RESEARCH: OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS UNDERSTATE UNEMPLOYMENT.

What the researchers found was that, for whatever reason, unemployed workers, who are surveyed multiple times are most likely to respond to the survey when they are first given it and ignore the survey later on.

The report notes, “It is possible that unemployed respondents who have already been interviewed are more likely to change their responses to the labor force question, for example, if they want to minimize the length of the interview (now that they know the interview questions) or because they don’t want to admit that they are still unemployed.”

This ends up inaccurately weighting the later responses and skewing the unemployment rate downward. It also seems to have increased the number of people who once would have been designated as officially unemployed but today are labeled as out of the labor force, which means they are neither working nor looking for work.

I know, shocking news.

I’M BEGINNING TO WONDER IF WE SHOULDN’T BE A BIT PICKIER ABOUT WHO WE LET INTO THE COUNTRY: Tsarnaev sister arrested for alleged bomb threat.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Drive-thru BROTHEL launched where prostitutes take clients to ‘sex boxes.’ “The publicly funded cubicles are open all night and are located away from the city centre and include bathrooms, laundry facilities and panic buttons.”

NICE TRY: USC Football Star Didn’t Sprain Ankles Saving Drowning Nephew – He Was Burglarizing Home.

UPDATE: Actually, according to this report he’s not a suspect. But the nephew-saving story isn’t true, and he says it’s not about domestic violence.

CHANGE: Here Are The States Where Tons Of Americans Are Getting Gun Background Checks.

SHIKHA DALMIA: Why Obama Can’t Lead On Racial Justice. “The cause of racial justice might need not a black Democrat but a white Republican—just as normalization with China required not a liberal peacenik but a security hawk like Richard Nixon.”

JIM TREACHER: My Knee Deal Is Finally Over, I Hope. “Yesterday, I finally received my settlement from the U.S. State Department for crippling me with one of their heavily armored security vehicles as I crossed a DC street legally back in Feb. 2010. It has put me in a reflective mood.”

SARAH HOYT: “Pull down those walls. I’m sure the roof will remain standing.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “No one, I mean no one, has ever looked more like a glowing Disney princess while ordering Taco Bell.”

BEWARE: You May Suffer From Sleep-Drunkenness. “Ohayon explains that while researchers aren’t exactly sure what causes this confused behavior, animal studies give us a clue: Sudden awakenings seem to trigger the startle reflex, which allows animals (and, likely, us) to respond quickly to potential threats. To our poor, half-asleep brains, an abrupt awakening signals an emergency — a time for action, not reason. This is also, incidentally, a reason to reconsider your hilarious idea to wake up your sleeping buddy while wearing a terrifying mask; judging from the (slightly NSFW) evidence on YouTube, sleep-drunk individuals are likely to respond to the prank by punching you in the face.”

Seems fair.

IT’S A KILL SWITCH FOR YOU: How Cops and Hackers Could Abuse California’s New Phone Kill-Switch Law.

AT AMAZON, save up to 50% on Handheld Vacuums.

Also, end-of-summer deals on American-made garden hoses from Water Right.

SCIENCE: The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets: He’s the most important human skeleton ever found in North America—and here, for the first time, is his story.

As work progressed, a portrait of Kennewick Man emerged. He does not belong to any living human population. Who, then, are his closest living relatives? Judging from the shape of his skull and bones, his closest living relatives appear to be the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands, a remote archipelago 420 miles southeast of New Zealand, as well as the mysterious Ainu people of Japan. . . . Not that Kennewick Man himself was Polynesian. This is not Kon-Tiki in reverse; humans had not reached the Pacific Islands in his time period. Rather, he was descended from the same group of people who would later spread out over the Pacific and give rise to modern-day Polynesians. These people were maritime hunter-gatherers of the north Pacific coast; among them were the ancient Jōmon, the original inhabitants of the Japanese Islands. The present-day Ainu people of Japan are thought to be descendants of the Jōmon. Nineteenth-century photographs of the Ainu show individuals with light skin, heavy beards and sometimes light-colored eyes. . . . The discovery of Kennewick Man adds a major piece of evidence to an alternative view of the peopling of North America. It, along with other evidence, suggests that the Jōmon or related peoples were the original settlers of the New World. If correct, the conclusion upends the traditional view that the first Americans came through central Asia and walked across the Bering Land Bridge and down through an ice-free corridor into North America.

This is not as crazy a journey as it sounds. As long as the voyagers were hugging the coast, they would have plenty of fresh water and food. Cold-climate coasts furnish a variety of animals, from seals and birds to fish and shellfish, as well as driftwood, to make fires. The thousands of islands and their inlets would have provided security and shelter. To show that such a sea journey was possible, in 1999 and 2000 an American named Jon Turk paddled a kayak from Japan to Alaska following the route of the presumed Jōmon migration. Anthropologists have nicknamed this route the “Kelp Highway.”

“I believe these Asian coastal migrations were the first,” said Owsley. “Then you’ve got a later wave of the people who give rise to Indians as we know them today.”

The Army Corps of Engineers sure didn’t want this researched, and continues to interfere today. Why?

IVY LEAGUE ANTI-SEMITISM UPDATE: Yale Episcopal chaplain Rev. Bruce Shipman digs deeper.

SPORTS JOURNALISTS SURE ARE A BUNCH OF POLITICALLY CORRECT WEENIES: “What exactly are the standards… other than never saying anything that gets criticized?”

21ST CENTURY WARFARE: ISIS co-opts Twitter hashtags to spread threats, propaganda.

HAS ANYBODY ASKED OBAMA ABOUT THIS? ERIC HOLDER? Gaza in Manhattan: Individual Jews Held Guilty and Attacked. “So far, I have found only one brief article about this in the New York Post. Are there more such incidents that are not being covered?” Yes. Buy a gun.

A CONNECTION BETWEEN hip width and sexual behavior in women?

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Christopher Remy, Trophies of War.

SPYING: How privacy fears are driving automakers in the age of the connected car [w/poll].

SO IT’S NOT JUST A LOCAL PROBLEM: BBC: Child sexual exploitation is happening in a “number of towns” in different parts of the country, according to the author of a damning report into abuse in Rotherham. Are the perpetrators all Pakistani Muslims?

On Facebook, Jason van Steenwyk comments: “This doesn’t happen without some serious enabling. I would start rooting out people within the bureaucracy… public employees of whatever ethnicity… for being part of a ring set up to enable this.”

UPDATE: From the comments: ″Her Majesty’s subjects are surely observing that the more bloodthirsty and savage they are, the more respect they’ll be given. I hope Her Majesty’s Government takes a sober look at the incentive structure they’re putting together.” Yeah, I’ve made this point, too.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: iFail: Why John Deasy’s Risky iPad Gambit Crashed and Burned at LAUSD.

FASTER, PLEASE: A Startup Hopes to Teach Computers to Spot Tumors in Medical Scans.

WAR ON WOMEN: Hey moms! See a NYT journo mock your ‘faux outrage’ over Dems saying you don’t have a real job.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? The thing is, the NRSC went all-in to deep-six Milt Wolf in favor of doddering nonresident Pat Roberts. Now Roberts faces a “tough re-election fight,” with this observation: “It’s difficult to see how Milton Wolf would have done appreciably worse in this case, and he might have held the Republican base together better.” Especially as the NRSC pissed off — and pissed on — the base in backing Roberts.

As with Mark Foley and Thad Cochran, a better-run party would have found quality replacements for these weak incumbents, instead of encouraging them to stay in and — in Cochran’s and Roberts’ cases — killing off primary challengers. But whatever the folks running the GOP, and in particular the NRSC, are getting paid, it’s too much.