marketer, which will make it easier for the Internet search giant to obtain renewable energy to run its huge data centers…

In its approval order, FERC pointed out that Google does not own or control any facilities that generate electricity to sell in the wholesale markets.

Google says the extent of its electric generation ownership is to provide power solely to the company’s facilities and for emergency backup power.

Other companies that consume a lot of electricity have been given similar power marketing authority by FERC to help control their energy costs.

The agency lists on its website about 1,500 companies that have subsidiaries with the same market-based rate authority, including Alcoa, the Safeway grocery store chain and Walmart.

There has to be at least a couple of paranoid vegan Google-panic geeks who will now fear being electrocuted if they use the Chrome browser.

At the Saks flagship store in Manhattan, a 23-year-old sales clerk was caught recently ringing up $130,000 in false merchandise returns and siphoning the money onto a gift card…

Employee fraud involving gift cards appears to be growing sharply as retailers struggle to contain overall theft, now estimated at $36 billion a year in the industry, or 1.51 percent of retail sales, according to a leading national study. Even as total sales have been falling, employee theft and shoplifting have been rising across the United States, industry experts say, with occasional arrests making headlines.

Many of the gift card crimes are straightforward, frequently involving young sales clerks and smaller amounts than the Saks theft. Among the variations of such crimes, cashiers often do fake refunds of merchandise and then, with the amount refunded, use their registers to electronically fill gift cards, which they take. Or sometimes when shoppers buy gift cards, cashiers give them blank cards and then divert the shoppers’ money onto cards for themselves…

The most common type of employee theft is “sweethearting,” in which cashiers fail to ring up or scan goods that friends or relatives present at the register, Professor Hollinger said. Stealing from the till remains a problem, too. But with gift cards continuing to grow in popularity, they are an increasingly easy target.

Whatever method employees use to steal, their take is more substantial than that of the average shoplifter. Joshua Bamfield’s global study of retail theft found that larcenous employees averaged $1,890 in theft, compared with $438 for shoplifters…

Professor Hollinger says the rate of theft is greatest among retailers with high turnover rates and many part-time workers, who may be less loyal and under more financial pressure than full-time workers.

He also found higher theft among younger workers. “Older workers know they have a lot more to lose — promotional opportunities, health insurance, 401(k)’s and pensions,” Professor Hollinger said.

My experience in traffic management, small parcel manifesting systems plus a bit of retail – leads me to believe that the prospect of a future within a firm makes significant difference to loyalty, standards-based behavior and theft. Someone working in a facility where management reaches out to promote from within, assist in education assistance, provide medical benefits – is a lot less likely to jeopardize an entry-level job that can lead to something better.

There are plenty of good examples – UPS being the strongest in my experience.

In a neighborhood full of families, it was the children who apparently first noticed someone new had moved into the rented yellow-vinyl house on Joliet’s far west side.

They told their parents around February that a new boy was joining their games on this quiet cul-du-sac of neat, brand-new homes and had started attending their school.

What neighbors didn’t know, but what federal authorities now allege, is that this family — husband, wife and young son — was hired in Mexico, given a car and directions to Joliet and paid to live there as part of an elaborate ploy to disguise the two-story home’s true purpose. It was to serve as a stash house for a drug ring that allegedly raked in about $10 million a year selling cocaine, most recently under the leadership of a man named “Panda.”

Federal agents and local police raided the four-bedroom Joliet home in June, finding $1.4 million in cash in vacuum-sealed baggies in the attic and, inside a black Ford pickup in the garage, 54 kilograms of cocaine, according to recently unsealed court documents. It was part of a larger bust in which 17 people were arrested and accused of using stash houses across the southwest suburbs in Bolingbrook, Hickory Hills, Joliet, Oak Lawn and Plainfield.

Federal authorities say the suburbs now rival Chicago when comparing the amount of drugs imported to the area by Mexican cartels. The most significant drug conspiracy in Chicago history, detailed last month and traced back to Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpins, operated out of stash houses dotted all over bucolic suburban neighborhoods.

RTFA. Some of it is good police work, some of it luck – as it always is.

There’s the usual neighbor saying, “Oh my God – I never would’ve suspected it.” NSS.

A Colorado company’s recall last week of beef products possibly contaminated with E. coli has been expanded, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. The recall came as a result of “an ongoing investigation into 24 illnesses in multiple states,” the USDA said.

The initial recall of 41,280 pounds announced last Wednesday was voluntarily expanded Sunday to include an additional 380,000 pounds of products made by the JBS Swift Beef Company, of Greeley, Colorado.

The recall came as a result of “an ongoing investigation into 24 illnesses in multiple states, of which at least 18 appear to be associated,” the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said in a written statement.

On its Web site, the company said the suspect beef was produced at its Greeley plant on April 21 and distributed nationally and internationally. “Each of our customers will be personally informed of this recall by phone,” the wholesaler said. A spokesman would not identify those customers to CNN.

“That’s ridiculous!” said Sarah Klein, a staff attorney for the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. “JBS should be able to say who they sold meat to, and those companies should be able to say, ‘These are the products we created from them.’ “

The recall underscores the need for “a comprehensive animal identification system” that would allow meat suppliers to trace their products to an individual ranch, she said…

Symptoms of infection with E. coli bacteria can include severe or bloody diarrhea, vomiting and severe abdominal cramping…

Checking in with TV Talking Heads, this morning, there were a few diligent types who’d taken the time to call JBS, some of the JBS recutters they’d been able to track down – with no cooperation from JBS – and called local supermarkets from national chains to see if anyone knew if any of the contaminated beef was in their local food supply.

Or at least the ranchers of America, slaughterhouses like JBS – and their lobbyists haven’t given the FDA and our federal government permission to do so.