A candidate for membership on RCM?

Always time for more bicker-banter, but never for straight answers, right, private foreman? Why not explain how you can be on a list of cullers that you claim to know nothing about? Why does the guy you say put you on that list deny doing so? I think you could have a bright future as a used car salesman if you weren't too busy being a weasel.

Wayne

Submitted by whom? Other phonies like you and foreman?

Yes, so you've been saying for a year and a half. You'd think I'd be at the very top of the cullers' list by now. 'Cause surely there's a huge number of people who believe that ridiculing deadbeat liars is worthy of a death sentence, and that anybody but you should carry it out. LOL I don't understand what the holdup is with the cull anyway. Has gummervision HQ fallen behind processing participant applications? Are you guys fighting over which of you gets interviewed by Palin first once gummerco is running the country?

Wayne

You forget, Larry. I'm the one who doesn't have any background in climatology and who has no opinion about it. You're the one who thinks he does.

Publish or perish, Larry. You'd better get those papers ready for editing if you're hoping to get tenure. d8-)

You wouldn't know a liberal if he bit you on the ass, Larry, much less have any idea about what they think.

His "Ph.D" (self-awarded) is from an "institution" that trains people in how to be con men with a clerical collar. He co-founded it and then promptly awarded himself a doctorate of philosophy.

Maybe he should get into climatology.

Ed, I don't believe anyone anymore. Considering politicians, advocates of personal agendas, and marketers, truth, as a matter of honor, is a thing of the past.

Wes

Ed can be abrasive at times, but I don't think he lies. I trust my good neighbors and most of my kids.

On the other hand..the color blind really cant tell what is red..or green. So they have to guess.

Like Ed does.

But they often guess wrong.

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. Gunner Asch

I guess there's no cure for that, given the way politicians and the media are behaving today. I try to figure out their philosophy and/or their politics before judging what they say, because it seems like all of them are driven by the need to promote their cause, rather than to report the facts.

As I frequently say, there's no substitute for going to the source and checking facts. I get a lot of surprises that way.

Let me guess: You're pink pearl with chartreuse fender skirts, right? And you have a lowering kit and a pair of hot-pink fuzzy dice hanging from your rear-view mirror?

More like a rusted out 65 chevy sitting in a hole, with a septic line from a scruffy single-wide inserted into the vent window, and awaiting backfill.

Wayne

I figured it out. The new voting machine software is so much different from the old version. The new allows for more than one hundred percent. Thank you!

Yes, you can be surprised. The problem with facts is they are compiled by people that may or may not have an agenda subject to review of those that do.

I've been reading secondcitycop blog lately, Chicago crime statistics seem to be a recurring topic in regards to management 'tweeking' them. So that raises the question, does other major metropolitan police organizations also 'tweek' the reported data?

You have stated before that you have greater faith in the feds than state and local government. That may color what you consider 'reliable' data.

I've learned you can have your own set of facts. Murder rates for example.

Not every jurisdiction reports data to the FBI to create the UCR. It is voluntary, according to the FBI they do have 93 percent of the population covered.

I've heard time and time again that youths are where a majority of homicides come from.

17-24 looks like a hot spot for homicides. But there is 5402 out of 16,277 that are age unknown. What can one honestly make out of that?

There are 5402 dead people we didn't identify in this day and age or did someone decide that some data we will not report in order to satisfy an agenda?

I was looking for something else when I noticed this.

Wes

I believe Ed really believes he is being an honest searcher of facts. I also believe that when I'm looking for facts that I'm doing my best to be honest about it.

Ed has caused me to do more cross checking before making a statement than anyone else has. I figure he puts effort to look things up and the only proper thing would be to do the same when replying to him. Some days he is a lot of work ;) He is retired, he has the edge ;)

I do not think he lies either.

I trust Mom, Uncle, my brother and sisters implicitly on manners of personal honor with in the family or their interactions with others.

Wes

PS Sorry for talking about you third party Ed.

Years of working at it helps you discriminate. And there are some basic principles. For example, trend data over time, compiled by a known agency that's subject to scrutiny, usually can be counted on. What you can't count on is one-shot reports that have unreported methodology, and, of course, those by avowedly biased organizations.

Yes. See what the FBI says about their UCR data. They tell you not to use it to make comparisons between jurisdictions. If there is a value of comparison that's close between two places, it's not very reliable.

The FBI has worked hard over the past two decades to make the UCR data as comparable as they can. They've done a pretty good job, according to independent reports. But it's not good enough to compare, say, New York with New Orleans -- except that the disparity in their numbers is so huge that you can at least count on one being relatively greater than the other, if not by how much.

Where the UCR data *is* quite good is in reporting long-term national trends. And regional trends. Don't count on state-by-state trends as much, because some individual states have changed the way they report.

For example, NJ's gun crime figures took a big jump when Florio was governor, because he required all municipal police organizations to report whether a gun was present or *not* in *all* crimes. Previously, they only had to report positive occurrences. The numbers jumped immediately.

You learn these things by working with the data a lot. For example, when I was reporting on trade with China I was on the phone with government agencies virtually every day. Eventually, I learned where the weaknesses were in their data.

Many state and local governments are simply incompetent, or too underfunded, to report reliable data. At the federal level things average out much better.

That's pretty good, for the country as a whole. It's not good if you compare some rural region with the New York MSA. The non-reporting jurisdictions tend to be ones with thin populations.

Victim data has always been weak from the FBI. You'll do better with other DOJ data:

In fact, if you're looking at crime, keep the homepage handy along with your FBI/UCR links:

But I'm 400 grit. From ten feet away, I look Ok, if you leave your glasses at home.

Semi-retired. And probably not for long. The ghostwriting business is not healthy. I may wind up editing again -- if anyone is hiring old farts.

Gee, thanks.

Hey, at my age, I'm glad when anyone notices me at all. I shaved my beard off two weeks ago (too hot and itchy) and it took my wife a week and a half to notice. d8-)

On Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:47:38 -0400, Wes wrote the following:

I'm sure he used to, but last year, he seemed to come unglued (giving some of us both barrels several times) and looking as crazy as he accused us of being. I finally placed him with Cliffy and stryped, in the bozo bin. SomesHeimers? Or just tired of being RINO? Who knows/cares?

Ayup. What good is it when we lie to ourselves? (see below for more on that)

anyone else has.

I'll ditto (megaditto ) that in its entirety. But he's a whole lot less work nowadays. ;) Gunner caused that reaction in me and that's when I researched it and out the _shocking_ truth about handguns. I had been fouled by those 10% who have their heads in unsunshiny places.

NOTE to the group:

Gunner emailed this morning and said that his neighbor had moved, taking his internet access with him. He'll be back when he can. I know that Ed will be pleased. (No, about G coming back soon, Wes. ;)

-- Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst. -- Lin Yutang

Geez, Ed, that doesn't sound good! Did you pleasure her with a feather duster in total darkness?

On Sat, 19 Jun 2010 19:42:21 -0700, Larry Jaques

A guy who is normally very rational and analytical can still have strong opinions and get aggressive about them. Engineers excepted, of course.

Not when your inner Puritan kicks the rational editor out of the driver's seat. Then you're more like one of Tawm's spiral knot brushes at 22K RPM, derusting the inside of a thigh. Fun!

I know how it sounds, and you're right, it doesn't sound good. She hasn't felt well for a couple of months and is propped up with pillows at night. I'm waiting it out...