Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
The Other 68% Were Crap To Begin With
We’ve had a real exciting week in the world of “studies,” at the very least in the realm of soda making people fat, which you can read about here and here and here and here. We still have two days to go before the week’s over, and what do we have here? A study-of-studies, 45 to be exact, saying 32% of all these studies turn out later to be just cock-and-bull stories and, by implication, do more harm than good if people pay attention to them.
Subsequent research contradicted results of seven studies — 16 percent — and reported weaker results for seven others, an additional 16 percent.
That means nearly one-third of the original results did not hold up, according to the report in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
What do you do if the money’s tight, and something goes on sale that you kinda-sorta need, but not really? Some people will pull out the credit card and go get the thing, since, after all, it’s on sale. But smart people will say hey, let’s wait awhile, since it’s not the highest priority. Maybe by the time it’s more important to us, it won’t be such a hot commodity, and we’ll end up getting it for just as good a deal as if it was on sale again.
Studies should be treated the same way. If soda does indeed make you fat, then it didn’t start making people fat in July of 2005.
You know what this reminds me of? Cell phones. Have you ever gotten off a cell phone call from your wife, or boss, or girlfriend, with a brand-new obligation to do something that requires an interruption from something else you were just about to do…and thought to yourself “you know, if there were fewer ways to communicate, I’d be getting more done”? Sometimes knowledge is not power.
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