Censorship

This is what everyone should really be worried about.

And it isn’t the government. It’s much worse than that.

Person of the year. Uh huh.

Facts? We don’t need no steenkin’ facts.

Truthiness…. Says quite a lot, doesn’t it?

I love this quote from the article:

“The national argument right now is, one, who’s got the truth and, two,
who’s got the facts,” he said. “Until we can manage to get the two of them back
together again, we’re not going make much progress.”

Everything You Know is Wrong Department

Related to my post on Viet Nam myths yesterday:

American soldiers in Viet Nam acted like modern day Ghengis Khans - This is proof it wasn’t so.

Rest in peace.

My Statistics Prof would have KILLED me for this one

Wow - this is just amazing. Anyone see the problem with this sample?

This is called skewing a sample…… I would have failed statistics if I had tried this one….

Old Media Death Rattles

Comrade Patterico owns Hiltzik…..

To really enjoy the whole thumping, you need to read the comments on Hiltzik’s own blog and read what Cathy Seipp wrote on the subject.

Sharp Kid

The Anchoress has a very bright son. This sounds very plausible (read the comments, too).

Dumb Idea Department

Well, it WAS a dumb idea, but I gather they finally figured out that the Stones wouldn’t be able to play the gig…….

And for heaven’s sake - GET OVER JANET JACKSON!

Misleading Media Stories Department

From Knight-Ridder news we get this little gem.

Ok, so we have a headline that reads:

Enforcement of mine safety seen slipping under Bush

the lede (which I was taught is supposed to encapsulate the entire story so the headline readers get a brief of the whole article) reads:

Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient
toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and
smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators
owed, a Knight Ridder Newspapers investigation has found.

The next few paragraphs point to lower and fewer fines and reduced staffing in the ranks of Inspectors. So far, so good, right?

So why is this paragraph buried?

“Within the last five years the number of fatalities have been cut in half,”
said National Mining Association spokeswoman Carol Raulston. “From our
perspective that’s where we ought to be focused. It is what is happening to the
absolute number of injuries - and the rate of injuries - that has gone down.
Mining is no longer the most dangerous industry in the United States.”

The entire article is spun so that there is a definite attempt to make this all Bush’s fault. But the facts presented in the article frankly do not support that contention. What I can read (if I get all the way through the article) is that fines have dropped, collections have lagged, number of citations has increased by quite a lot and deaths and injuries have decreased since Bush took office.

In other words, there are much more important measures of whether mine safety is improving than how much money is being collected by the feds in fines.

Like, for example, fewer deaths and injuries.

A more accurate headline would be:

Mine Owners and Unions disagree over measures of mine safety enforcement

With a lede:

Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, fewer and smaller fines have been issued for mine safety violations and collection of fines have also lagged, while actual deaths and injuries have declined.

But that would be accurate, can’t have that, can we?