• Dictionary of Occupational Titles, Revised Fourth Edition, Vol. I
• Dictionary of Occupational Titles, Revised Fourth Edition, Vol II
• Selected Characteristics of Occupations Defined in the Revised Dictionary of Occupational Titles

Data published in these volumes are in the public domain and may be reproduced and distributed without source credit. This version also includes data never published in print. These data, in the following fields, remain under copyright to the North Carolina Occupational Analysis Field Center:

• Work Fields
• MPSMS (Materials, Products, Subject Matter, & Services)
• Significant Worker Functions
• Temperaments
• Aptitudes
• Environmental Conditions
• Physical Demands (except Strength)

These data may be reproduced and distributed only with source credit.

The Department of Labor has abandoned the Dictionary in favor of O*NET. The Social Security Administration, however, still relies on the Dictionary for work characteristics and transferable skills analysis in administering the disability insurance and supplemental security disability income programs under the Social Security Act (20 C.F.R. §§404.1566(d) and 416.966(d); SSR 00-4p).

Download: DOT.zip
(5,082,753 bytes, md5: 72c11d10fca87b03974ec050ee57febe, downloads:15)

You really ought to explore the original for a while, because part of the point of the comic is that exploration takes time and effort. But when you’re done with that, check out my zoomable Google Maps version here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnsCaSfEXe0

The heart is hard to translate. It has a language of its own. It talks in tongues and quiet sighs, prayers and proclamations, in the grand deeds of great men, in the smallest of gestures, in short, shallow gasps. But with all my education, I can’t seem to command it. The words are all escaping and coming back all damaged. I would put them back in poetry, if I only knew how. I can’t seem to understand it.

I would give all this, and Heaven, too– I would give it all, if only, for a moment, that I could just understand the meaning of the word. You see, because I’ve been scrawling it forever, but it never makes sense to me at all.

It talks to me in tiptoes and it sings to me inside. It cries out in the darkest night and breaks in the morning light. But with all my education, I can’t seem to command it. The words are all escaping and coming back all damaged. I would put them back in poetry, if I only knew how. I can’t seem to understand it.

I would give all this, and Heaven, too– I would give it all, if only, for a moment, that I could just understand the meaning of the word. You see, because I’ve been scrawling it forever, but it never makes sense to me at all.

No, words are a language, and it doesn’t deserve such treatment. All my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling. All this “Heaven” never could describe such a feeling (or so I’m hearing). Words were never so useful, so I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before.

Song	Album

I’m also working on doing the same with iTunes.

I’m going to be making a number of other changes soon as well. I need to clean up the blogroll, replace the Flash clocks with canvases, and fix the wishlist. I’m also working on a major project, based on some recent research I’ve been doing into combinatorial mathematics. That project will eventually get some attention here, when it’s done. For now, I’m having fun learning things like “Ruby” and “Ajax” and “Twitter Bootstrap” and “Rails.” More to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ5ynBA1UIc

In response—or at least so it seemed to me, Obama got on ABC and did this:

Vapid, election year puffery. What serious opponent of anti-miscegenation laws would go around saying he’s in favor of mixed-race marriages, but that the states should be allowed to ban them if they want? Shameful and extremely pragmatic. Nothing more than a campaign speech. This is his “personal” “opinion” (insofar as he can be said to hold opinions of his own for any length of time) and will not translate to national policy.

In 1947, the year before the California Supreme Court struck down that State’s anti-miscegenation law as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, 30 states (of 48) had such laws in effect: California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Indiana, and Maryland repealed theirs between 1948 and 1967. Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Delaware had theirs struck down with Virginia’s when the US Supreme Court found the latter violated the 14th Amendment (Loving v. Virginia).

As of Tuesday, 39 States now ban same-sex marriage (as such) by one means or another, although the law is complicated in a handful of them. No Only one [see update below] State ever banned mixed-race marriages by constitutional amendment, while the majority of States with same-sex marriage bans have chosen this route. Except in North Carolina, anti-miscegenation laws weren’t put in place by popular initiatives. And no State ever reenacted a ban on mixed-race marriages after a repeal, c.f. California’s Prop 8.

So when others talk about how hopeful things look on the gay marriage front, I can’t help wonder if they’re looking at the same country I’m seeing. “A majority support gay marriage,” they say. I see no evidence of such a majority, and cannot help but question the polling methods. Frankly, the “majority support” angle is offensive to me, because it is dishonest and because it concedes the whole moral argument over democratizing these things to the opposition.

A Supreme Court ruling à la Loving at this point would be disastrous, both for how it would happen and for the reaction. Such a ruling would create both good and bad law, and the good would be wiped out by the subsequent amendment to the US Constitution. A Gay Loving would add so much fuel to the amendment-pushers, and only 38 states need to ratify. Too much of the country opposes the idea of gay marriage for a Gay Loving to work.

In sum, I am not optimistic at all about this fight on the national level. Don’t look for it to be over for a decade at least.

PS: I wrote a portion of this post in response to a thread on the OList:OHomos mailing list.

UPDATE: Trey points out that North Carolina once amended its constitution to include a ban on mixed-race marriages. Indeed, at the 1875 constitutional convention, the people in convention ratified, among 29 other alterations to the State constitution, a provision providing that

All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the third generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited.

This provision remained in the North Carolina constitution until the people replaced the entire constitution with a new one in 1971, despite Loving in 1967.