Worry about the right things

A very good story about manipulation of facts and statistics to further other goals.

By the way, did you know that 70% of all statistics are either inaccurate or made up?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/worry_about_the_right_things.html

Would you like to see how individuals voted in Ohio?

You pretty much can. You can get a list of people who voted, along with direct printouts from the voting machines and mostly make a one-to-one correlation. I think this would fall down if the precinct had more than one voting machine.

http://news.com.com/E-voting+predicament+Not-so-secret+ballots/2100-1014_3-6203323.html

The persistance of myths and misinformation

Somewhat frightening.

A quote: "The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."

When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.

Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC."

EEEEK!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300933_pf.html

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/0220212

Green cars that you can't buy!

Well, if you live in certain states you can.

http://autos.msn.com/advice/article.aspx?contentid=4024974
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/04/1510203

RIP: Richard Jewell

He was the guard accused of bombing the Atlanta Olympics in 1996: one person died in the blast and 111 were injured. It's quite likely more would have died had not Jewell acted as he did.

"Three days after the bombing, an unattributed report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described him as "the focus" of the investigation." The accusations became more substantiated as the press started quoting each other. He won several law suits against the press for defamation of character, the one against the Atlanta J-C will be going to trial in January. The next year Attorney General Janet Reno apologized for the way he had been dragged through the mud.

"Eventually, the bomber turned out to be anti-government extremist Eric Rudolph, who also planted three other bombs in the Atlanta area and in Birmingham, Ala. Those explosives killed a police officer, maimed a nurse and injured several other people.

Rudolph was captured after spending five years hiding out in the mountains of western North Carolina. He pleaded guilty to all four bombings in 2005 and is serving life in prison."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070829/ap_on_re_us/obit_jewell