Steve's barking don't always trust statistics

I remember when I was in grade school the socialist Norman Thomas gave an address to to our assembly.
Now the only thing I remember about his address was the statement he made figures lie and liars figure.
Statistics are numbers (figures) that address on going or previous situations.
What good are statistics anyway? There great for graphs. They should be good for probability. It can even sometimes can make a case for cause and effect.
When we in the United States make the case for life expectancy and our health care system shouldn't we through out death by guns and auto accidents? Doesn't that screwier the system?
When economist make a case against pumping money into the system shouldn't they look at the system more closely and differentiate an agricultural society, from an industrial society and a mixed society.

When we use statistics in baseball is the whole picture being taken in? When they say so an so bat 320 against lefties and only 230 against righties, does that statement  show what kind of hitter the batter is against right handed curve ball pitchers and fastball pitchers and the same for left hand pitchers. Are all the variances taken into account?

During the great depression when Roosevelt took his foot off the throttle the unemployment rate was 20%.
Statistic don't show what would have happened if the wages were paid to WPA workers were more the subsistence giving a greater discretionary income and perhaps self starting the private sector.

A greater worry about statistics is if the number aren't accurate to begin with.
Why shouldn't they be accurate?
Numbers can and are manipulated for self serving purposes.      

Steve's barking poisoned food saves lives

Think about this, we poison our food with chemicals to kill off bugs that eat our food.
If we were to eat too much of the poison food surely we would get sick, that why it's a good idea to wash off your fruits and vegetables (without using soap or as we call it rinsing them off).
We use growth hormones on our chickens and coop them up, surely that's not a good thing for the chickens and us chicken eaters but if we didn't do that would there be enough wings and breast to go around?  What would be the price of chickens and there parts if we only had free range?
What about cows and sheep, lets not forget about pigs and other penned in animals, would we have enough to feed those who desired the eating of flesh for there nutrition if they didn't a little poison in them?

What would happen if we were all vegetarians would there be enough food to go around?

Modern Western men like myself eat too much. We also tend to waste enormous quantities of food. The common wisdom is that this food could be used to feed the starving in various places in the world were there is a shortage of food, the people are hungry and children are dying of malnutrition. My over the belly gut feeling is telling me that we have to be careful fixing this inefficient food distribution system or more people will starve.

Some people eat to live, I'm one of those people who live to eat.    

  

Steve's barking why did the government get telephone records of reporters?

If the government has a telephone monitoring system call Prism why did it have to subpoena the telephone records of reporters?

Steve's barking Snowdon hero or?

Is the leaker that the US NSA has been gathering information  on all the citizens ,telephone calls so that a computoter can monitor them a hero or villian?
I for one am confused, not at Mr. Snowdon but at myself. I'm so ambivalent to the  ignoring of the fourth amendment to the constition by my government.
 It appears that Mr Snowdon is a true believer in the constition, because that the only way to explain his mental. equivalent of a suicide bomber.
Here is a highschool dropout, working as a Secuity guard, then as a CIA analyst eventually working for a private firm earning 200,000 dollars a year in  Hawaii, ending it all to tell the world what it already suspected.  The US is just like any other country.
I know not if  it's. a. Good or bad thing. I s he a hero or villian. Would. I have done the same in my brilliant youth.

Steve's barking don't do your job IRS

In the past several days my elected government has been chastising along with a large portion  of the media the IRS.
Now as I recall from my audit days in New York State one would look for certain red flags to be a little more zealous looking into what should be given a closer look. Now if I'm not mistaken most audits are done this way. Experience should tell what words or expressions should be given a closer look.
So my government and those whom tell us what to think (media types) are telling the IRS not to do their jobs.
What next some billionaires start complaining that the IRS is picking on them and it's class warfare. What's the government going to say, take the billionaires word on what they put on their tax returns?
Congress writes the laws, if they don't want the names of those giving to a political group and want it to be tax exempt they can change the law.
I hope those congress people aren't the same one's who complain that government isn't open enough, for those a** holes would be full of S**t.

I must have gotten so jaded in my old age the NSA is looking at Verizon telephone records and all I can do is yawn though I kinda know this is wrong and I'm pretty sure unconstitutional even with a court order.    
    

Steve's barking, whats good maybe bad

Does something good create something bad?
Plastic containers made things easier to carry.
Plastic containers became a landfill problem.
Replace plastic with cloth and you have a bacteria problem.
Replace the horse which when defecating creates a health problem. With a gas driven carriage and you have an co2 problem.
Cut income of workers to make a grater profit and you have an ability to pay problem eventually cutting customer base. Reducing profits in the long run.

The electric companies need you to use  more electricity for greater profit. The electric companies can't supply the electricity telling the consumer to cut back. The electric companies profits sink.

Fish is a great food for nutritional value. Every body wants to eat fish(?). With the nets and sonar that we have today we catch more fish. This being a good thing except that we're over fishing so we might not have any fish tomorrow.

We need oil and gas so we developed this thing called fracking, we may have plenty of oil and gas and no water to drink.

We have developed pesticides that kill bugs that carry disease and eat our food crops. These pesticides maybe harmful to us.

Ect, ect , ect.

Does every good action have an equal but bad reaction? Is there such a thing Newtonian economic law?

Steve's barking, No one's taking the guns away.

No sane person in the United States believes guns are going to be taken away from citizens who own them.
There are over three hundred million plus reasons why that not going to happen and none of those reasons belong to the constitution. An amendment to the constitution can be taken away by another amendment, just ask the women from the temperance league and the eighteenth amendment.
The 300 million plus reasons are the number of guns in the hands of the citizens. Let's not forget between one quarter and one half of the citizens of the United States have guns.

Two of the school shooting tragedies could have very easily been avoided if the parents of the shooters had practiced gun safety. I put the blame squarely on the NRA for not preaching gun safety enough.

Too many of those worrying about a gun registry assert that there are law and order people, so why don't they want a simple tool that will help catch the bad guys?

For you who think that gun laws will greatly reduce the number of gun deaths in America, I believe that death due to guns would go down slightly less then 1 percent.
Gun violence is one of the things Americans will have to live with.