You have to be rich to be poor

This is one of those articles where, if they're even only accurate on about half of what they claim/suggest, things look pretty bleak indeed.

Things cost more in poor neighborhoods.

I have no idea what can really be done about that. One of those cogs in the perpetual cycles.

Don't lay down on train tracks, especially when you are sleepy

Last year, a couple of girls fell asleep on some train tracks and, surprise surprise, they got ran over by a train (and, luckily, only suffered a foot and a leg amputation).

Yesterday, I saw this report on NPR "2 Teen Girls, Injured by Train, Cope With Change." I listened to it hoping that it would redeem my impression of these two children and their parents as complete fools. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt in cases like these, but it was particularly difficult in this case: Even if they did not intend to take a nap, even if they held in their minds a belief that the tracks were unused, in what circumstances can you excuse two girls for laying down on train tracks?

Anyway, I listened to that story and, if anything, it actually made my opinion of these two girls and their parents worse then it was before. I don't like being judgmental. I sometimes find myself going out of my way to assume people are better, kinder, cleverer than they seem. But I'm having a really hard time with this story.

At last, the circle is complete

No, there's no video in this post. Instead, I found a story on slashdot that I really enjoyed:

"Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia."

It was only a matter of time before this happened. I guess when you don't want to pay for your newspaper (and therefore the news reporters) then you shouldn't be surprised when wikipedia becomes one of their major research resources.

When two people disagree, usually, one of them is wrong

This Peter Schiff guy got it exactly right, over two years ago. I'm sure he wasn't the only guy to have this idea, he was the guy who stuck his neck out on tv and said it would happen in a couple of years. Kudos to him.

huh?

what?



God Damn you fox news.

Placebo

I've typically operated under the assumption that the placebo effect is ubiquitous, pervasive to the extent where not a thing happens in our minds that does not directly affect our entire bodies. I'm talking about 90% of our individual physical realities are completely mental.

When I was just a teenager, having just learned about the placebo effect, I was convinced that simply thinking about the destruction of my cold virus was more effective in speeding up my recovery than chicken soup or any other remedy available. I've never since had a horrible, debilitating cold.

I just stumbled on this NYT article here, found via metafilter, which seems to provide evidence that, regardless of the amount of physical exercise you actually do, what really influences how fit you are is whether you think you're getting exercise.

And the evidence piles up.

Crime happens. Just don't let it get to you.

You take google maps and mash it up with some kind of crime database and you can get a pretty up-to-date map on all kinds of crimes that are happening in your neighborhood.

Here, for example, is a link to a map of homicides in the LA area.

People say that crime has been steadily decreasing over the past 10, 20, 40, 100, 1000 years (pick your favorite time span). But the reason we feel like things are getting worse is that our local news is much better at reporting crime, especially violent crime. Well, the internet is going to make damn sure that gullible fools like me never leave our homes, so we can spend more time on the internet. Oh sweet internet, your warm glow keeps me safe in the dark.

New York Times knows how to use flash

There is a pretty cool flash animated info-visualization of democratic supporter demographics available from the NYT. Here is the link.

Just like Europe

In my SD-Union/Tribune this morning I found the headline "FBI admits 4th year of privacy abuses" (it's an AP story so I'm sure you can find it online somewheres). I didn't finish the whole article but it got me to thinking about another article I read online somewhere where different EU specialists were arguing about which of the EU countries had the most spied-on populace.

Over the years I've come to realize how truly big Big Brother has become in many of the economically powerful EU nations. By comparison, here in America our privacy is much less invaded. And when the FBI has to 'admit' that "oops, we spied on you more than usual again last year.... our bad!" you know things are changing.

I haven't read this anywhere, and I'm sure that no one with authority would admit that it's true, but I have a feeling that our government agency, and the White House probably are looking to Europe as an example of how spying on your populace works, how the citizens of those countries haven't yet revolted and how it has led to more controlled borders, etc. So having evidence that it works, they feel it's time to implement it here at home.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I am afraid that having that kind of power consolidated, that is to control the information of a citizenry, could more easily fall into the hands of a bad leader elected by that apathetic citizenry. It's a scary thought and is not beyond the realm of possibility even for a country like the US. Maybe the benefits outweigh the potential risks, I'm willing to accept that possibility, but I'd like to see the data from those EU countries who've implemented state-wide RFID, or who've got face detecting cameras on every major street corner, etc.

But that's a digression. What I meant to write was: Why are government sectors looking to Europe for techniques to establish surveillance but ignoring the slew of other good ideas that we might borrow?

The last (fluent?) speaker of the language Eyak has passed away. That's linguistically relevant in itself. But the reason I'm discussing it is that the article I read about this event has the following paragraph:

Jones [the last speaker] died peacefully in her sleep Monday. Her mother was found by a friend, said Bernice Galloway, a daughter who lives in Albuquerque, N.M.

It took me a while to figure out what this paragraph was saying. On my first read I understood that Jones died, but her mother, who was apparently lost somewhere, was found by a friend of Jones'. Then I thought her mother also died and she was found dead along with Jones. That made me construct a scenario where both women died due to some kind of gas leak in their home. Eventually I made it to the "said Bernice Galloway, a daughter..." which cleared things up a bit.

The article can be found on the website for the seattle post/intelligencier. And I suspect their copy editors don't care much for the online version of their paper.

WTF?

I've never before used the acronym WTF in print: Never in IM chat, never on IRC, never on my own websites. I may have once used it ironically in speech... maybe.

The reason I am using it today: Politician bans a morpheme.

Scientific reporting

Shortly after posting my last poorly-thought-out-stream-of-consciousness post, I randomly stumbled on this article titled "Is scientific Journalism Doomed?" which is a more interesting informal analysis of the problem. (via slashdot)