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Fresh from talking sense about the likely implications of a male birth control pill, qwerty decides to play logician and the results aren’t pretty:

Vox’s data isn’t quite this bad, but is very sloppy and is based on very poor logic. As a result it’s probably off by a factor of 5 or more. Hard to say. Being off by a factor of 2 is pretty lame.

First, he takes a number of murderers (about 3400) in a certain age group. Then, since he personally has only heard of 2 murderers who were homeschooled, he assumes all the rest of the 3400 must have had a public education.

The worse thing about Vox’s logic is in comparing a tiny number to a huge number, without consideration of it’s accuracy, then projecting this sketchy data over 3 years, increasing his error by threefold.

He concludes that a homeschooled kid is only 1/114th as likely to kill as a kid from the public school system.

It would only take the discovery of 2 more killers on the homeschooled side (be it crime of passion, drug crazed homicide, road rage, or whatever) to change the result by a factor of 2.

Very sloppy conclusion, all in all.

This is the sort of pedantic observation that is particularly embarassing, ignoring as it does the forest for the trees. For qwerty to be correct, one has to believe the following things:

1. In a nation full of compulsory public schooling, a significant percentage of children have never attended public school or been homeschooled.

2. In a nation where 45 murders are committed every day, primacy of publicity would be given to one over a period of ten days without there being man-bites-dog component given the absence of a celebrity aspect. qwerty also ignores that there are many homeschooled individuals over the age of 22; I left them out in order to simplify the analysis but any +22 homeschooled killers would be fair game for the media as well.

3. Given a media which consistently seeks to negatively publicize that which it opposes, and given that this media is overtly anti homeschooling, the media would neglect to report widely on a homeschooled killer.

4. There have been at least 8 additional homeschooled murderes under the age of 22 in the last three years. Given the publicity that accompanied the recent case, what the chances that we’ve simply missed the coverage of them.

Most importantly, qwerty fails to note that his estimate still leaves 218 of the 228 homeschooled killers indicated by the statistics missing. Thus, even if we accept his revision, this would mean that instead of being 114 times more likely to commit murder than a homeschooler, a public schooled individual would be only 25 more times likely to do so. In other words, my point about there being a significant difference linked to schooling still stands.

The true deleterious effect of public schools may in fact be even worse – my 1/114 estimate may be too generous in favor of the public schools – because ten percent of the 45 million students in America attend private schools. This is why I originally said 40 daily murders, not 45, but I do not know at the moment if the privately schooled are doing their fair share of the killing or not.

To be strictly fair, given the gaps in the data, we should collate the publicly schooled and the privately schooled as one collectively schooled group in asserting that murderous 1/114 ratio, although I expect that given the fact that most killers are of lower IQ and lower income status and the dearth of media stories devoted to “prep-school killers” I suspect that my original estimate will ultimately prove to be too low, rather than too high. In any case, any possible errors here lie in the admittedly incomplete data, not in the logical assessment of it.

He’s just a boy, standing in front of a girl, explaining why he doesn’t love her:

I read with ashen resignation that Maureen Dowd, the professional spinster of the New York Times, will soon birth a book, no doubt parthenogenetically, called Are Men Necessary? The problem apparently is that men have not found Maureen necessary. Hell hath…. Clearly there is something wrong with men.

I weary of the self-absorbed clucking of aging poultry.

Why is Maureen hermetically single? For starters, she is not just now your classic hot ticket. She’s not just over the hill, but into the mountains, to Grandmother’s house we go. She probably gets more daily maintenance than a 747, but she still looks as though a vocational school held an injection-molding contest and everyone lost. That leaves her with only her personality as bait. The prognosis is grim.

Was that ungentlemanly? She makes a career of being disagreeable about men. What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, say I.

Reading her unending plaints, one concludes that she is deeply in love—with herself, and too loyal ever to cheat with a man. Behind her writing you always hear the little voice, “I’m so wonderful, so elite…why doesn’t somebody marry me?” (Well, Maureen, I can give you a few ideas. You’re a pain in the ass….) “I’m so smart, I’m so powerful, I’m so, sooo elite, so talented, so…special.” As, in their way, are ingrown toenails. “I’m successful, shriek. Men hate me because I’m smart. They feel threatened because I’m so wonderful.”

Actually, Maureen, you are no more threatening, or appealing, than somebody else’s gym socks. I suspect that men don’t like you because you aren’t likeable.

I seem to recall mentioning similar notions on a few occasions in the past not that it ever seems to penetrate the Strong Independent Woman aka Evolutionary Dead End set. As a general rule, it is safe to assume that if people don’t want to be around you, the problem probably doesn’t lie with them.

JH queries my dismissal of the homeschool killer as an aberration:

Considering there are at least 45 million students attending your “evil school system”, as opposed to one million home-skoolers, your claim of 40 murders every day [committed by the public schooled] – if correct – is moot.

There’s nothing weird being “taught” in any of those one million households, is there? Of course not, just the facts: homosexuals deserve death, Earth is only six thousand years old, and Adam and Eve rode to Church every Sunday on dinosaurs.

What I find amusing (and it is certainly not the pre-meditated murder of two humans): Where is the usual crowd that complains loudly about public schools, the parents who send them there, and our secular society in general, after a shooting such as this? They are strangely silent when the offender is a Bible-toting, scripture-spouting gun-lover.

The reason the crowd is not spouting loudly about it is twofold. 1) The media is doing as much anti-homeschool spouting as it dares, 2) which isn’t much because even the most devoted advocates of the public schools don’t believe that the murders had anything to do with the kid’s education, which was by all accounts directly contrary to his actions.

More importantly, the point is by no means rendered moot by the recent murders. Let’s run through the numbers, using 2003 since those are the most recent and complete. There were 50 million school-age children, 1.1 million, or 2.2 percent, were homeschooled. There were also 16,503 criminal homicides, or 45 per day. Therefore, since most individuals are public schooled, at least 40 and probably all 45 of those murderers attended public schools. Since the increase in the number of homeschooled children is on the rise, however, it would not be accurate to point out that there should be at least one homeschooled killer every day of the year.

But the Uniform Crime Report for 2003 also shows that 3,445 murders were committed by individuals under the age of 22. Here we can point out that homeschoolers should account for 2.2 percent of those murders, or 76 of them per year. Since, to our knowledge, homeschoolers have actually only managed to commit two murders in the last three years out of the 228 that are statistically expected of them, homeschoolers appear to be 1/114th as likely to commit murder as their public school counterparts.

This alone should suffice to indicate that the public school advocates are indeed correct as their socialization is clearly lacking.

JS sees things through a different lens:

This war we’re in was sparked by religious differences (I’m still waiting for someone to tell me the difference between Osama Bin Laden invoking God and George Bush invoking God).

Christians have been waiting for the End Times since the first century and I’m sure every generation has seen signs that told them it was near. This generation is no different. I’m sure the world won’t end until the sun becomes a red giant about four billion years from now.

As far as Israel and 1948. Mark my words that nothing will come of it. The years will pass and the Christians will keep redefining the length of a generation and you and I will grow old and die as will our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and so on until the sun exhausts itself (see above paragragh). And there will be no rapture or return of Christ. Israel will continue to exist…or it won’t.

As far as hatred toward Christians. I was once a born again Christian 25 years ago. That lasted less than a year as I hung out with the most bigoted, fascist, self-righteous, judgemental, hypocritical anti-science group of people I’ve ever known.

I still have some Christian friends (and family members) and let me tell you, nothing has changed. I’ve been called Satan simply because I’m an evolutionist, a deist, and a reader of Wayne W. Dyer books. I do believe in God, just not a theistic one that has to re-engineer his plans to save mankind because his first idea didn’t work. Or has to step out of eternity and use supernatural intervention to create life and do whatever else he needs to so the universe will work right.

I am absolutely certain that in time (maybe thousands of years), Yahweh and Allah will go the way of Odin and Zeus. And science will answer all our questions concerning the physical universe.

Don’t cut yourself short. You are a genius, maybe even a super-genius. Without a doubt you’re smarter and far, far better educated than me, and I too have an IQ that would put me in Mensa if I cared about such nonsense.

It is always a mistake to judge the ism for the ist. It is tempting to do so, and most of us – including me – give into the temptation, but it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Did the fundamental truth of the labor theory of value really rest on the existence of a Soviet Marxist’s private Black Sea dacha in the Worker’s Paradise? Does the historical fact of the Resurrection truly depend on whether or not a television evangelist has sex with a hooker in a grungy motel?

I see JS’ certainty that science will eventually answer all of our questions regarding the physical universe to be a faith every bit as childlike as that required by the Christian. Perhaps even more so, because even if all our questions regarding What and How were settled, this would not provide us with the answers to Why and What Now.

Anyhow, while I appreciate the enthusiasm of his regard, I can assure JS that I am no genius, let alone a super-genius. I’m already too much given to adverbial extravagance, let’s not join the ranks of the linguistically adulterous.

Paula demands accountability:

You’re such a class act, Vox. Calling a wife and mother of two a name referencing a Vietnamese hooker. So classy. Such impeccable logic, too. Oh, she lied. So my calling her a name referencing a Vietnamese hooker is justifiable.

You hold views that women are inherently of equal worth to me, yet different (emotionally, biologically, psychologically). I assume because of this view, you also believe that women ought to have a different sort of respect/treatment.

A real gentleman would not have ever ridiculed a woman the way you did Michelle Malkin. She is, indeed, unaccountable, a horrible historian, and a fraud–but to refer to her as Me-So? Besides the prostitute bit, it also attacks her ethnicity.

Why did you think it was necessary to do this?

Paula has the timing backwards, so her questioning of my “impeccable logic” is not applicable. I labled Ms Malkin as “Me So Michelle” long before she lied on the Baltimore radio station about having answered my questions regarding her book. I gave her a nickname implying that she was an Asian prostitute because it is my firmly held belief that she is among the worst of the media whores, trailing only Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera.

It’s called a metaphor, and this is a particularly apt one, being doubly applicable and spiced with a dash of alliteration, no less. And as long as we’re on the subject of metaphors, I should note that a gentleman is not supposed to treat a whore like a lady, he is merely expected to pay her according to the services rendered.

Her nickname is not necessary, any more than it was necessary to label Mr. O’Reilly “Brave Sir William” and imply that he lacked basic male equipment. I did it for the same reason I do most things; it amused me. And I don’t believe that women who want to play on an equal playing field deserve special treatment or respect; it is only those who believe that women are too weak to play a man’s game that whine about how someone called poor wittle Me-So a Mean Name or made her cwy on TV. Please.

At the very beginning of my brief and inglorious football career, a girl showed up at first practice. She was big, outweighed me by at least 15 pounds and was very outspoken about how tough she was. The first time one of the linebackers hit her in a tackling drill, he hit her hard and smashed her into the ground. She started crying and walked off the field, never to return. I have seen this sort of thing happen time and time again, in sports, in the office and in the blogosphere.

If you can’t take it, then don’t dish it out. If you want respect, then earn it through your actions. It’s that simple. As for class, when have I ever made any claim to that? My natural inclination is cruel and vulgar arrogance; if I happen to be occasionally able to surmount it, that is through the grace of God and the civilizing influence of Spacebunny.

I shall await with interest Paula’s explanation of how referring to an Asian woman as an Asian is an attack on her ethnicity. It is always possible, I suppose, that she subscribes to a belief that Phillipinos are intrinsically superior to Vietnamese, or that all Asian women are prostitutes.

ML goes further than I would:

Vox, great article, I guess one of the great stumbling blocks of the intellectual subculture is pride. All men are born with a spirit that is in rebellion against God, it seems that at least some of the people you are talking about marshall the resources of thier {supossedly} great intellects in their war against God.

I think many of these intellectuals revel in their percieved superiority over “normal” saps especially when it’s very likely that said intellectuals were picked on and marginalized by so called normal people as children.

While I agree that intellectual pride is a genuine stumbling block for many individuals, I reject both the implication and the overt statement in the second paragraph. It is mystifying to me that so many people who readily recognize physical superiority and understand how a physically powerful individual develops a superiority complex are incapable of understanding that precisely the same process is at work in the intellectually superior.

In both cases, the sense of power can be intoxicating and often leads to arrogance, but no one ever talks about “perceived” physical superiority – except a few stupid equalitarians, of course – or refers to “normal” strength, speed, quickness or agility.

The sense of separation from the norm is not created by any rejection by others, it exists from the very first moment of engagement. The subsequent marginalization that often occurs is usually the result of actions on both sides; the normal mainstream fears and is jealous of those who excel and harbors the usual dislike of those who are different in any way, superior or inferior, while the intelligent individual all too often refuses to compromise and engage with the mainstream in terms it finds acceptable.

This is ironic, of course, because one who is smart enough to be intrincically separated from the mainstream should be smart enough to figure out how to engage successfully with it. Some, especially girls, do this almost automatically, others like me require a few years of junior high hell before the light bulb goes off.

Unfortunately, a common result of this marginalization is that whereas the physically superior merely feels a mild and reasonable contempt for the norm, the intellectually superior often develops an outright dislike, if not hatred, for it. This, I think, is why intellectuals are so dangerous and why Plato’s notion of rule by highly educated, highly intelligent Philosopher-Kings is a fundamentally flawed one, as it can lead to terrible atrocities at the behest those intellectuals capable of rationalizing the transformation of their hatred for the masses into dehumanization.

From SI:

As for the Packers, their season is all but over after their division rival swept them for the first time since 1998.

“This one may be the worst because No. 1, it was Minnesota; No. 2, it was at home; and No. 3, it was Minnesota again,” said Green Bay defensive end Aaron Kampman.

The reason Monday night’s win was so satisfying?

1. It was Green Bay.
2. It demonstrated that Brad Johnson can lead the Vikings to the NFC North title. Despite his Super Bowl ring, Johnson has always been badly underrated. He’s not a superstar gunslinger like Brady or Manning, but he’s two notches above the Trent Dilfer category in which most people classify him.
3. It was Green Bay.

Even if we don’t make the playoffs, it has now officially been a successful season. Or at least, it will be as soon as Mike Tice is politely, but firmly, shown the door.

Ted’s given the matter some thought:

I don’t believe you’d get an affirmative answer, since those who disdain religion are generally not much interested in any sort of reasoning they would simply consider rationalization

However. I, a former Catholic turned agnostic would accept your explanation even if I cannot possibly agree with you.

God may very well exist, but in my opinion, if he does, he is either incompetent, disinterested, or a gamesman, with the latter quite likely making him the Devil himself. However, I personally am not only not hostile to Christianity, I believe it represents man’s only chance for long-term survival. It’s just that if you link Christian principles to God, you have the problem of God not practicing what he preaches.

Not wanting to categorically state that God is evil, I attribute his work to three possible scenarios (I admit there may be others):

1) God as Tabitha where he’s not fully in control of his powers, as with the young lady on Bewitched, and this we see around us is the result

B) God as scientist where he’s created any number of worlds and we’re his lab rats in a rather elaborate experiment to see what works.

3) God as frat president with life on earth being “hell week” before we gain full membership in his fraternity.

As you may notice, any of the above is a contrived situation. There is no need for us to have been created, and it’s an exercise in self-indulgence on God’s part that we are – a totally selfish act, for aren’t we better off if we’d never existed at all? The attendant anxiety alone makes that clear, I think.

Then there’s that whole business about the universe not being as orderly as some geniuses think, and the fact that seemingly random occurrences bring (often unexpected) devastation and accompanying misery. To what end? For what purpose? Is it good enough for you to say that we can’t know Big G’s thinking processes?

Actually, I tend to lean towards option (B) myself. That seems fairly obvious to me, given the constant mentions of separating wheat and chaff, sheep and goats, etc. But I don’t see anything inherently negative in that, indeed, it would tend to indicate that we are, indeed, created in his image.

Is it good enough for me to say that we can’t know God’s thinking processes? Yes, for me. I regularly encounter people who are simply incapable of grasping my thought processes and after many years I’ve finally learned to accept that they’re not intentionally being difficult, that they just can’t do it for whatever reason. I therefore have no problem believing that I have a similar inability to understand the way in which a Divine mind operates.

Res Ispa inquires further:

“I do not subscribe to the literal 100 percent Word of God theory of the Bible. Nor do I understand how anyone who has read more than one English translation of the Bible can hold to it.”

Please explain what you mean/believe more fully.

I had a feeling this might come up. Basically, I’m simply looking at the process with which the Bible was written and applying my knowledge of how translations, even those informed by the writer, tend to depart slightly from the author’s precise text.

I do not doubt that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and I am a Biblical literalist in terms of following its guidelines. That being said, if a man cannot accurately translate a book from English into Italian without some degree of alteration creeping in, how can a man, even one guided by the Holy Spirit, perfectly translate a divine revelation into a human tongue? And then, of course, there’s the obvious fact that one translation will differ from another, even translations into the same language.

But this does not mean that we can pick and choose between what we believe to be error and truth, because this would be tantamount to setting ourselves up as an arbiter of God’s Word. Since we are told that we are incapable of understanding the ways of God, we are likewise incapable of proper discernment in these matters and we should not be surprised if things occasionally do not make sense to our lesser, human logic.

Whilst preparing for tonight’s big game against the Cheeseheads, the Original Cyberpunk concocts a scheme to revive the Purple:

The big news in Minnesota this week, of course, comes in two parts. The first is that the Vikings have launched an aggressive campaign to deal with their chronic image problems by unveiling a new 77-page “code of conduct” handbook for their players, as if this lot of remedial English students can be expected to actually read and understand the thing. Secondly, in a related story, the owners of Al and Alma’s Supper Club have won an injunction against Metropolitan Collectibles to prevent further sales of their famous Vikings Cruise souvenir t-shirt.

I, in the meantime, have just had one of my intermittent and wholly undependable flashes of pure brilliance, and have figured out how to solve all of the Vikings’ personnel, money, and public relations problems in one bold stroke. The beauty of my idea is, it can be expressed in a single phrase: Play to your strengths.

And just what are the Minnesota Vikings’ well-proven strengths?

First, spend whatever it takes to get Randy Moss back. Then, sign Terrell Owens, Osi Umenyiora, and Rod “He Hate Me” Smart, if he’s still around. In fact, try to get every player in or recently kicked out of the NFL who’s been penalized lately for showboating, taunting, unnecessary roughness, late hits, or unsportsmanlike conduct.

Next, change the name of the team. “The Minnesota Vikings” is so boring, old-school, and to be blunt, white. We need a new team name; one that truly reflects the energetic spirit of this dynamic new 21st century urban football organization.

I’m not entirely sure that “Skol Thugz” has the same ring to it, however.