Somewhat OT: Revolutionaries, Scotland and Texas

[David Bovill]

As part of my ongoing research into the effects of coding practices, and
legal frameworks, on serious crime rates around the world, I've dug up some
surprising correlations. Many analysts have argued that the major factors in
violent crime and property crime, have been due to factors such as drug use,
penal policy, and the ability of citizens to provide an effective deterrent
(such as gun possession).

Please note that despite disproportionally affecting young males, "penal
policy", has nothing whatsoever to do with the "male member". The Latin
routes are quite distinct with penal deriving from from the "poenalis" -
that is pertaining to punishment, and not "penis" (the male member or
"tail"), whose proper adjective would be "penial" in any case. I digress.

On 8 January 2011 06:13, Chipp Walters <chipp at altuit.com> wrote:

>
> (In fact, in Texas, I'm allowed to shoot a robber as he's carrying out a
> TV, in the back, who is robbing my neighbor's house...while they're away...
> Yep, we don't have too many home invasions here. And we balance our budget
> each year).
>

Unfortunately there are no good figures for distinguishing 'home invasion"
from burglaries, and so in the interests of objectivity we are forced to
discuss the more general category, which in the light of Chipps point is a
pity. Interestingly despite popular opinion to the contrary, Texas does not
fare as badly with regard to violent crime, as it does when it comes to
burglary - coming 7th in the national league
tables<http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/txcrime.htm>for burglary in
2005, and only 14th for violent crime. For reference the
same figures for New York at that time were more even coming 46th and 48th
respectively. Texan cities, feature heavily in the top league table slots
for burglary<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate>,
but again do not fare as badly for forcible rape (with the exception of Corpus
Christi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Christi,_Texas>), aggravated
assault, or murder.

It would seem that gun ownership, 3 strikes laws, and the like have little
to do with burglary rates comparatively or absolutely. On the other hand
this may not be the case for the ownership of a Revolution or LiveCode
license.

   - Graph of Global Burglary
Trends<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burglaries_per_1,000_pop.svg>

What is striking about this graph is both the extremely high burglary rates
in Scotland, as well as the precipitate fall after mid 1992. Interestingly
this is the exact same time (June 1992), that Metacard released version 1.0
of the language that we now all know and love as LiveCode. This explains
many things. Why for instance do Scotland, Texas, Australia, and even Brazil
feature so heavily in our community? Is there perhaps a rational explanation
why adoption of Livecode is so strongly correlated with high property crime
rates - and could this perhaps be the underlying reason for the re-branding
of the language from Revolution to LiveCode?

There are of course a number of things left unexplained by this analysis,
why burglary rates failed to decrease after the introduction of MetaCard in
Australia for instance (more recent figures may shed light on this). But in
general it goes a long way to explain why such a uniquely skewed collection
of crime plagued participants, have managed to create one of the most
peaceful, and nurturing programming communities on the web.

Long Live LiveCode!