Nobrainer’s Think Tank

There is a person who makes me cringe. I cringe when I see him on TV. I cringe when I hear his name. I cringe when I see his Granny Clampet face. I cringe when I see his name. I cringe when I hear his god-awful lisp. I am not alone.

Why Holtz still has a job at all is an open question. He’s easily the worst of ESPN’s studio analysts–and that’s saying something, considering Lee Corso is still on Gameday. Given Holtz’s sordid track record as a coach, maybe Disney is afraid that they’ll get put on probation not long after he’s let go.

ZING!

I don’t disagree.

I disagree with conservative/libertarian bloggers who rail against the MSM, who bitch about bias, who bitch and moan about misleading reports, and who then mislead without care to support their beliefs.

In recent news, it was reported that jail/prison populations have been steadily increasing. We now have about 2.2 million inmates in this country at any given time..

From SayAnythingBlog, the post opens, “This isn’t good…” as it leads in to blockquote parts of the article. Good or bad is certainly questionable. Bad because its expensive? Bad because we’re being too tough? Good because we weren’t tough enough before?

It’s bad, we find out, because “In 2003 we put over 771,000 in jail for marijuana-related charges alone, and 89% of those jailings were for simply possessing the substance.”

Ok, hold on to that.

[A]ssuming the number of marijuana-related arrests remained somewhat consistent from 2003 to last year (and in all likelihood they went up) it is safe to say that 38% of the 2 million or so people we put in jail every year are put there for using a relatively mild drug that has an effect on humans that is not much different than alcohol. Or, not any worse anyway.

“Safe to say?” Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not sure if the poster, Rob is, biased, stupid, or ignorant.

Comparing simple, yearly arrests to prison populations is impossible. Want to compare arrests to arrests? Fine. Want to compare populations to populations? Fine. You cannot compare, in any meaningful sense, one to the other.

I pointed out as much in the midst of 45 other comments. No one seemed to notice. As in so many debates, it seems, there is little room for understanding the underlying facts before moving forward.

From a past S.A.B. post linked to from the one above, factoring in the 89%:

That’s 686,728 thousand people investigated, arrested, indicted, tried, convicted, sentenced and jailed for using a relatively mild drug that has an effect on humans that is not much different than alcohol. Or, not any worse anyway.

A note from the FBI report cited (link to full, 538 page .pdf document) [emphasis mine]:

In the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, one arrest is counted for each separate instance in which an individual is arrested, cited, or summoned… One person may be arrested multiple times during the year; as a result, the arrest figures in this section should not be viewed as a total number of individuals arrested. Rather, this section provides the number of arrest occurrences that were reported by law enforcement.

Again, a pile of bad comparisons were made by the poster. Rob compares people to to arrests. He compares arrests to convictions. He turned arrests into convictions. These bad comparisons were made last October. In fact, the first comment of 31 makes the point (before being mostly ignored):

My guess would be that in a lot of cases the “arrest” is nothing more than being given a citation like a traffic ticket, I know that’s what happens in Texas. Those who are arrested pay a fine and go on their way. It’s a source of revenue, not a drain of resources. That’s what happened to my neighbor’s son 2 years ago, he had less than 4 ounces so he got a $[1]250 fine + taxes(gotta include them)and was out of munincipal court in less than 20 minutes…

Now, seven months later, Rob has made another pro-weed post based on erroneously comparing prison populations to pot-related convicts, which were erroneously derived from pot-related convictions, which were erroneously derived from pot-related arrests.

“Fake but accurate” has been thrown out the window for what I will call “Bullshit but I don’t care!”

In short order, I embark upon the first leg of the Summer Wedding Tour 2006 Edition.

Posting will be light.

Hopefully someone will do something funny enough to warrant a post. We shall see.

Cheers,

Nobrainer

Starting with a comment from lonestarball.com

what a puss.

(thanks to Deadspin sports)

The headline: Have better batters beaten the no-hitter?

Nobrainer speculates: The pictures were using as much junk as the hitters. The crackdown is hurting them as much, or more than, the guys at the plate.

The headline: BellSouth wants USA Today retraction

More:

That same USA Today article said that Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. also provided the NSA with massive databases of domestic calls. Both those companies also denied the claim.

Nobrainer speculates: The intelligence community isn’t leaking so much as rupturing — in a controlled manner. By increasing the number of “leaks” — which are either misleading or outright false — the trust and value which can be placed on any leak is minimized. For a leak to be legitimized, further evidence will be required. Such requirements will more easily lead to the real source of the leaks.

It seems the U. of Colorado has found their findings:

Summary of Our Findings
The Committee’s investigation of the seven allegations before us has unanimously found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Professor Churchill committed several forms of academic misconduct as defined in the policy statements of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Colorado system:231
1. Falsification, as discussed in Allegations A, B, C, and D.
2. Fabrication, as discussed in Allegations C and D.
3. Plagiarism, as discussed in Allegations E and G.
4. Failure to comply with established standards regarding author names on publications, as discussed most fully in Allegation F but also in Allegations A, B, and D.
5. Serious deviation from accepted practices in reporting results from research, as discussed in Allegation D.
We did not find plagiarism in Allegation F.

At least he was off with hook with Allegation F. Good for him I suppose. I would go into further detail, but I have no desire to read the 125 page document the U of C released. A more thorough summary is available here.

The word scumbag comes to mind.