The 2010 Census data has been calculated and the government has announced that Plato, MO is the new “population center” of the United States. It sure sounds impressive, but what the hell does “population center” mean?

The mean population center represents the point at which a perfectly flat and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all 308.7 million residents weigh the same and are counted where they live.

Ah, now there’s an important statistic that was well worth the time spent to calculate it, especially since it’s based on the tenuous assumption of all people weighing the same. Why not calculate the center of the population on a flat map if everyone wore water wings and moved 5 miles in the direction of their grandmother’s house? All the same, the people of Plato are really excited about it.

Village leaders will unveil a commemorative survey marker next to the local post office.

Well that sounds just awesome. People can stop by the post office, pick up some stamps, wave to the slow fella that sits on the park bench all day, and then take a photo of themselves next to the population center of the United States. Act fast though, in 10 years the center could be somewhere else, like West Plato.

via KMOX

Update: Yes, as pointed out in the comments and online, there are other reasons for the population drop: Schools being a big one, and the economy being another. However, crime seems the most universal and the worse, and more specific to St. Louis, so we focused on that.

Original post follows…

The 2010 Census numbers are in! Totally out! All kinds of numbers in them…big numbers…yup…lots. of. numbers. Ok, screw it. You can take it right?

The city of St. Louis’ population fell 8% from 2000, currently sitting at 319,000. Shockingly, it appears years of high violent crime have made people want to leave the city, dragging it’s population down to it’s lowest level in 100 years. Clearly Mayor Slay’s program of putting his fingers in his ear and yelling “I can’t hear you crime!” over and over again while simply hoping that car theft will force his population numbers to stay put hasn’t been working.

From Mayor Slay’s blog:

This is absolutely bad news. We had thought, given many of the other positive trends, that fifty years of population losses had finally reversed direction. Instead, by the measure of Census to Census, they continue, though at a slower pace. Combined with the news from St. Louis County, I believe that this will require an urgent and thorough rethinking of how we do almost everything.

St. Louis County’s numbers? So glad you mentioned that Mr. Mayor. (The guy can’t help his city from going down the crapper, but he’s pretty great at segues.) The county’s population also dropped by 2% dragging it’s numbers below 1 million people.

The question is: Where did all these people go? Don’t be coy, you know exactly where they went. You’re probably one of them, sitting there now, all smug like “Oh I like where I live because my house has value and no one shoots at me or breaks our windows.” Well…uh…shut up! Check out this pec dance we’re doing right now. You can’t see it, but it’s crazy sexy and impressive. Take that St. Charles County.

For the rest of the St. Louis region, it was good news. St. Charles County grew by 27 percent. Its largest city, O’Fallon, grew by nearly 72 percent, moving to the seventh largest city in the state. In 2000, it was 13th. It now has 79,329 people.

St. Charles County, with 360,485 residents, surpasses St. Louis city. Lincoln County also made strong gains, growing by 35 percent. Jefferson County is now the fifth largest county in the state, with 218,733 people, a 10.4 increase from 2000.

Maybe this will be the wake up call the city’s leaders need to stop arguing about little crap and get their butts in gear to fix this mess. It’s not a good sign when there are areas of town where the best idea to help the crime is to offer residents a deal on a home security system. That’s the kind of reactionary crap that has gotten us in to this mess, and the same reason why people are fleeing from this area like rats trying to get off the Titanic. Here’s hoping the Mayor’s not dumb enough to tell us all how the census numbers are misleading and things are a lot better than they sound. “At least there’s plenty of parking spots!” We’re joking. Don’t say that Mr. Mayor.

Just in case none of this can be fixed though, the paperwork to have St. Louis renamed “South Detroit” is filed and on the Mayor’s desk.

via STLToday H/T Riverfront Times

Eric Fischer was inspired by Bill Rankin’s Chicago map of racial and ethnic divides which took the recent Census data and dotted a city map with colored dots equaling groups of the same race…so he did the same thing for other cities. Not sure if this really counts as being “inspired”. “Thought that it was cool so I did the exact same thing.” might be closer.

Below is Fischer’s map of St. Louis. Each dot is 25 people. Red is white, blue is black, green is asian, orange is hispanic and gray is “other”/white guys that wear their hat sideways.

Ok…we crappily overlaid a Google map on this image for a little clarity.

No surprises here, but it is interesting that South City is far and away the most diverse area in the region. It’s like a real city right there in the middle of this other city which is right next to the two other segregated areas. How lovely!

For more clarity, we are  over-overlaying some informative notes:

For slightly less clarity, we are now going to overlay a photo of popular morning anchor man John Pertzborn:

Hopefully this was informative.

A recent opinion piece posted in the Post Dispatch recently is making the rounds. The piece, written by UMSL professor Charles D. Schmitz is entitled “St. Louis is a world-class city” it’s a well-written rah-rah piece that someone from another town might brush off as self-aggrandizing, it makes some pretty cogent points.

The focus of the piece is one major issue: St. Louis City should swallow St. Louis County. Schmitz ran the data as if that was the case and came up with the following:

- St. Louis would suddenly fly from 53rd to the 7th biggest city in the US. Seventh!

- Including the county in all metrics and our high crime rate drops to below the national average.

- Same with our currently high dropout rate and shittastic (our word, not his) schools. Adding in the country and we peak above the national average.

In the world we live in, our failure to do this simple act will relegate us to the ash heap of history. On the other hand, merging the city and county into a “city” as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, will increase our status, bring us unimaginable opportunities and change the perception that we are a third-rate city with a rank of 53 to our deserved lofty ranking of seven.

You can’t deny the data points here, adding the County to the city limits seems like a great idea from the city perspective…but its going to be crazy difficult to get the county to go along with this.

Let me put it to you this way. If you were an old crack head with no education and someone said “Wouldn’t it be awesome if you were banging that younger, attractive, but kinda prude chick over there?” Of course it would! No brainer. …not a great thing for that chick though. It might turn out great, but just try to convince her of that now.

You know those douche bags nerds that always turned in all their homework and when you didn’t have a chance to yours done because you were a little busy with feeling the naughty bits of the opposite sex, they would make sure the teacher knew that they did their work and you didn’t.  You just want to put your foot so far up their ass that you leave trademarks on their adam’s apple right?

The Census version of those kids are O’Fallon and St. Peters, MO.

Bedian said a census bureau tipped St. Peters officials about this Web page, which said O’Fallon ranked 44th and St. Peters 49th nationally. Both had a return rate of 61 percent, well above the national rate of 52 percent and Missouri’s overall rate of 55 percent.

If you were wondering, as we were, who the badass kid that sits in the back, always smells like smoke, uses aggression to cover up the fact that he is scared and gentle on the inside and never turns in their homework was. It looks like Osage Beach City, MO with only a 29% responding rate. Figures since he has all the parties over there with lots of drunk slutty chicks.

via STLToday’s Chas Beat

Nothing like a bet no one knows or cares about with a city we are clearly better than on a field of play that probably ranks in the top 10 most boring bets of all time to get a city of people excited about something!

In an effort to get Missourians excited about the 2010 Census, Mayor Slay and Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser have agreed on a friendly competition to see which City improves its Census mail-in response by the highest percentage from 2000-2010.

The losing Mayor will have to send the winner a case of his hometown’s favorite beer and most delicious barbeque.

If I screwed around with dumb crap like this at my job at the banging hot chicks factory, I would be fired in no time.

Really? Really?  This is your best plan to get people “excited” about the 2010 Census? This is it? …all you could come up with?  What moron is dumb enough to fall for this and basically post the stupid as press release somewhere…oh the Globe Democrat is:

The last mail participation update and the challenge winner will be announced on May 3, 2010. Let’s make sure that St. Louis beats Kansas City in the 2010 Census Challenge!

Dorks.

Why don’t we just go ahead and send in our census forms but go ahead and let KC win this one and we can just keep on winning better “contests” like…

1. The city people think of when someone says “Name a city in Missouri!”

2. The winner of the Rick Ankiel version of Old Maid.

3. City name that doesn’t make people confused as to what state you are in.

4. Better monument.

5. More stabbings.