So there I am, reading Norm Pattis's latest missive: The government has seized the life savings of a hard working couple whose son was growing marijuana in their basement. The feds also want to seize the couple's home. There is no evidence to suggest the couple was complicit in their child's activity. None. The pot was in a remote corner of the basement behind a wall. You … [Read more...] about Norm Pattis Fights Evil
The Cost of Murder
A team of researchers at Iowa State University has just published a paper that estimates the cost to society of several violent crimes. Led by Matt DeLisi, an associate professor of sociology and director of the criminal justice program, the team came up with the following numbers: Crime Social Cost2008 US$ Murder 17,252,656 Rape 448,532 Armed robbery 335,733 … [Read more...] about The Cost of Murder
More About That Graphic Sin
A couple of days ago, I posted about this silly graph, which shows the wage gap between men and women: The dotted gray line on the graph at first seems to show that "Women's Wages as a Percentage of Men's Wages" are dropping, but that turns out to be because the dotted gray line is plotted against the right-hand scale, which is printed upside down, with the larger … [Read more...] about More About That Graphic Sin
The War On Drugs Get Even More Ridiculous
Ladies and Gentlemen, our nation's insane War On Drugs may have reached some sort of apotheosis with this story: Two Philadelphia police officers have been charged with criminal conspiracy, robbery, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, theft, and other related charges, according to officials. Sean Alivera, 31, and Christopher Luciano, 23, allegedly robbed a … [Read more...] about The War On Drugs Get Even More Ridiculous
Graphic Sin From the AFL-CIO
If you know anything about graphic presentation of data, especially if you've read Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information, you know that there are lots of ways to cheat to make the data appear to support your argument more than it really does. But James Parks at the AFL-CIO Now Blog has a post about the need to close the wage gap between men and … [Read more...] about Graphic Sin From the AFL-CIO