I gave in!  [Read more]

Auto manufacturers and religious institutions commit the same blunder. Sometimes, their innovative solutions run far ahead of the public’s endorsement and fall out-of-favor with consumers.

In 1957, Ford Motor Company launched an advertising blitz for the goofy-looking Edsel. Consumers were turned off by what Ford featured above the car’s front bumper—an oval vertical grill. Customers quipped it looked like a horse collar. [Read more]

This article originally got published a few weeks ago at Practice of Madness. It's more in line with the material usually published here. Give it a full read - it's a collaboration with a very close friend. Apologies if it's difficult to read here - Jennifer's page is very interactive. If you have trouble, go ahead and read her website from the source: [Read more]

All I can say is, if James Van Der Beek and Krysten Ritter's (of don't trust the B in apartment 23) agents are not shopping them as possiblities to play Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras in the eventual movie to be made about this NSA story, then James Van Der Beek and Krysten Ritter have the dumbest agents in the history of Hollywood.

My prediction is that Van Der Beek's career will be revitalized by the (eventual) film in the same way that John Travolta's was revitalized by Pulp Fiction, and that he will cause a minor poopstorm by proclaiming "Thank God for government overreach!" during his Golden Globe acceptance speech. [Read more]

In the wild (i.e., when we're not talking about contrived examples), data mining involves significant amounts of statistics. There are two common quotes that come to mind when talking about statistics:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. (Popularized by Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens, who attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, but with uncertain provenance.)

and [Read more]

The old saying is that “figures will not lie,” but a new saying is “liars will figure.” It is our duty, as practical statisticians, to prevent the liar from figuring; in other words, to prevent him from perverting the truth, in the interest of some theory he wishes to establish. (Carroll D. Wright, a prominent statistician employed by the U.S. government in 1889)

This article is a try at new stuff for my website and for me as a writer - let alone for my contributions to Dagblog. I'm limiting myself here - I'm pretty sure I could actually write a book about Star Wars if I let myself loose. Let me know what you think and thanks, Mike, for encouraging me to do this.

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BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

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In response to the New York Times' “The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill” (“Paying Till It Hurts” series, front page, June 2,)

Kenneth Prager, a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, wrote the following short Letter to the Editor, which was published June 3 along with several others: [Read more]

Contrary to popular belief, surviving the adversity of the Black community requires the ability to think. When I look back upon my life I can only imagine the contributions that some of my friends could have made to this society had they not succumb to the adversity of having to survive the Black experience. The only reason that I survived was through a combination of luck, and the fact that I lacked the personal courage that many of my friends were blessed with. So I was willing to put up with many of the things that they were either willing to either lay their lives on the line to fight, or they found so unbearable that they essentially committed suicide through the use of drugs and other means. [Read more]

Geologic of the Seattle rap duo Blue Scholars

The Otherside, a documentary about the growing and unique world of Northwest hip-hop, is an ambitious documentary. Northwest hip-hop is a very weighty topic - rappers from the Northwest are very similar to white rappers: they're a consistent part of the hip-hop aesthetic but there is still something strange about rap from the Puget Sound; it doesn't quite fit with what we are used to hip-hop sounding, acting or looking like. [Read more]

I keep hearing so-called Black activists talking about how the "White Supremacist" system is holding the Black man down. But can't these so-called intellectuals see that if White Supremacy can hold the Black man down, that means that the White man is indeed supreme!!!? It’s directly analogous to a man going home and telling his family that he can't feed them because "Willie won't let him." If Willie can prevent him from feeding his family, that means that Willie is the better man. Thus, every time we say, "the White man won't let me," we’re reinforcing the idea in our own minds that the White man is superior to us. It shouldn’t take Socrates to see that simple reality in that logic. [Read more]