Lest We Forget!
D-Day June 6, 1944.
Looks Like I Stepped In It Again.
Wouldn’t Be The First Time, And Certainly Won’t Be The Last.
I got more comments on last night’s blog than I haven on anything else in a while. Apparently some people thought my Miss America post was too ‘political’. Others had comments, both pro and con, on my ‘Thought for the Day’ graphic.
You can find statistics online that will support this. and others that lean the other way.
Some questioned the actual figures listed in the graphic. The problem is who is allowed to ‘torture’ the statistics. Note I said ‘statistics’, not facts. And they’re usually not the same.
In fact, according to the FBI, the most dangerous city in the US is St. Louis, MO. But its 188 murders in 2017 were less than a third of Chicago’s 650+. But on a per capita basis, St. Louis is much more dangerous. It all depends on how far you want to ‘twist’ things.
For example, how is ‘murder’ defined? Sounds like that would be straight forward, wouldn’t it. But not so fast. There’s ‘murder’, and then there’s ‘murder.’
Was it ‘deliberate’, ‘accidental’, or ‘justified’? Or was it even ‘suicide’? Some stats have them all included. Yes, even suicide. Hey, the person ‘killed’ themselves, right?
As another example of this, remember right after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting back on February 14th? Well, in literally just minutes after the shooting, an Internet meme was circulating, saying that in just the six weeks since the beginning of the year, there had been 18 School Shootings.
WOW! 18!
At least until you start looking at the ‘facts’. According to ‘Everytown For Gun Safety’, the organization that came up with this, the first shooting of the year took place on Jan 3rd. And was a suicide.
Yes, a guy sitting in the parking lot of a school killed himself. But there were no students and no teachers anywhere near. That’s because the school had been closed for seven months.
Two more were accidental discharges by licensed peace officers, with no one injured. And another was when a gun accidentally discharged in the glove compartment of a car parked in a school parking, before any students were even around. Apparently it too was a ‘school shooting’
That ‘18’ number is shrinking fast. In fact event the Washington Post gave Everytown Four Pinocchio’s, their highest (worse) rating for the article.
Another example is the one about how many ‘children’ are killed by guns every day, week, month, or year. Take your pick. One says that 19 ‘children’ are killed every day. That’s almost 1300 a year.
The problem is how you define a ‘child’. Some places have the age as high as 19, or even 24. And of course, now you’re in the ‘gang member’ range.
It all goes back to Mark Twain, channeling English Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
On the Miss America front, a number of past contestants have come out lambasting the changes, saying this was a big mistake. And others have come out in favor of the changes. So I guess it’s a toss-up. But I still don’t think it will last much past this next year or so.
Several people, both on radio and one of our blog readers, John Brown, said with no swim suit competition and no evening gown competition, the whole thing might as well just be on the radio.
Sounds about right to me.
Thought for the Day:
The most dangerous thing in the world is a smiling women . . . sitting in silence.
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