Dan Lewis - Latest Comments

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

Dan121377 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:02:59 -0000

I don't think there are a lot of armed robberies of stores in Manhattan, period. There's too much foot traffic to make it worthwhile. You'd be better off mugging a pedestrian on a side street than holding up a corner market.

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

Dan121377 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:00:51 -0000

(1) The Upper East Side is a pedestrian section of a pedestrian city. Even late at night there are upstanding citizens walking around. I live across the street from a bar and whenever there's a marginally important game, there's foot traffic in and around the area until at least two hours after the game ends. And you don't drive anywhere except for out of the neighborhood. You walk to the grocery store, drug store, dry cleaners, etc.

(2) If anything, the "real" population is higher than the 200k cited by Wikipedia. It does not count most of the people who work in the neighborhood but live in other neighborhoods, as the typical area worker does.

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

Dan121377 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:56:17 -0000

But why no guns?

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

happyjuggler0 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:06:18 -0000

90% of murders are by acquaintances. It's not too hard to figure out from there why the murder rate is much lower in rich neighborhoods.

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

acusticthoughts — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:42:40 -0000

Two factors that might have statistical significance -

1. What percentage of people in that area spend time floating around the area? DO the people here spend more time indoors, at fancy restaurants, in their car with a driver?

2. What percentage of the time are the people who own homes there actually there? This particular population of people spends a significant amount of time in other places in the world. A better look at the population might be to find the average number of people within the region, versus those who are registered to actually live there. Then you might find that the "real" population closer to 100,000 or 50,000 or even less - who knows, which would increase that murder per 100,000 number.

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

hmmz — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:48:52 -0000

Rich areas have more money, but one would think the tough guys would go to rich areas in order to "obtain" said money. Perhaps there is a class-based deterrent effect of tough guys being visually identified when they are creeping in rich areas looking for targets. I believe the only way to get a real answer to this question is to ask someone in the know. Maybe people in rich areas make difficult targets and access to money means higher risk of consequences? Tough guys are risk mitigators too.

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

Dan121377 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:42:01 -0000

That's part of the reason why the homicide rate is so low generally, sure. There are few projects (some, though, for example in the 90s) and while there are homeless, they are pretty well known in the neighborhood and non-threatening. (I'll have to take your word that Upper East Siders with drug habits always pay cash.) That does not fully explain why there are literally no gun-related homicides in the area, unless you are also suggesting -- which I think is also right -- that your reasons mean that six and a half years is too small a sample size. So I'll read that into your comment.

But what is troubling me is the fact that there are two gun-related homicides just outside the Upper East Side's borders, and the fact that those borders are illusory and mostly meaningless. A cynic would think that real estate agents did a data dive on crime data in NYC and, having found that gun deaths were zero if we drew lines at 59th and 96th, drew those exact lines.

Re: Why Aren’t People Shot on the Upper East Side?

Chris — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:35:18 -0000

You lack projects and people with money always pay for their drugs. Police are also quick to remove "suspicious" people from rich neighborhoods.

Re: You Are Not Your Bio

asg — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:58:30 -0000

Hah! I remember seeing a Thomas episode with Carlin's name in the credits and thinking "no way". But it was!

Re: How to Make the Other Person Read Your Mind

Dan121377 — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:21:29 -0000

If you can. Sometimes you don't know what ways there are to get what you want, so you have to just explain your thinking.

The paper plates example isn't a good one, I guess, as most people know that "high-end" paperware exists. But what if you didn't? You'd not be able to ask for it.

Re: How to Make the Other Person Read Your Mind

fredwilson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:11:26 -0000

so be more specific about what "it" is?

Re: Just Walk Beside Me and Be My Friend

Dan121377 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:39:38 -0000

A truism. Always solid.

Re: Just Walk Beside Me and Be My Friend

Dan121377 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:38:52 -0000

There's a guy in the video wearing nothing but red brief underpants and an umbrella hat. You can see him jump into the frame at the 2:16 or 2:17 mark. I have a feeling that there were a lot of people on drugs.

Re: Just Walk Beside Me and Be My Friend

dangarion — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:16:07 -0000

It didn't turn into a mob till the ladies showed up. Once they show up that validates everything beforehand.

Re: Just Walk Beside Me and Be My Friend

Sooze — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:13:47 -0000

Guy #1 and Guy #2? Definitely on drugs. :)

Re: My take on the Pajamas Media ad network collapse.

Justin Gardner — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:51:20 -0000

I agree we're missing the sell through rate, and that's obviously key.

But I think folks stayed in because they had delusions that the PJM network would begin to boost their traffic so they could start making real money. Obviously that was foolish, but we're not talking about a ton of blogs here. And let's face it, they were probably only making $50 a month off of Google Adsense/BlogAds anyway. Not really much incentive to keep those.

And to the point about being part of the PJM network, I don't think that can be discounted. Because now they were part of an elite conservative network that included their blogging heroes. And we're only talking about 60 blogs here. So would you want to be the guy who says, "I'm out of here!" I'm thinking no. But some did leave and they were just deleted from the network with little fanfare. After all, it was just business.

In any event, I welcome your thoughts tomorrow.

Re: My take on the Pajamas Media ad network collapse.

Dan121377 — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:36:45 -0000

I'm glad to run through the #s some more with you. I think the key data point we're missing is the selll through rate -- I know that a lot of times I see a PJM ad, it's a house ad for some TV show. And I doubt that there was a lot of sites which did not hit the 100k quarterly threshold -- why would you stay in the network when it's paying you $0?

Re: My take on the Pajamas Media ad network collapse.

Justin Gardner — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:45:16 -0000

Dan, take a look at my response over at Donklephant. I think Mickey's revelation of a $2 CPM payout to their top bloggers is incredibly significant news and I'll have a big post about this tomorrow morning that runs through the numbers.

Thanks again for taking the time to debate the numbers with me. :-)

Re: Dear Microsoft. Thanks for the $15 bn valuation. We still hate IE. Love, Facebook.

Dan121377 — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:09:12 -0000

Yes, it works in IE7 (and for that matter, IE6, to a degree). So why doesn't Facebook recommend it as a Facebook-acceptable browser?

Re: Dear Microsoft. Thanks for the $15 bn valuation. We still hate IE. Love, Facebook.

Mike — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:03:01 -0000

It works with IE 7.

Re: Dear Microsoft. Thanks for the $15 bn valuation. We still hate IE. Love, Facebook.

comment troll — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:10:38 -0000

FIRST!

Re: Jury Duty: Two Days, Two Trials, Two Words, One Hundred Thousand Dollars

Dan121377 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:47:53 -0000

No idea. My initials are "DNL" -- I never actually drank the stuff

Re: Jury Duty: Two Days, Two Trials, Two Words, One Hundred Thousand Dollars

cneil — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:45:19 -0000

Sorry this isn't about your post. I noticed your twitter icon is from Dnl. Can you still get this soda anywhere? I loved it, but it disappeared in Missouri.