HoodaThunk?

Iowahawk hits the bullseye. (Within a certain margin of error.)

There are 3 types of lies, the saying goes: lies, damned lies, and statistics. A good mathematician can solve a formula and give you a great depiction of the real answer. A good statistician can take than same data and make it depict any damn thing he’d like it show. Iowahawk has a hilarious-because-it’s-true post up about that wonderous “margin of error” we’re all hearing about when political polls are reported:

Works pretty well if you’re interested in hypothetical colored balls in hypothetical giant urns, or survival rates of plants in a controlled experiment, or defects in a batch of factory products. It may even work well if you’re interested in blind cola taste tests. But what if the thing you are studying doesn’t quite fit the balls & urns template?

One of the things my stats instructor taught me was that when the subjects of the analysis are intelligent they have the ability to act in random or non-random fashions at will. That automatically skews any kind of statistical analysis because statistics rely on the given characteristic being studied to remain constant. In Iowahawk’s example, a given ball of a given color is always that color regardless of whether it’s sampled or not. Human beings’ political positions don’t behave that way.

You really need to read that whole post because it’s seriously on-target.

October 28th, 2008 Posted by ricjames | 2008 Presidential Race, Politics | no comments

Tragic accident: boy firing Uzi at a gun fair shoots himself and dies.

(Note: As with any accident that occurs in split-seconds, I encourage everyone to be patient for the results of the investigation.)

A Massachusetts boy has died as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot would at a gun fair being held in Westfield, MA. The 8-year-old boy was firing a full-auto weapon, an Uzi submachine gun, when he lost control of the weapon and was shot in the head. From the story:

With an instructor watching, an 8-year-old boy at a gun fair aimed an Uzi submachine gun at a pumpkin and pulled the trigger as his dad reached for a camera.

It was his first time shooting a fully automatic gun, and the recoil of the weapon was too much for him. He lost control and fatally shot himself in the head.

Now gun safety experts — and some gun enthusiasts at the club where the shooting happened — are wondering why such a young child was allowed to fire a weapon used in war. Local, state and federal authorities are also investigating whether everyone involved had proper licenses or if anyone committed a criminal act.

I’ve personally fired the type of weapon being used in this situation and it should be no surprise to anyone who’s ever done so that the barrel of the weapon rises as you fire it on full auto. It’s not too difficult to maintain control of it if you’ve got adult-sized hands and the mass to back them up. You see, when I saw the headline on this and noted the age of the shooter, the 1st question in my head was “yeah, but how big was he?” My daughter’s 7½ but she’d be hard pressed to get her hands around the forward grip of an Uzi and that’s using both of them. The gun also has a mass that’s a significant percentage of hers and the recoil – light and controllable for me – would present a force equivalent to roughly half of her arm-strength.

In short, there’s no way at all that I’d let her fire a fully-automatic weapon without my own hands being on the weapon along with hers.

I’ll wait for the investigation to complete before I weigh in fully, but I also can’t believe the boy was holding the weapon raised to his shoulder. He was likely holding it low and to his side – Hollywood “from the hip” style – when he pulled the trigger. That’s the only way I can think of that the barrel would rotate up tightly enough to put the shooters own head into the line of fire. Again, though, let’s wait for the official findings.

October 28th, 2008 Posted by ricjames | 2nd Amendment, Human Interest | 4 comments

Halloween costumes with a classical flair

Well, you probably knew from reading the classics that Cerberus was the 3-headed dog guardian of the gates of Hades from Greek mythology. I’ll bet you never thought to ask what breed of dog, tho…

October 28th, 2008 Posted by ricjames | Human Interest | one comment