Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

The world is going to hell in a handbasket. Really. I mean it. Not.

You know, things really arent that bad. I know, I know, G Dub's in the Whitehouse, we are fighting a war in God forsaken lands (but who can blame us, gas is at damn near 3 bucks a gallon- I'm ready to invade Exxon my damn self), and it's going to rain on Saturday. So why am I in such a cheery mood? Simple. There are 2 million people currently incarcerated in the U.S.

That is good news to me. Seriously. That means that there are 250 million Americans who are free!
Stupid statistics.

Today's rant is about the use of statistics to frighten the single most fragile creature God ever put on this planet...Americans.

We are the scared-iest bunch of folks. Some stupid kid gets killed doing a wheelie on his bike down the middle of a major street at rush hour, and what is the American response? All children must wear those silly little helmets that even the most overprotective mother wouldn't have considered
subjecting their child to in 1978. I speak from experience, people.

And whose to blame for this silly law? Well obviously the silly hat makers lobby financed the effort, but the real culprit is statistics. Somebody, somewhere calculated that out of the millions of bike riding children, something like, oh, 5000 kids died from head injuries sustained while riding a bike. This, like all statistics, is the handywork of the devil.

Second example- SARS. Remember, it was the bubonic plague of 2002. All of China was wearing surgical masks to prevent this deadly illness that killed...like 2 percent of its victims. Damn. That's one hellified killer. 2 percent.

Or, and this one comes back to life from time to time, 25 percent of black males are in jail/prison/stealing the tires off your Buick outside. I hate this statistic. I really hate it because it obviously isn't true. There are 250 million people in America (give or take an illegal immirgrant or two), of that about 39 million are black. Of that, roughly half are women. What's that leave? 19 million black men. Now, sterotypes tell us that black folk have alot of children, so for argument's sake lets say that half of them are lil kids. So now you've got 9.5 million black men over the age of 16. If we take another stereotype and assume (wrongly) that HALF the folks in jail are black, then you have 1 million black men in jail.

Assuming all of this to be true, which almost none of it is, then only 11 percent of black men are in jail.

Now, before some of you say, "It's a conspiracy!" Let's examine who promulgates this meaningless drivel...Black people themselves. It is not Newsweek or Time that reports on this nonsense, but black publications, particularly when going on a "hate whitey" rant.

And this morning, Fox News (which I think is funnier than Howard Stern, and I LOVE Stern) runs a story about the "outbreak" of teenage girls who use steroids. Steroids! They even had a 'researcher' from Penn State (my Dad is a Nitiny Lion, he should be ashamed) who claimws that 5 percent of all teenage girls use steroids.

Where? I have yet to see one, let alone 5 out of every 100 teenaged girls on the street. And I have seen some BIG girls. But not because of D-bol. Mostly because of THE BOWL of Hagen Daz that they chow on every night.

Poor Suzy in Iowa. Right now, her mother is preparing to pepper her with questions about steroids. Just because she plays volleyball.

Statisticians are the Devil. One final piece of proof...The Bible says to beware the number of the Beast, 666, which coincidentially is the statistical odds against one of these evil creatures ever, ever, getting one right. I hate statistics.

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