Anybody who hears hears crap like “200,000 to 300,000 US youth are victims of sex trafficking” and believes it needs a tune-up in the department of B.S. detection. I don’t know why people love to believe made up stats and then discount real ones that matter (eg: poverty, prison, homicide). One headline read, “HUMAN TRAFFICKING…
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All this revolution and celebration got me thinking… One of the things I’m always surprised at when I travel, at least when I travel anywhere other than the US and Western Europe, is just how sweet and kind and generous the average person on the street is. I’ve seen it Egypt, in Syria, in Thailand,…
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I’m ran the latest draft of my book through a word-frequency count. 47 uses of “simply”?! That’s simply too many, and I got that down to 11 (mostly just by deleting them–it’s interesting how often “simply” simply isn’t needed). Now I’m working on “certainly,” “of course,” and “actually.” It’s very easy to fall on such…
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Sort of. And only in response to a lawsuit. Here’s the Times story. Why not just give out the raw data so academics like me can actually use it? It might actually help the NYPD and the city. Just sayin’…
I love Venn Diagrams. This is a good one: It’s from a site I need to visit more, Chartport.org.
Drug Czar Kerlikowske said, “drugged driving is a much bigger public health threat than most Americans realize and unfortunately, it may be getting worse.” [Cue evil music!] Except, of course, it’s not. Kerlikowske is talking about this, which estimates that one-third of those who die in motor vehicle fatalities test positive for drugs. The problem,…
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If you don’t read The Atlantic, you should. Not only can you act like you’re smart, you might become smart. Or at least a lot smarter than you’ll ever become reading the typical drivel in a cop magazine (yes, I know, “staying alert can save your life”–so remain in “Code Yellow” and read something worthwhile).…
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The key is to un-learn the academic habit of treating every proposition and argument offered as needing to be taken seriously and requiring a refutation, if false. Note to self: Making sh*t up is a valuable research technique. Must use it more often. So says Mark Kleiman. [thanks to Jay]
Do you ever see a headline that says “Gang Membership Down”? I’m suspicious. Gang membership did not increase 25% in one year. That I can guarantee.
Fox News says an ever-increasing number of people are losing their jobs. 15 million alone in a 3-month period in 2010! That’s patently absurd. But it’s cited to the Bureau of Labor Statistics so it must be true. They “corrected” their graph to read: “total unemployed.” Straight up, I guess ever since Obama started handing…
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