[geeks] What desk toy or "tchotchke" says "geek" to you?

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 @ 16:33 +0000, Mike Meredith said:

> On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:39:17 -0500, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Wed, 29 Mar 2006 @ 06:37 +0000, Mike Meredith said:
> > 
> > > Oh and I'd like a little evidence to demonstrate that data published
> > > in Europe is of a lower quality than US data ... and 'it doesn't
> > > demonstrate what I want' isn't evidence.
> 
> I note you still haven't come up with any *evidence* that European
> governments lie about crime stats. I'm specifically irritated by that
> ... not whatever HCI comes up with.

I can't come up with it, because you were not present when I found out.

It works like this:

You get the numbers that are published, ideally for a given location.

Then you get a cop to tell you the arrest and conviction rates in the
same area.

If the arrest and conviction rates are several times higher than the reproted
numbers, then the reported numbers are wrong.

That's what I saw, and so I have my doubts about what is published in
some countries over there.

Now maybe I didn't get the "raw" numbers.  I just found what I could.

By contrast, it was fairly easy to find numbers in the US which matched
what the cops reported.

Note: that doesn't for a minute mean that what the governments in the US
report is the truth: they routinely fudge despite evidence to the contrary.

Since most people believe what they want to believe instead of really trying
to find out, they get away with it.

In the US, it is my experience that the hard numbers are often there, but
ignored and rarely published.

In Hampton, VA years ago the mayor told the public:

    - there are no gangs in Hampton
    - there is no mob or mafia in Hampton
    - there are no drugs in Hampton

The nonexistent local mob meets in a restaurant near where I used to work, and
I suppose they eat nonexistant pizza and drink ethereal beer while they are
there too.

The non-existent gangs routinely rob stores, assault people, and kill one
another. This of course causes non-existent stores to lose non-existent
merchandise, non-existent bruises to appear on non-existent victims, and
non-existent corpses to attact flies and the coroner.

The non-existent drug traffic exceeds 15 million non-existent dollars every
year (that's for the whole area though), and that's just what they catch, not
what gets away.

Get the idea?

I don't need hard numbers to know the mayor was lying. Any local dispatcher
could tell you that, or anyone with a good scanner. Or maybe you could just
open your eyes and see for yourself.

Another thing to consider is that it is hard to get hard numbers for some
things, either because there is no resource spent on gathering them, or they
are just hard to get.

But then, you don't need hard numbers in all cases either.

If the cops take calls from areas where people are unarmed more often
than where people are armed, then either the relation is based on that
or something closely related.

If the cops almost never have to take calls into an area where people are well
known to be heavily armed, or they perps are always outsiders who don't know
the area, then that's a pretty sold case that firepower is a deterrent to
crime.

Don't get too hung up on hard numbers.

> > Yeah, there are some idiots, but cops in various European and UK
> > cesspools would beg to differ with the rosy impressions some of their
> > governments like to leave you with.
> 
> I prefer hard numbers to anecdotal evidence which is inherently biased.

If someone tells you everything is peachy, but the cops are inundanted with
severe crime, then that someone is lying to you, regardless of what any hard
numbers say.

Of course, I suspect that what you are being told is probbably not in
agreement with any hard numbers, if they were properly collected.

> Governments of course spin the results to make them look good, but you
> can always look at the raw figured to see the real story.

If they are not also fudged, yes.

You have to check the sources.

Be very wary of numbers reported naked, as in without all of the related
information.

The book "How to Lie with Statistics" is a good read to help with that.

> > give, and the absolutely idiotic idea they push forward that criminals
> > will magically obey gun control laws.
> 
> Note that I'm not interested in gun control in the US ... I just think
> your argument is a great deal weaker if you wade in with 'other
> governments lie so ignore their figures' and 'somebody told me it's bad
> in Europe so it must be so'.

I didn't say that, you did.

Put words in your own mouth, not mind.

> It's not as if quoting crime stats from different countries (or
> different US states) tells you much about the effects of gun control
> anyway.

Correct.

Also, crime is irrelevant anyway.

In the US we are not armed primarily to deter crime, but to resist our own
government if we have to, and foreign governments should they decide to drop
by with hostile intent.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["The grieving lords take ship.  With these
our very souls pass overseas." -- Exile]