Back in 1998, my class was the first subject of the now-infamous mindset list. And honestly, I think NPR hit the nail right on the head in this blog post:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129250886

The mindset list seems to be more representative of the mindset of the people writing the list than the mindset of the incoming college freshman class. As one commenter on the NPR post said, "The bigger difference between generations is not that I don't know who shot JR (I'm sure Google could tell me), but that I don't give a flying **** who shot JR."

I got my mystery sale item today. It's a celebriduck, which is lame enough. However, this celebriduck (the Tin Woodman, which is available as part of a set of four Wizard of Oz themed ducks for $34.99) doesn't even cost $9.95 from the celebriducks website!

I call shenanigans!

I'm in ur alley, showin mah bonez.

Radioactive cat iz transparent!

I haz endoskeletonz. Let me show you them.

Or, the caption that goes with everything:

"Jesus, what an asshole."

I can has transparency?

Yeah, I noticed that this morning, too.

Jason -- FYI, downtown St. Louis has multiple zip codes, so you should probably take that into consideration with your stats. Also, there's the St. Louis Police Department's safe city map, which lets you find out what sort of crimes have been reported in various neighborhoods, etc.

For example, I did a search of the Downtown neighborhood from 1/1/2007 through today, and found that there were no murders downtown, two sexual assaults, 36 robberies, 435 thefts, 22 stolen autos, and three serious assaults.

I recommend checking out the interactive map. You might learn a thing or two:

http://safecity.slmpd.org/MapMain.htm

Also, you are correct -- JeffVanderLou and the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhoods in north city and the Dutchtown neighborhood on the south side are rough areas.

Having lived in St. Louis my whole life, and as someone who recently bought a house on the city's south side, I can tell you that most of the city of St. Louis -- especially downtown -- is pretty safe. And the suburbs, which aren't factored into this crime rating, but are often considered to be part of the city, are very safe. You're much more likely to be the victim of violent crime if you're wandering around the northern part of the city. There are also a few spotty areas south of downtown. But hey, to the authors of this post -- people who have probably never actually been to St. Louis or Detroit, it's all the same, right?