EYE CANDY: Raciel Castro (5th time!)

Raciel Castro is another one of my all-time favorite models. He has numerous Instagram followers (@racielcastro) but I am surprised that he doesn't have even more. He has appeared as Eye Candy at least 4 times  before (May 19, 2014; December 29, 2014; July 7, 2014;  May 21, 2018). Enjoy!

EYE CANDY: Gerardo Gabriel (3rd Time!)

Gerardo Gabriel is a Latino bodybuilder with an immense following on Instagram (1.4 million @gerardo_gabriel). He has appeared as Eye Candy twice before (April 3, 2017 and July 4, 2016). His abs are incredible and the rest of him is not too bad either!

EYE CANDY: David Cardona

The kind folks from Hunk² sent along these pictures of  David Cardona, a 28-year-old Colombian model who is 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds. He has more pictures at his Instagram site (@Juan_el_vikingo).

EYE CANDY: Jordan Torres (Third Time!)

Jordan Torres has appeared as Eye Candy multiple times before (December 17, 2018 and January 28, 2019). He is a male model, quite popular on Istagram (@officialjt) and Twitter (@itsofficialjt).

EYE CANDY: Jordan Torres (reprise)

Jordan Torres is a model from New York City who has well over 260,000 followers on Instagram (@officialjt). He has quickly become one of my favorite Eye Candy models and has appeared here once before (December 17, 2018). You're welcome!

Ricardo Lara Becomes 1st LGBT Individual Elected Statewide In California

Ricardo Lara has been declared the winner of the California Insurance Commissioner race, defeating former Republican (and current Independent) Steve Poizner. Lara is an openly LGBT state Senator and as of today he leads Poizner 52%-48% (or 400,000 votes) with nearly 10 million votes tabulated:

Lara becomes the first openly LGBT individual elected statewide in California!

Hat tip to Equality California.

GRAPHIC: Demographics of Immigrant Fraction Of United States Has Varied Over Time

This is an interesting graphic which shows the demographics of the non-native population of the United States has varied over time. Axios summarizes the changes over time thusly:

• For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the vast majority of immigrants came from Western and Northern Europe. The Irish fled famine, the Germans fled political instability, and Italians primarily wanted better economic opportunity.
• The 1965 act ended a program that allowed Mexicans to work on U.S. farms but remain residents of Mexico. That changed the nature of immigration from Mexico and from Central America "to primarily unauthorized," Batalova says.
• In 1986, the U.S. gave legal status to almost 3 million undocumented immigrants — an overwhelming majority of them from Mexico. These new green card holders could then sponsor additional family members.
• There has been a surge of Central American asylum seekers in the U.S. over the past several years as political chaos, poverty and violence have ravaged many of those nations.
• New laws also opened the door to immigration from Asia — initially from India and Taiwan, and later China.
• Following the Vietnam War, there was an influx of Vietnamese people and other citizens of the region who fled to the U.S. as refugees.
• Most recently, there's been a wave of immigration from African countries that began in the 1990s and 2000s for a wide variety of economic, political and humanitarian reasons.

hat/tip: Axios

EYE CANDY: Raciel Castro (4th Time)

Raciel Castro is one of my all-time favorite models who has appeared on Eye Candy. Today is my birthday and Raciel was the first person I thought of (closely followed by Simeon Panda and Mike Thurston) as my favorite male models to appear as Eye Candy on this special day.

#NSF REPORT: U.S. Doctorate Recipients At Near All-Time High (2016 Data)

The National Science Foundation has released its annual Survey of Earned Doctorates and there are some interesting nuggets in the data (up to 2016):

• The largest share of doctorates awarded in 2016 was in the life sciences (nearly 23 percent), followed by engineering (17 percent), and psychology and the social sciences (16.5 percent). All fields of humanities and arts made up 10 percent of doctorates awarded.
• The time between students entering graduate school and receiving doctorates has fallen in all fields of study over the past 20 years, but, on average, it still takes years longer to earn a doctorate in non-S&E fields than in S&E fields.
• The number of S&E doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents grew 2 percent since 2015 and 39 percent since 2006. The number of doctorates in S&E fields awarded to temporary visa holders grew 2 percent since 2015 and 20 percent since 2006.
• The number of doctoral awards to temporary visa holders is highly concentrated -- 10 countries accounted for 71 percent of the doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders from 2006 to 2016. The top three countries -- China, India and South Korea -- accounted for 54 percent of the doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders.
• Women have earned a slight majority of all doctorates awarded to U.S. citizen and permanent residents each year since 2002, and women have earned more than 30 percent of all doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders over that period.
• From 1996 to 2016, the number of women earning degrees in S&E fields increased by 84 percent.
• The number of doctorates awarded to blacks or African Americans who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents increased by 32 percent from 2006 to 2016. For the same period, the proportion of doctorates earned by Hispanics or Latinos increased by 67 percent.

One key take-away for me is that 1) Latino doctoral recipients now outnumber African-American and that the gap between male and female STEM doctorates is actually slightly widening, even as both numbers increase (see the graphics at the top of this page).

Hat/tip STEMPROF newsletter edited by Mark Connolly.

GRAPHIC: The racial/ethnic demographics of U.S. Top 10 metro areas

Information on race in America, especially in metropolitan areas in the United States. This is from a recent deep dive into race, politics and demographics by the Boston Globe's award-winning Spotlight team as the paper tried to examine why Boston is perceived as "more racist" than other big cities.

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Kevin de León Announces Challenge to Dianne Feinstein's Re-election Bid

Whoa! Kevin de León is my State Senator and is the head of the California State Senate. The 50-year-old Latino politician from Los Angeles is termed out of the legislature next year and many people have been wondering what higher office he would seek next. This week he announced that he is running to become a U.S. Senator from California. Currently, California's Senators are Dianne Feinstein (who was elected in 1992) and Kamala Harris, who was elected in 2016. Feinstein recently announced that she would be trying to win a 6th 6-year term in 2018.

de León has announced that he will try to stop that from happening.

Since both are Democrats and California has a top 2 primary it is very likely this race will not e decided in the primary, but almost certainly go the distance to November 2018.

SATURDAY POLITICS: #AD51 Runoff On 12/05/17 With Wendy Carrillo and Luis Lopez

The special election to replace now-Congressman Jimmy Gomez in the 51st Assembly District happened this Tuesday October 3 and the top 2 finishers were Wendy Carrillo (who had also run against Gomez in the special election in the 34th Congressional District) and Luis López. Carrillo received the most votes (4,771) in a crowded field of 13 candidates while López was second with 4,086 and Mike Fong was close behind with 3,515.

However, only the top 2 finishers advance to a run-off election to be held on Tuesday December 5. López has run for this seat before, way back in 2012 (against Gomez), while Carrillo is something of a perennial candidate in Northeast Los Angeles elections. López is openly gay and is a healthcare executive and was endorsed by various progressive democratic clubs (East Area Progressive Democrats and Stonewall Democrats) while Carrillo used to work for a local affiliate of Service Employees International Union, which ran an independent expenditure campaign that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support her.

This is my home district (and I voted) so I am following the race quite closely. It will be interesting to see who (if anyone) Gomez endorses as well as what the other candidates in the race do.

Hat/tip to Los Angeles Times.

EYE CANDY: Juan Esteban Berri (3rd time!)

Juan Esteban Berri is a model and actor from Colombia who has appeared as Eye Candy twice before (October 22, 2012 and January14, 2013). He has been listed as 6-foot-1 and 160 pounds and was born in 1980, so he is 37 now. Juan has an Instagram account (@juanesberrio) and is on Facebook (juanesberrio).

Enjoy!

EYE CANDY: Gerardo Gabriel (reprise)

Gerardo Gabriel is a Latino bodybuilder with over 1.3 million Instagram subscribers (@gerardo_gabriel) who has appeared as Eye Candy before (July 4, 2016). These pictures and many more on his Instagram tell you why!

Saturday Politics: Race For CA-34 U.S. House Seat (Not Yet) Crowded

Cue the musical chairs! Last week California Governor Jerry Brown announced his intention to appoint U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra to replace U.S. Senator-elect Kamala Harris as California Attorney General. Becerra, 58, is currently my congressman, representing California's 34th congressional district; he would become the first Latino attorney general in the history of the state (in 2016!)

Becerra had been a rumored candidate in the race to replace Barbara Boxer that Kamala Harris ultimately won over another Latino candidate, Loretta Sanchez. Within hours of the announcement that a rare safely Democratic Los Angeles-area Congressional seat was open, former Speaker of the House John Perez announced his candidacy for the race. Soon after that, my state Assemblyman, Jimmie Gomez, also announced his intention to run for the seat. Activist Wendy Carillo has also declared she is interested. Surprisingly, my City Council person Jose Huizar has so far declined to enter the race to replace Becerra, as has fellow Councilperson Gil Cedillo. For the special election, you just need to be a resident of California (and a U.S. Citizen and over age 25).

Today comes the surprising news that Perez is withdrawing from the race, citing an unnamed health condition which is serious enough that it will prevent him from running a rigorous race in the 2017 special election, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Citing a recent diagnosis of a serious health problem, former California Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said Saturday he is dropping out of the race to replace U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles).
"I've got to focus on my health right now," Pérez said in an interview. "But it was a very hard decision."
The 47-year-old Democrat declined to offer specifics about his condition, citing a desire to keep it private. But he said it was serious enough that it would keep him from waging a vigorous political campaign in 2017.
"The treatment is one that doesn’t lend itself to the intensity of a campaign that the community deserves," he said.

Almost certainly there will be other prominent (and not so prominent) Los Angeles area politicos joining the race. MadProfessah will keep you posted, since it is literally happening in my back yard!

GRAPHIC: Crime Rate versus Stop-and-Frisk in NYC

Kevin Drum has an excellent post today describing the facts about stop-and-frisk in New York City which graphically shows the relationship between the crime rate and stop-and-frisk policy (which stopped doing in 2014 after a federal district court judge ruled the NYPD's policy was illegal racially profiling Black and Latino men).

Since a picture is worth a  thousand words, I'll let the graphic speak for itself! But you can also read Kevin Drum's piece yourself.

EYE CANDY: Jonathan Guijarro

Jonathan Guijarro is a hot model from Spain. I found him on Facebook and Instagram (@jonathanguijarro). I suspect this is not the last time you will see him as Eye Candy. Hawt is hawt!

EYE CANDY: Daniel Tamayo Zapata

Daniel Tamayo Zapata is another hottie I found on Instagram (@danieltamayozapata). According to his Facebook page, he is from Medellin, Colombia. Unfortunately, I don't have any other information about him. If you do, let me know in the comments!