At the risk of turning this into a new topic which is hounded to death on the blog, I found some more interesting comments about carrying guns in public – nothing new, they are just more recent ones on the More Guns, More Homicide post.

Previously I pointed out that, as a Brit, I found it odd that the desire to carry a gun while you go about your daily life is so strong in some Americans and that oddness remains. I still find it strange beyond belief that some one in a civilised western democracy can feel so “unsafe” they need to be armed when ever they are in public.

Now, this self defence argument for “packing heat” makes me wonder a bit more. For example, on the comments “ben” was asked the following question by SG (read original):

let me get this right Ben. Someone walks up to you in the street and sticks a knife in your face, says “gimme your wallet”, and you think you can draw your gun and threaten and/or shoot them before they stab you? Is this how the self-defence argument works? Or does it work by you pulling your gun before they pull the knife, i.e. shooting them if they look threatening?

While this seems like a reasonable method of explaining the self defence argument for carrying a gun the responses it drew included this from MarkP (“I’m an actuary, I own a gun but don’t carry it, and have no particular love for them”) (read original)

No, SG, he thinks if he pulls his gun, the knifewielder will see the gun and will flee. And he is substantially correct. People wield weapons mostly for bluff. If the knifewielder had wanted to just have a fight, he would have stabbed Ben without asking for the wallet.

The only thing funnier than paranoid gun nuts protecting their phallic symbols are gun-phobes revealing that they cannot think logically about guns for one second, and know nothing about the real world. I suggest this be alleviated by talking about “weapons” rather than guns, since guns are only the most effective weapons at killing, but certainly not the only ones. Just ask the people in Rwanda.

While on the surface this seems like a logical line of reasoning, it suffers from a logical fallacy, having said that his attempt to broaden the debate is worthwhile, but I suspect it is futile.

Now as I see it the fallacy is that he is assuming the gun wielder is not bluffing but the robber is. If the statement “people wield weapons mostly for bluff” is true, then it must also apply to the gun owner and therefore drawing the weapon does not carry any reason to assume the robber will run.
When the gun is drawn the situation escalates. The robber will suffer from an adrenaline rush and may well decide that running will result in being shot in the back and attacking the gun owner is the only option. On a purely technical point, if the knife wielder is close enough to be a real threat anyway, the hand gun is probably useless unless it is already drawn.

There is more though. Ben replied to the question with: (read original)

It works like this: If I thought my life was in danger, then I’d draw and shoot if necessary. If not, then he can have my wallet, car and any other inanimate object he likes.

It is an interesting conundrum he presents. Some one is threatening you with a knife and you may not consider your life was in danger? If there is no threat, he will surrender his objects but if there is a threat he will try to fight. Very unusual and difficult to imagine how it can work in practice.

There are a multitude of arguments for, and against, gun ownership. My personal thoughts about the escalation of violence may well suffer from the slippery slope fallacy but I doubt it. When one person is armed and the other isn’t deaths may occur. If both are armed deaths may still occur and may well be more likely. Is the belief the death may not be the victim sufficient grounds for people to carry guns? Would you rather be punched or shot as the result of an argument with another car driver? Would you carry a gun in case the other driver came up to you and started shouting? At what point would you draw the gun?

As soldiers are taught, once the weapon is brought into view the whole situation changes. If your opponent does not back down immediately you pretty much have to kill them. The more people carry guns, the more likely an otherwise heated situation will turn violent. Is this grounds for banning firearms in the US? I don’t think so, but then I don’t live there.

Thanks to Pharyngula for bringing this to my attention: You can get the creationist Truth In Science DVD through Bittorrent.

When science and religion combine the results are almost always entertaining. Browsing through Pharyngula today, I came across a link to an post on the Bad Astronomy blog. Both of these point to some extracts from a page published by the Middle East Media Research Institute. (Now this is a Washington based institute so it may not be actually representative of what Middle Eastern beliefs and opinions are).

The transcript is about an Egyptian researcher who has put forward scientific reasoning to abolish Greenwich Mean Time and replace it with “Mecca Time” and begins with this chestnut: Continue reading →

Now, it seems I was a touch hasty with my last post on gun crime and statistics. If I had spent more time reading the comments on the Deltoid post even more comedy bad-statistical goodness would have come to light.

As someone living outside the US, I have no real concept of how this is an issue which creates such a furore. I am dimly aware of the constitutional issues, but as far as I can tell the right to bear arms was there because the founding fathers didn’t believe in a standing army. I don’t think they envisaged a future where both would happen, but who am I to know.

The main pro-gun comments seem to come from a guy called “ben” who proudly proclaims “I pack heat” and while superficially sound, they don’t seem to survive detailed analysis. For example, the numerous studies which have linked gun ownership to homicide are disproven by a the apparent fact that the homicide rate in gun-carrying Seattle is lower than in gun-banned Vancouver. Interesting. I think it is important to highlight that the debate is about “homicide” not “gun crime” which is a mistake I have made in the past.

While it is entirely possible that the apparently obvious more guns = more crime assumption is wrong, this leads to more questions which could have interesting conclusions. If more guns != more crime, then why does the nation with the highest incidence of gun ownership have more crimes per person than other nations? Are God-fearing Americans simply more criminally minded than (say) Canadians?

Well, not really a bad science blog post but it seems some people are willing to go to all manner of lengths to avoid facing up to statistical analysis they don’t agree with.

Lurking on scienceblogs once more, I came across a post titled More guns, more homicide in which Ted Lambert discusses a study showing that American states with the highest incidence of gun ownership also have the highest incidence of homicides. Yes, I know that seems to be so self evidently obvious there is an urge to go “duh” but studies like this are required to ensure that what we assume is the case, is the case.

Anyway, it is not Ted’s post (as such) nor the study itself I am talking about now but the inevitable furore from the pro-gun lobby.

Take this little chestnut from Jeff Stoyer:

In the current study, they claim they’ve “controlled” for factors such as unemployment, etc. I’d be interested in seeing how they accomplished that statistical dance.

Well blow me down. Who would have thought that any statistical survey would have been able to carry out this sort of “statistical dance.” It is mind boggling and sadly pays testament to how little people learn about statistics and the methods involved.

Matters are certainly not helped by the old adages: “89% of all statistics are made up on the spot,” “Lies, damn lies and statistics” and “you can make statistics prove anything you want.”

Sadly, all this points towards the “general public” thinking that statistics is some odd combination of witchcraft and subtle dishonesty. Now, I know that public opinion is not science but it does influence policy much more than science or statistics will ever manage. The more that people are swayed by a simple lack of understanding about how statistics are collected and the implications they produce, the more governmental policy will veer away from the track marked “sensible” and towards the one marked “Insane – Faith Schools – Creationism – Flawed Criminal Policy [etc].”

I will leave a rant about crime statistics and how they are warped and misinterpreted for another day and hopefully there are those who are more statistically inclined than myself who can add more to this topic.

Flickr tags: Guns, Crime, America, Homocide

Recently there have been lots of problems with 1and1 and their mail servers. As a 1and1 customer (this site is hosted on a 1and1 server), I have been unable to get reliable email delivery for the last three days. I have tried sending an email to customer services (well…), I have tried using their online contact forms and I have scoured their home page for information on the outage. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to tell me if it is my problem or their problem, no idea of how long it wil last or any possible solutions.

Fortunately today I found an article on the Register where 1and1 make the following statement:

Yesterday, a number of UK customers experienced some delay in receiving inbound email. The delay was due to a surge in email volumes over our email servers. Our email system continued to receive all email during this time, with only its delivery to inboxes being delayed.

The email delay was handled according to set procedure, emails were queued and stored and no email was lost during this time.

The technical issue was resolved and all emails involved are being delivered safely. Only 1&1 email users were affected.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers due to the queuing of emails.

Today, 1&1’s UK Customer Control Panel was temporarily unavailable for a very short time whilst systems were maintained.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but are customers of 1and1 now expected to have to search the Register to find out about service outages and problems? Not only that, but the problem was certainly in place before yesterday and as of 1815 hours (GMT) today it was not fixed.

I am truly amazed that 1&1 thinks it can demonstrate such an appaling level of customer service. Why is there no server status or service information page?

Sadly, given the consumer apathy prevalent in the UK, I suspect they will still be “top webhost” this year.

Just some musings today – I am trying to hold off my attacks on the insane (Creationists, Alternative Medicine supporters etc.) which doesnt leave me much else 🙂

This led me on to wondering about quite a few things, one of which was the “Slippery Slope” logical fallacy. Now, I am often accused of being guilty of this – I frequently make doom and gloom predictions along the lines of if we dont prevent x then at some point in the future y will be terrible.

I am not sure that my useage is always a fallacy though.

There always will be times when allowing something to happen does actually mean that things will become worse and in an effort to silence any of my potential detractors I looked into the form of the fallacy some more.

The accepted form of the Slippery Slope goes:

1. Event x has taken place or is going to take place
2. As a result event y will happen.

Now as far as I can gather, this is only fallacious reasoning if it can not be demonstrated that y will follow x. Some farcial examples are, if I hit you in the head with a baseball bat unconsiousness will occur.

Surely that can not be a logical fallacy? Can anyone give me better examples of the fallacy in action and why it should be avoided?

Before we fully draw a line under the previous blog entries on the news item about cancer and fate (initial post, first follow up, second follow up), I came across an interesting blog post about this very subject.

On a blog post titled “Bad Science: Fated to Get Cancer?” (which is well worth reading) the following conclusions are drawn:

Conclusion:

These kinds of studies may lead to confusing results. We can go back and forth on this all day depending on our interpretation, but ultimately it is the experiment and conclusions drawn are flawed from the get-go. We need to be cautious of our source of information and not let these press releases do more damage than good when their results are not scientifically sound.

* A note on “fate”: Simply because something is unknown, does not mean it is due to fate or chance. There are many phenomena that we do not quite understand completely and tumorigenesis is one of them. Many things that used to be considered fate or luck now have scientific explanations. Take, for instance, the people who can have repeated unprotected sexual intercourse with an HIV+ partner without acquiring the virus (akin to not developing cancer despite smoking). An uninformed observer would say that these people are not fated to get AIDS. However, in reality, these many of these people are descendants from survivors of the Bubonic Plague in Europe. The disease selected for a genetic polymorphism that made some people resistant to viral infection and this allele remains today. I suspect that the susceptibility of some people (the 10) over others (the 89) will soon become clear in time with a biologic rational rather than pure fate.

Hopefully this will be the last of it. We are all right 🙂

Should peoples opinions (or more accurately opinion polls) be a valid method of deciding what is, or isn’t good science? Is science, or the scientific method, something which can be validated by debate?

On Pharyngula, there is an interesting post (as always), titled “Ken Ham is still getting his PR for free” which has the following extract (from a blog entry on an ID supporting museum):

“Mocking publicity is free publicity,” Looy [curator] said. Besides, U.S. media have been more respectful, mindful perhaps of a 2006 Gallup Poll showing almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve, but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Now creationist nonsense aside, the bit which intrigues me is the assumption that because almost half Americans believe something it must be valid. This is a recurring theme where ever bad science, creationism and the like try to get publicity.

There are routinely requests for the likes of Richard Dawkins to attend public debates about Evolution vs Intelligent Design and the same thing happens in other areas (vaccinations springs immediately to mind, but there are lots more).

Now, what scientific purpose can be achieved by having two people trying to score points of each other in front of a lay audience? More importantly, the side with the better speaker will win, independently of the quality of their science. If someone has an excellent trial lawyer arguing that (for example) gravity doesn’t exist while a stereotypical physics professor tries to argue it does there is good reason to assume the audience will walk away thinking Gravity does not exist.

Yet it would still exist.

“Science” (for want of a better term) is independent of public opinion. The Popperian scientific method requires repeatability and falsifiability as the hall marks of “good science” not simply being “believed” in. It constantly amazes me that people will assume that simply because lots of people believe in something which is wrong, it must be right.

(Cross posted in the web design blog) Quick rant. It seems there is a lot of propaganda which is pushing Microformats as the “new great thing” on the web. As a result of this, I tried to institute the hCard / vCard microformat (find out more at microformats.org) on a web site currently being developed.

Now the format itself is (eventually) easy enough to get to grips with and it is possible that it could be useful. Being able to generate a human and machine readable address book entry from the same data seems like a brilliant idea. Putting it into practice is somewhat harder.

In a nutshell you mark up your data with SPAN or DIV tags (or whatever) which has a class set to match the vCard fields (eg “fn” for name, “org” for organisation etc). This is fairly straight forward, although it can generate lots of span tags if your contact details are even slightly complicated. When all this is done, you are left with some (X)HTML markup which can be styled as you see fit.

That was the easy bit.

Having done all the microformat marking, you are left wondering if it has “worked.” Is the data actually machine readable in the manner you would expect? The (X)HTML is, but that is no big deal – if the machine readable bit isn’t, all that span effort went to waste.

Now, moving to the dreaded Technorati can help. At the “Technorati Kitchen” there is a page which converts the mark up into a .VCF file which you can down load and try to import into what ever address software you use (Outlook, Windows Address book and the Nokia Address book were the ones tried today). The problem is the VCF you get to download wont open in anything. If you open it in a text editor it “looks” legitimate but no address software seems to like it. It is not just the mark up I made either, following links from the “examples in the wild” page took me to sites like “Mike Rumble – Contact” which downloads a broken VCF thanks to Technorati.

In the end, I had to leave the markup in (hoping it was working) and manually create a functional vCard – which now works fine in all the applications available to test.

Hopefully there is a better solution and if anyone knows it, PLEASE let us know!

As always, weekends are hard going on the blog so as a cop out, I thought I would point you in the direction of some of the other blog posts I have been reading, rather than actually writing any.

Hilaly does it again, but so what? From the Evolving Thoughts blog, this is a reflection on the rantings of Sheik al-Hilaly and the implications Democracy has on allowing lunatics like this to rant.

What Is Evolution? An excellent blog post explaining just what Evolution is and isn’t.

David Paszkiewicz speaks out… Some follow up by PZ Myers on the objectionable creature briefly mentioned a week or so ago. In a nutshell he is a history teacher who informed his pupils they would go to hell if they didnt follow the teachings of Jesus.

I almost feel sorry for them More fom PZ Myers – this time he is commenting on people trolling on his 16 year old daughters blog trying to refute evolution. Sadly for the trolls, they are being beaten by the 16 year olds.

Accept the implications – again, you can see why Myers seems to get the most comments on science blogs! This time he is commenting on research which shows the more educated people become, the more likely they are to accept evolution (amongst other things).

Not a really diverse list, but an insight into where some of my source material comes from 🙂