Priorities

I saw a bit of Obama's press conference today, one of the questions asked was how the situation in Egypt would effect gas prices.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

      The saying goes something like "87% of statistics are made up on the spot," but I wonder if we would be better off if that was true? Take this statistic for example,
[In "toxic body burden" research preformed in 2003, medical scientists at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found an average of fifty or more toxic chemicals in the bloodstream and urine samples of nine volunteers, most of whom led normal or even environmentally conscious lives.]*
Ironically, this book warns us of the dangers all the corporations relentlessly pushing their deceitful messages on us to make us buy their bullshit.

Still, let me avoid digression and get back to my main point. This statistic is 100% useless, why?

1 Sample size: 9 people.
      This leaves me speechless. I, I mean, How, or gahhh...
2 Control group: None.
      The paragraph goes on to blame manufacturers polluting on these toxins, but without a control group that isn't affected by the pollution, these readings are useless. At the very least some sort of context is needed. What are you defining as poisons? At what levels were these poisons? For all I know you are registering .0001 ppm of caffeine as a toxin.
3 Spread: lol
      To get anything meaningful you need a good distribution of samples. Nine volunteers at a college is a joke, and a very poor one at that.
4 Clearly incompetent : Yes
      But the absurdity doesn't stop there, if we look at how poorly they did this "study" I wouldn't be surprised if they contaminated their samples, had faulty equipment, or just made stuff up.

      Not all statistics are this obviously flawed though, and many studies are on complex things that most of us wouldn't know the correct methodologies for testing. There are some things we can do to find out if these are faulty statistics, but often sources are not cited, and even when they are it can be a lot of work to look them up and evaluate them.


*(Affluenza the all consuming epidemic, second edition. page 103)

Thoughts on deception.

I am taking a class talking about well, how a lot of the stuff we see and are told isn't exactly true. It is also about thinking for yourself, in any case it is all very ironic. We are reading a book with statistics so crappy they make me want to puke. As a result I started thinking about other deceptions and I figured I would point them out. In the coming posts I will try to cover these topics. After I finish I may try to clean stuff up in a book like format if I fell it is worth it, but I doubt I will.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Analogies, generalizations, and exaggerations
Sayings
Quotes
Slight of hand

And also, of our own self-deception.

Idols and demons
Stubbornness
Fear
Paranoia
Naivete

Is it weird that terminals make me feel nostalgic,

even though for most of my life I didn't even know what a terminal was?
I installed my new SSD, and I was relocating my documents folders. It is as easy as clicking a few buttons. It just seems wrong! At the very least I should have to edit my registry files. Am I turning into that crazy guy at the end of 60 minuets?!?!?

Still alive

Not much to say. I plan or trying to post on my blog more often this year than I did last year. Who knows, I may even say something of value!

Oh, my sister got married to an awesome guy, although he is a mac user... Check out www.mattandreah.com to see more.

More photos.

Here are some new photos I have taken recently. As always, click for bigger. Flicker also has some new photos as well. These are from my backyard.

Evil mosquitoes attacked me when I went outside for a bit.
I have got my PC set up to play my old PSX and PS2 games though.

Fuck Sony

PS3 Firmware 3.21 disables "otherOS" feature.

Yet another reason to stick with a PC. Who creates a consoles then removes functionality? Sony apparently.

Sure, you don't have to install the update, but then you can use PSN, play any games online, or even play newer PS3 games. Oh, blu-ray is out for anything new too.