Ranting and Roaring

Loyala Hearn gives credit to Danny Williams for breaking up Paul and Heather, poor dears:

Hearn said it all started with McCartney's famous appearance last spring on the "Larry King Live" CNN show. McCartney, an animal rights activist, was debating Williams, the Newfoundland and Labrador premier, on the merits of the seal hunt.

Hearn said McCartney showed respect for the points Williams made in defence of the hunt, but his wife – apparently a more zealous anti-sealing activist – was "not so gracious."

McCartney saw a different woman that night, Hearn said, and that may have changed his view of her.

"And we'll take some credit for that," he joked.

I heard William's appearance on Larry King and I think it's a shame that he didn't take the opportunity to tell Mills that as a person of no accomplishment (except living of someone else's decades old work), she should really take the opportunity to keep her mouth shut about telling hard working people to go on welfare.

BTW: Mills is claiming Paul used to beat her senseless, or something.

Samizdata says that The New Scientist to decided to drop a little editorialization into their reporting on the NK nuke blasts. Unfortunately, they flubbed:

While reading the October 14th issue of New Scientist I came across the following statement in an article titled "Nuke test sends shock waves round the world":

It may even have been only half a kiloton – the same explosive power as the terrorist bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995

[...] A half kiloton is 500 tons or 1,000,000 pounds of TNT. Now TNT is a 'high explosive', and the Oklahoma City bomb (and those of which I am quite familiar with from Belfast many years ago) are almost always made from nitrate fertilizer. While rather potent, they pack perhaps a fraction of the power per pound of a high explosive. So let us be conservative and give it a factor of two.

The quoted statement is therefor claiming a small truck pulled in front of the Murrah building loaded with about two million pounds of fertilizer.

How on Earth did the editors of a well known science magazine miss a hooter of this magnitude?

StatsGuy writes about the Lancet study (via Kathy). I'm just going to include a small snippet, this a long post with lots of stats and survey stuff that you should really read through:

The interview team went to 1849 households in urban areas of Iraq and encountered only 15 refusals and only 16 residences where neither the head of the household nor a spouse was in.  Don’t forget that they only went to each household once: there was no follow-up whatever.  If I ran a door-to-door survey with a response rate of 98.3% on the first go-round, I’d think I’d died and gone to statisticians’ heaven.  That is nothing short of miraculous.  That response rate implies that family heads in urban Iraq are virtually always at home.

Reading through the following paragraphs should really capture you interest — the survey team was probably one of the most speediest and effective teams ever fielded by humanity. Or perhaps something else was going on.

Stats guy also writes (in a separate post) that the Lancet report authors ignored other studies on Iraq:

This I found odd.  Articles in academic and professional journals that address topics of controversy generally include references to previously published studies and discuss the perspective the current article takes vis-à-vis the views and findings of those earlier studies.  That is how scientific knowledge advances—by critically engaging published findings of other scholars and specialists.

The authors of the 2006 Lancet article, however, appear uninterested in critical engagement with the ILCS estimate of Iraqi deaths.  Yet we know that the Lancet researchers are aware of the ILCS, for they refer to it twice in their footnotes.  The first page mentions "surveys that assessed the burden of conflict on the population" and the fact that "insufficient water supplies, non-functional sewerage, and restricted electricity supply . . . create health hazards", and for these the ILCS is footnoted.

But as for critical discussion of the enormous difference between the ILCS estimate of deaths and the estimates generated from both Lancet surveys, the authors don't want to touch that.  They don't even acknowledge its existence.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.

Steven E Moore on the Lancet study in OpinionJournal. First, about the survey method:

Survey results frequently have a margin of error of plus or minus 3% or 5%–not 1200%.

The group–associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health–employed cluster sampling for in-person interviews, which is the methodology that I and most researchers use in developing countries. Here, in the U.S., opinion surveys often use telephone polls, selecting individuals at random. But for a country lacking in telephone penetration, door-to-door interviews are required: Neighborhoods are selected at random, and then individuals are selected at random in "clusters" within each neighborhood for door-to-door interviews. Without cluster sampling, the expense and time associated with travel would make in-person interviewing virtually impossible.

However, the key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough cluster points. In their 2006 report, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional sample survey," the Johns Hopkins team says it used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points.

Neither would anyone else. For its 2004 survey of Iraq, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) used 2,200 cluster points of 10 interviews each for a total sample of 21,688. True, interviews are expensive and not everyone has the U.N.'s bank account. However, even for a similarly sized sample, that is an extraordinarily small number of cluster points. A 2005 survey conducted by ABC News, Time magazine, the BBC, NHK and Der Spiegel used 135 cluster points with a sample size of 1,711–almost three times that of the Johns Hopkins team for 93% of the sample size.

Do the Lancet study's author stand behind their words?

I'm at YYT.

The Iraq Body Count (of which I'm not a fan, for other reasons) writes a "reality check" for the Lancet Study which claims 650,000+ Iraqis have been killed in the last three years:

A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja. 

Point #4 had occured to me also.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.

The Toronto Star reports (via Michael K):

Suspected Shiite militiamen killed at least 46 Sunni Arabs in a weekend rampage of revenge killing in a city north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday, raising the toll in the latest sectarian bloodletting there to 63.

And don't forget that if you the Lancet's report is correct, several hundred to maybe a thousand other people were killed on Sunday also, but somehow no one managed to notice to report it.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.

Linda Frum interviews Mark Steyn in the National Post.

I fear Bruce (and perhaps Damian too) may have slipped and bumped his head; how else to explain this posting on the Lancet article:

The actual statement of claim is pretty simple when you reduce it to the nub. The Iraqi survey team claims to have randomly interviewed households totalling 12,801 individuals, and found that exactly 300 of them had died violently between the U.S invasion and July, 2006. Survivors produced approximately 240 death certificates that confirmed this.

That math (even if you use only the certified deaths) works out to 5.5 violent deaths per thousand people per annum in Iraq. Extrapolate that to the entire population of Iraq and you get a number in the 450,000 range. Assume the other 60 undocumented violent deaths were truthful reports, as well, and you're up to 600K.

The methodology as defined in the study is as sound as any other scientific study (more on this later). The simplest statistical sample size calculations tell us that if the real number of violent deaths so far in Iraq had been, say, 60,000, then there should have been around 30 certifiable violent deaths in a sample of this size, not 240 (or 300).

Now, there's nothing I particular disagree with in what Bruce is saying here. However, there's one other fact you can deduce from this data: to switch the projected number of deaths from 60,000 to 600,000, all you need to do is deliberately mis-sample between 210 and 270 households in the survey of 12,801 household; to spell it out, to go to households where you know someone died instead of a "random" sample about 2% of the time. I could come with similar numbers for Toronto if you gave me a budget and a handful of undergrads with a sense of humour.

Who would do such a dastardly thing? Lying lays near the top of the toolbox of the political extremist and it's hard to argue, given the timing etc. that the purpose of the Lancet articles are anything but political in nature.

You of course can judge for yourself whether anti-war activist Horton (who's not afraid, or ashamed, to appear on the same stage as the odious certifiable nut George Galloway) is such an extremist.

Read all posts on the lancet study.

CBC reports:

Liberal leadership candidates angrily denied and denounced an accusation by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that most of the contenders for the party's top job were "anti-Israeli."

[...] 

Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae slammed Harper for the "shameful" comment and demanded an apology.

"I think what he said was disgraceful," Rae said.

"I think to suggest that there is a pro-Israel party in Canada and there's an anti-Israel party in Canada is something of which he should be thoroughly ashamed."

He didn't say there was a "pro-Israel" party, you ignorant little province wrecking twerp. Why don't you crawl back up to your cottage and leave us alone? Haven't you done enough already?

Ignatieff said in statement that it was "disgraceful" for Harper to play "crass politics with the issue of the Middle East."

"Frankly, it is beneath him and his office to do so."

Oh yeah Iggy? Why did Susan Kadis resign then? Maybe she's not a stupid as you obviously think we all are.

I'm just testing out our new photo album extension.

Gheorghe Lucian is flown around the world to confront rich, privileged environmentalists who try to keep the poor down, improvished and no doubtedly, quaint. The Telegraph reports:

An unemployed Romanian miner who is flown across the globe to confront environmental activists is the unlikely star of a Michael Moore-style film, aimed at debunking the militant green movement.

Gheorghe Lucian, 23, is a plain-speaking resident of an impoverished village where an opencast gold mine is planned.

He is dismayed that the project, which would bring a £400 million investment and generate 600 jobs in an area where unemployment is 70 per cent, is being blocked by environmentalists.

–>

[...] The official admitted that residents of Fort Dauphin, where environmentalists are objecting to a mine, were "economically disadvantaged" and many had no jobs. But he insisted: "I could put you with a family and you count how many times in a day that family smiles, if you could measure stress. Then I put you with a family well off, or in New York or London, and you count how many times people smile and measure stress… Then you tell me who is rich and who is poor."

Using a style reminiscent of Michael Moore, whose film Fahrenheit 9/11 lampooned the Bush administration, Mr McAleer lured environmentalists into making statements that were false or patently ridiculous.

During the hour-long film, Françoise Heidebroek, a Belgian opponent of the Rosia Montana mine, says Romanian villagers prefer to use horses rather than cars, and to rely on "traditional cattle raising, small agriculture, wood processing" to live.

Locals retort that their land is too poor for farming, that they all want cars and that they are desperate for the investment the mine would bring. The film had its first screening last week at a conference of gold-mining companies in Denver, Colorado. Alan Hill, president of Gabriel Resources, which did not control the film's content, said: "Before, the environmentalists would lob mortars at us and we would keep our heads down. Now, there is a big push back."

Weirdly, I'm reminded of Drew Barrymore bragging about having had taken a dump in the woods. If you were to visit her house today, I somehow doubt you'll find a little squat out back in the dirt where she does her business.

We just had a snow squall move through; first snow of the year. The airport is reporting winds up to 85 km/hr which is just a touch below Storm Force. Trinity-Anne and I ran out and got our faces covered in flakes.

We're supposed to sail on the weekend but with the marine forecast for Gale Force winds, well, we'll see.

Fun weather fact: if you look at the radar right now, you can see lake effect snow AND you can see snow turn to mixed to rain as it passes over the Toronto heat island.

Joanne Jacobs writes:

Handwriting is becoming a lost art, writes the Washington Post. Schools spend little time teaching it, expecting students to use keyboards.

When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

However, children may not write fluidly if they can't write by hand fluidly. Research "shows children without proficient handwriting skills produce simpler, shorter compositions, from the earliest grades."

I've been printing since the eighth grade, as soon as they let me make a choice how to print. Of course, I had invented my own very fluid printing style, which I still use a variant of today.

If you want to avoid this, try this:

When you’re making an unplanned exit from an airplane, a parachute helps you get back to the ground safely. What about the airplane, though?  A parachute for the plane could help it get back safely, too. NASA and private industry have worked together to research and develop a low-cost, lightweight recovery system for aircraft that uses a ballistic (forcefully powered) parachute system to lower an entire aircraft to the ground in an emergency.

This sequence shows the parachute deployment in 1998 during certification of the Cirrus SR20.

Just saying.

CBC reports:

What was supposed to be smooth sailing for a new Toronto ferry's maiden voyage turned into a turbulent trip for those on board.

Shortly after leaving the mainland docks Wednesday, the ferry spun around in the harbour several times before smashing into the shore's breakwall after the captain had an anxiety attack.

Officials say blue smoke set off as part of a fireworks display meant to celebrate the voyage apparently obscured the view of the dock.

That caused the captain to panic and lose control of the vessel, said the Toronto Port Authority's head of operations, Ken Lundy.

The mishap turned what was supposed to be a 90-second crossing of the gap between the mainland and Toronto Island into a 30-minute journey. The gap is 120 metres wide.

My ancestors were starved and forced out of their country and forced into Canada by a fixed referendum, so strictly speaking we never "came" to Canada in the same way your ancestors did. So until me and my refugee family get reparations and our vast ancestoral estates, castles and huge heards of goats and cows back: thwwwwwwwwww back at you, buddy.

Or sit on it by accident.

Steve Janke:

[A]t some point it will have to be noted that the $722,900 worth of aid to North Korea meant that the the North Korean government was able to divert $722,900 towards the development of a nuclear device without being forced to face the consequences of a starving populace (or at least a populace starving somewhat less).

Fascism is always descending on the United States, but somehow it keeps landing in Europe (Wolfe). Goldberg writes about "liberal paranoia" (tip: Kathy):

If the Christian base of the GOP gets its way, "All government employees – federal, state and local – would be required to participate in weekly Bible classes in the workplace, as well as compulsory daily prayer sessions." We would all have to carry religious identity cards that "would provide Christocrats with preferential treatment in many areas of life, including home ownership, student loans, employment and education." Non-Christians would be indulged as second-class citizens, "but younger members … would be strongly encouraged to formally convert to the dominant evangelical Christianity." Homosexual sex would be illegalized, while "known homosexuals and lesbians would have to successfully undergo government-sponsored reeducation sessions if they applied for any public-sector jobs." Dissidents would be on the run, the popular culture censored by bureaucratic Cotton Mathers, and "the mainstream press and the electronic media would be beaten into submission."

All of that is according to James Rudin in his book "The Baptizing of America."

This is kind of cool:

Self-assembling gel stops bleeding in seconds

Swab a clear liquid onto a gaping wound and watch the bleeding stop in seconds. An international team of researchers has accomplished just that in animals, using a solution of protein molecules that self-organise on the nanoscale into a biodegradable gel that stops bleeding.

If the material works as well in humans, it could save thousands of lives and make surgery far easier in many cases, surgeons say.

[...] Their work exploits the way certain peptide sequences can be made to self-assemble into mesh-like sheets of "nanofibres" when immersed in salt solutions.

In the course of that research they discovered one material's dramatic ability to stop bleeding in the brain and began testing it on a variety of other organs and tissues. When applied to a wound, the peptides form a gel that seals over the wound, without causing harm to any nearby cells.

[...] Still, they caution that extensive clinical trials are needed to make sure the materials work properly and are safe. The MIT researchers hope to see those crucial human trials within three to five years.

The horrors continue:

Two Toronto residents are paralyzed after drinking carrot juice that tested positive for a botulism toxin, according to the city's public health department.

"There are two adults who are severely ill in hospital and they had a history of drinking the exact same juice that's been part of the carrot juice recall," Dr. Elizabeth Rea, an associate medical officer of health, told the Toronto Star on Sunday.

Just in case you're the sort of person that drinks this stuff:

Toronto Public Health has warned the public to avoid drinking three brands of carrot juice. The federal regulator, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, issued a product recall covering the three brands on Sept. 30.

Bolthouse Farms bottles the three brands. The recalled products, all sold in both one-litre and 450-millilitre containers, are:

• Bolthouse Farms 100% Carrot Juice.
• Earthbound Farm Organic Carrot Juice.
• President's Choice Organics 100% Pure Carrot Juice.

Products with a "best by" date up to Nov. 11 have been recalled.

Consumers who have any brand should "take it out of the fridge, dump it down the sink," Rae said

And call an exorcist, just to be sure. May I recommend Coke or Pepsi instead?

Human sexuality is disgusting and must be controlled by the state. I think that's what the vandal is saying, anyway.

Jamming carrot sticks and other unpalatable crap down kids mouths in England doesn't seem to be working:

"I don't buy any of the stuff in the canteen, it's disgusting,' she says. "The drinks are vile – there's no sugar in them. And as for the food, well, it's all salads and vegetables and stuff – and I don't like that.

"So I stock up before school on crisps and lollipops and chews, then at lunchtime I go and eat them where none of them nosy teachers is looking."

Joanne's friends laugh and agree. They say that since the school got 'sick-bag food', they never go to the canteen. They much prefer to munch their sticky, fatty snacks in secret where no 'health police' can find them.

It's not quite what the Government intended when it set up the healthy food initiative.

And especially don't feed that crap to your kids.