After the largest private discrimination suit was filed against Walmart last year, and the "Two our of two ain't bad" story, now we find out that Walmart has been linking movies such as "Planet of the Apes" to African-American themed movies. With the help of the blogosphere and Wake-up Walmart, the story made it into the traditional media and Walmart quickly issued a formal apology.
These stories reminded me that J-Bird gave me a copy of the documentary Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices in December. So, I just popped it into the DVD player. The movie is just a collection of interviews, without much of an overarching storyline. This format helps shield the filmmakers from accusations of "altering" reality, though of course the movie is one-sided. Unfortunately, this collection of facts and statements isn't very captivating. But if you're curious why people like me and Enjanerd boycott Walmart, the film (or it's website) is a great place to start. (Addendum: the union-busting segment is actually quite moving and persuasive.)
Best line: Wal-Mart is "like a Chinese Company with an American Board of Directors."
Howdy Aaron! This isn't actually related to Wal-Mart but I bet you'll find it interesteing nonetheless.
Andrew Gelman, Gary King, Bernard Grofman and Jonathan Katz have submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court for their reconsidering of our Texas redistricting case (Jackson et al vs. Perry et al).
It's good quant stuff. You can find it at the MLM blog that Gelman and Cook run at Columbia; it's got lots of good stuff:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2006/01/measuring_parti.html
Thanks for the link--I took a look at it and it's interesting stuff. I like that they didn't try to make a direct point about the Texas case: they just made it clear whether a districting could be judged as "fair." I think some of the criticisms are correct though, in that it takes some extrapolation to determine what seat percentage Dems would get at 60% if they've never achieved 60%. I.E., how do you know where that 60% would come from geographically? Perhaps you could look at Dem incumbents who do get 60% of the vote...though, that's still a considerable assumption.
Now, since I don't want to be a hypocrite, I should mention that in the polling world we make such assumptions all the time. Though there we are just advising candidates, not trying to influence Supreme Court decisions.