Focus

Due to the fact that my new job involves me doing actual work I wont be able to post my lengthy rants during work hours. This is tragic because it means that I'm going to have to chose between blogging and World of Warcraft. /cries

But never fear, I plan to try to focus my blog more on the topics I actually intended to post about in the beginning, that is use of statistics and science and how it is manipulated by the media and stupid people. The ranting will be saved for the occasional, "God damn both political parties in this country are so fucking stupid" moments.

In honor of my new found focus I have linkmania:

From the Mystery Pollster: 2008 Presidential Polling in 2005: a REALLY Big Grain of Salt He makes a very good case for most of the presidential polling taking place at this point being a huge waste of time. And I couldn't agree more. Polls are not forecasts, all they tell you is who would win if the election were tomorrow, but much to my chagrin it is not. We still have 3 more years of Mr. Bush to deal with first, and who knows what could happen before 2008................. not that I have anything but confidence in our current administration. (Damn I almost typed that without laughing, so close.)

The second has more to do with science, Bill from INDC has pointed out the clear lack of impartialness to Michelle Malkin's evaluation of the RU-486 pills and the related deaths Bill does a good job of comparing statistics:

So, while 1 in 92,000 women have died from RU-486 side effects since the drug's US approval, 1 in 3,700 American women have died in childbirth during the same period, making actually giving birth 25 times more deadly than having a chemical abortion (the article states "10 to 13 times riskier" than having any type of abortion).

This whole controversy really has to do with people's views on abortion, not problems with the drug, lets talk about the real problem people and stop pussyfooting around. YAY Bill!

Also Instapundit linked to a post written just for me: Advice to the angry young blogger Actually he seems to be targetting complete idiots, which I'm not, but I thought the title was funny anyway. Would be nice if there were actual Advice involved, like can anyone tell me how not to get angry all the time? That'd be nice.

That's all I've got for now, time to go do actual work at my amazing new job! (Today my boss told me "Well.... yeah, you're smart, you can figure it out" it was a clear illustration to me of how my career has made a turn for the better.)