09:28 – Lies, damned lies, and statistics. I just read an article that claims that the fact that young black men are 21 times more likely than young white men to be killed by police as evidence that the justice system discriminates against blacks. I could as easily say that the fact that young white men are much more likely than elderly black women to be killed by police as evidence that the justice system discriminates against whites. In fact, I could make a good argument that the fact that young black men are only 21 times more likely than young white men to be killed by police is evidence that the justice system discriminates against whites. Because the fact that can never, never be mentioned is that young black men are much more than 21 times more likely than young white men to be violent felons.
The simple facts are that young men of whatever race are much, much more likely to commit violent crimes than any other group, and that young black men are much, much more likely to commit violent crimes than are young white men. There’s no debate about this. The figures are indisputable. As is the fact that whites are much, much more likely to be the victims of violent black criminals than the converse. So, if someone argues that our justice system is racially biased, I agree with him. Statistically, violent black criminals are much less likely to be shot by police than are violent white criminals. And I think this needs to be looked into.
Ah, but a thinking person also has to wonder:
How many of those young black men were a killed by black police officers?
When figuring those numbers, I’ll bet those instances were not removed from the total.
That alone would make the figures biased, since according to the race baiters blacks are incapable of discrimination, which would mean those numbers should be excluded.
As you say, lies, damn lies and statistics…
Whenever things like this come up, I think of the so-called church burnings in the 1990s.
Alarmists were making it out to be a racial thing, and it was. Just not the way they were presenting it.
While the insurance industry may play games with statistics for public consumption, one thing they do not do is lie to themselves.
Insurance company actuarial tables showed that a black church was statistically less likely (resulting in lower insurance rates) to burn than a white church (resulting in higher insurance rates). Those tables also showed the vast majority of church fires were unintentional, rather than arson.
Even though the alarmists did not want to talk about it, it seems that church fires are racially biased against white churches…
Speaking of nice warm fires on those cold winter nights, has anyone else noticed that one building that seems to have been spared during the Ferguson Tantrum was the library?
Guess the looters didn’t have much use for stealing some free books to go with their free steaks, free booze, free make up, free auto parts and free electronics.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/11/26/donations_to_ferguson_public_library_rocket_up_as_streets_erupt.html
Maybe not, but they’re deniable. “La la la, I can’t hear you!” or “Shut up, you racist.”
Sure, reality and the Gods of the Copybook Headings eventually win, but “eventually” can be generations in the coming.
They probably didn’t even know the library existed or what it was.
Some of us have been aware of those crime stats for a very long time yet the mythology persists anyway. Fred Reed has written about it many times but he’s ignored or blown off as some kind of wack right-wing nut. Anyone who even mentions any of this stuff is a de facto rayciss, but if you white, you rayciss anyway, so why not bring it up?
Sunny w/blue skies and 28 but “feels like” 22. A “wintry mix” for later tonight and then into the 40s tomorrow with some rain showers.
They probably didn’t even know the library existed or what it was.
Don’t be too sure about them not knowing of its existence. As to its function, well that’s another story.
In my neck of the woods, the library is treated as an after-school day care center for the kids by the
parents…er…adultsolder residents in the projects a half-mile away.Keeps the younguns out from underfoot so mama can do her thang.
Around here, libraries in the smaller towns close at school dismissal, precisely to avoid that after-school hours madhouse. Those towns cannot afford the number of employees necessary to keep a lid on things. Tiny Town has no problem, mostly because of the old-maid schoolteacher who left them millions, which has been put in a foundation fund that throws off a good part of yearly expenses.
That day-care and other-than-books-and-reading function as the main objective of libraries today seems to be rampant across This Great Land of Ours. Day care, computers and the net, social and community events, movie and tee-vee show borrowing, etc., and everything BUT books and reading.
OFD learned how to read at age four and by age six was writing ten book reports for the summer reading program at the Whitinsville Social Libary, in Whitinsville, Maffachufetts, and got a little blue and gold pin that said “Library Club of America” and “Readers Are Leaders.” This would have been circa 1959 and I had that pin for decades and subsequently lost it, along with my kid stamp and coin collections.
Them days are gone.
Mrs. OFD baking two more pumpkin pies and then heading out to Philadelphia for the week. Princess off to another contra dance tonight in Montpeculiar and then back to O Kanada tomorrow. OFD on the usual job hunt, chores and errands all week.
After another day and evening of NFL football tomorrow. Stocking up on Moxie and pretzels.
Vets Seek Help for PTSD Decades After War
It’s a WSJ article, so if you go directly to the link above and aren’t allowed to read the whole thing, Google the title.
Thanks for the link, Mr. medium wave;
“Many of those Vietnam veterans threw themselves into family and work after the war, keeping busy to avoid thinking about what happened. Now, in their 60s and 70s, they have retired, their children grown, living without the distraction of workaday life.”
Exactly. But we have also been finding this to be the case for a while now with older WWII and Korean War vets. Lotsa time on their hands and memories come flooding back and they start to break down, after decades of keeping it all smothered, which in a lotta cases took tremendous will power and effort.
“Mr. Williams said he tells other struggling veterans, “You don’t cure PTSD. You learn to manage it.”
There it is.
What’s been sorta funny for me, but not really, is that I thought I was pretty much OK and wasn’t having/being a problem. Other people told me differently, who were/are in a position to know. And of course forty years of substance abuses eventually took a huge toll and was the final “the bell tolls for thee, asshole” alarm.
From one of my gun site emails just now:
“”Citing security fears, Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot Michael Brown Aug. 9, has resigned from the police department,” reports stltoday.com, a move that should surprise no one with a pulse and even minimal brain wave activity. In his resignation letter (after the jump), Wilson cites the risk to residents and fellow officers should he go back to work on the streets of Ferguson – all true, no doubt – Wilson himself would have a target on his back every minute of every day . . .”
_The Survivalist (Frontier Justice)_ by Dr. Arthur Bradley:
http://www.amazon.com/Survivalist-Frontier-Justice-Arthur-Bradley/dp/148274631X/
Book number one of a five book series. I suspect that there will be more books in the series. The author is a prolific writer and has written several prepper books also. This book is another POD (print on demand) book by one of Amazon’s subsidiaries.
Very good apocalyptic book. The story is based on an engineered superpox virus that kills 90% of the world population in four weeks. Our hero is a US Deputy Marshall who is taking some vacation during a retreat at his remote cabin off the grid. When he emerges, the world is a different place.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (503 reviews)
Officer Wilson and his wife need to be placed in the Witness Protection System, and not only given a new identity but also some plastic surgery to alter both of their appearances.
I suspect the chit will hit the fan in some ways we ain’t anticipated yet. But meanwhile we still aim to at least get prepped for:
1.) Weather and climate events with power out for more than just a few days.
2.) Criminal activity involving us and our property.
I’d agree with DadCooks but if Wilson and his wife move far enough away and to an area where his background would not be a liability among its people, they may do OK. I suspect neither his former department nor the state of Missouri will spring for any relocation or identity changes, and certainly not surgery. Even less likely will be the Fed regime, who would probably not mind at all seeing him lynched by a mob.
Am you right?
Precisely! Sad story of a guy doing his job, catches a guy who with video camera has (in my mind) been proved a felon, is recklessly charged by said stupid suspect who ends up dead, but yet catches the fancy of major portions of America, including the ever-liberal-biased media who cast aspersions on anyone who thinks the cop should not be fried in hell, and actually will live in a hell for the rest of his life. Why anybody would want to be a cop in this era is beyond me.
Not me, sez OFD. I got out in 1986 and said to Hell with it, the game not being worth the candle to light it. Only way I’d do it now would be in an alternative dimension/universe where I could be combination of Buford Pusser and Judge Dredd.
This just in: the country pop douchebag Garth Brooks cancelled a concert or sumthin “in support of” the “protesters” in Ferguson. Meanwhile Jay Leno, who I’d thought reasonably well of in recent years, bagged out of some speaking engagement due to libturd media pressure about gunz or sumthin. Nobody has any ballz anymore.
but yet catches the fancy of major portions of America,
There it is Mr. Chuck. Liberal CNN “cop, who killed an unarmed black teen…” not even a mention of the “teen’s” strong arm robbery 10 minutes before.
The libturds will fan the racially flames until Champ rises up and bites Mr. OFD on the azz.
Champ be all hunkered down tonight in the briny depths of Davy’s Locker, probably about 400 feet, ’cause da wind be howlin’ again tonight out there. Reckon we’ll have ice forming up soon enough. Seems like only yesterday there was two feet of it out there with big-ass trucks parked and guys ice-fishing, with bonfires.
Just saw a vid still of the poor unarmed black child as he was about to shoplift some stuff at that store; he was a big ‘un, solid potential for any football line. If he’d been in any kinda shape, that is. Giant blob close to 300 pounds arm-wrasslin’ for the cop’s gun, etc., etc. I woulda dropped his ass down on the ground in a nanosecond without use of my sidearm back in the day, and probably now, come to think of it. But the training evidently sucks nowadays and it’s all Affirmative Action/Diversity crap.
Then there is the attitude of the lefty/libturds toward any kind of dissenting thought or speech; here’s one of them right here:
“I think like a lot of people I’m exhausted of having to talk about rape culture in a framework that assumes its existence is up for debate.”
Same attitude as they have with their warmist agitprop, affirmative action, diversity, Obummer, race-class-gender issues, the patriarchal hegemony, blah, blah, blah.
“…Another problem now is that the younger people are brainwashed to be hypersensitive about everything. Certain forms of speech cause them to perceive and interpret such speech as “acts of aggression,” or as “threats.” Many people in Amerika are easily threatened now by opposing points of view in many different topics of discussion…”
It’s now a threat, whereas before they’d just go into high dudgeon mode and screech; now they’re intent on becoming victims themselves.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-alleged-rape-culture/
I would laugh, but it is true.
Nice weather here. High was 52, and it is actually going to climb during the overnight to a high of 62 tomorrow.
Then the jetstream has another whip-like undulation coming from the west that will take us down to freezing for Monday, but then back up to above 40 for the rest of the week. Mean historical high temp is 44 for Monday and 41 for Sunday 7 December.
Weather Channel just killed their highly useful historical averages, as they self-destruct that operation. So I am now using WeatherSpark.com, which provides mean historical temps, rather than averages. Mean is closer to reality in my opinion. If you take your income, mine, and a few others, then add in Bill Gates’, the average is going to be waaay above yours and mine. Take the mean, and it is going to be a lot closer.
In searching for a substitute for the Weather Channel, I note that historical info for everyone providing averages goes back only to the 1970’s at the earliest. Where are the global warming folks when you need them? Or are they the ones hiding all the historical data?
Gee, what a coincidence!
The reading lists/syllabi for high skool and college English classes also only goes back to the 1970s!
My gawd I loved David Brudnoy. I would be driving home late, and just before he got off at midnight, he would take calls that he vehemently disagreed with, and he made mincemeat of the caller. I wish I had recordings of those tirades. He was so articulate.
Gene Burns was spurned by Boston radio, in the era before conservative talk ruled the airwaves. And Burns was perhaps more Libertarian than Brudnoy. Burns moved to San Fran and became an icon there. He claimed there is absolutely no difference between Boston and San Fran. Yes there is Gene — hills.
Loved both of those guys, but both now silent forever.
Bob Grant in New York was another Libertarian giant. But Grant, like Limbaugh now, stepped over the line more than once, which ended his career.
Grant dead now, too.
SteveB said:
during the Ferguson Tantrum
Great expression! Best description to date.
And if you are wanting a little of the great Swedish psychedelic rock tonight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FnXj31XQiA
The album that track comes from, Tranquility Bay, goes for $143 on eBay at cheapest. There was actually quite a bit of good Swedish/Danish psychedelic music turned out from ’67 to ’72 that we never heard over here.
Who exports more music than any other country on Earth behind the US and UK?
Sweden. And they are gaining on the US and UK.
I remember Brudnoy and Burns very well from the day; but most of my radio listening when I lived in MA was the earlier WBZ when they were playing rock from that era, the WBCN from that same era, and from the time I was a little kid, the classical station, WCRB in Waltham.
Now it’s either the FM “album” station down in Bristol, VT, or one of two classical stations, either the VPR version or the one from Montreal, which is mostly in French but they play a very wide variety of classical from the past 600 years.
Princess’s double major is languages and music theory, but with the latter she is lately concentrating on British Isles folk music from medieval into 19th-C.
I don’t listen to talk radio anymore; last time I did it was Howard Stern and The Greaseman when I was a dumbass grad student down in New Jersey. They were good for a few laffs while I walked on eggshells every day during the beginnings of uber-PC rubbish on the campuses.
I never listen to talk radio by design, unless I cannot avoid it because someone else is in charge of the radio (that hardly ever happens, because I am usually the driver, not the rider). Wait, I do listen to WLW on occasion. Somehow, Cincinnati has the highest-rated talk station in the nation. It is actually far more erudite than anybody else I can listen to and the technical quality of their phone calls is so good I wonder how they do it. The two main Indy talk stations (one politics, the other sports) have crackly, near-unintelligible sound from callers, and employ Bubba and his friends to work both of them. Not surprisingly, they are low-rated.
Last figures I saw on national listenership pegged the national talk radio audience at 6% of the overall radio audience. So one helluva lot more people are NOT listening to talk radio than are.
Chuck W. says:
Great expression! Best description to date.
Feel free to use it. I designed it under the Open Source License to be in the public domain.
To anyone who is interested, a prepper author(ess) . Her site also has a heap of recipes, for those interested.
http://motherhensstorytime.blogspot.com/
She’s a brilliant amateur story-teller, not too bad professionally as an author but could use an editor. Still, entertaining and she’s not getting paid for it. Main fault, as with many amateurs, is that she’s been starting a lot more than she finishes. However, she’s explicitly recognised that fault and reversed the balance now.
Another. “We Interrupt This Program… “. A novel, good by any standards, by Alan T. Hagan, who is a prepper guru as far as food and storage is concerned. Probably, although I won’t swear it, LDS.
http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/specialty-forums/survival-emergency-preparedness/vault/192640-fiction-we-interrupt-program.html
And another. This leads through several novels by Tom Sherry – very good reading.
http://deepwinterstory.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/first-post-on-new-blog.html
Chuck, I think you mean “median”. For an unweighted data set, average and (arithmetic) mean are different words for the same thing.
Right. My bad. Actually, I meant mode — the most frequently occurring number.
Trimmed mean would be useful as well. Cut off a percentage of the outliers. Gates wouldn’t be in _most_ such samples, so he shouldn’t be there unless we use all samples. With such a large population, we would expect the average to be closer to the median and the mode for the entire population. For smaller samples, trimmed mean is more useful.