Iranians Love Americans

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(KMO\";p=\"67189)</div>

Doesn’t surprise me that we are talking about Rather Biased . . . and CBS (See B.S.)

 

Re: Iranians Loves Americans

KMO:

Well, I'd much rather have a lower *overall* crime rate than a statistical difference in certain categories. When criminals have little to fear of reprisal, then the trouble really starts.

There have been some cases recently in Canada where a homeowner was forced to defend themselves against an invader, which resulted in the death of the criminal. In all cases, the Crown proceeded with Manslaughter charges against the homeowner.

I'm not sure how the Crown interprets "self defense" in the UK, but you state you are allowed to use "reasonable force ... including killing someone." As Canada basis most of her law on British Law and The Crown, I'm surprised to hear this.

There was a case recently here in Manitoba where an RCMP officer was charged with manslaughter. The officer had arrested an individual for public drunkenness. Back at the Detachment, the drunken individual suddenly got into a scuffle with the officer.

During the scuffle, the suspect got hold of the officers sidearm. The RCMP officer, fearing for his life at that point, managed to regain control of his sidearm and blow away the suspect. Justifiable, right?

WRONG.

Apparently, the officer should have pepper sprayed the drunk, or used physical restraint, rather than kill the suspect. I say, Do What You Have To Do.

In 1986, an Aunt of mine here in Winnipeg was mugged while walking back to her apartment. A Good Samaritan came to her aid, and in the process the street punk had his arm broken.

The street punk was charged for mugging my Aunt, but since he was a Minor there was no prison sentence. The Good Samaritan was also charged, with Assault of all things. He barely avoided a prison sentence but does have a permanent criminal record.

Are there more dangerous places, overall, to live? Sure. Statistically, you are *much* more likely to be murdered or have a violent crime happen to you in Regina, Saskatchewan than Winnipeg, Manitoba. And Washington, DC, is a remarkably dangerous place.

But getting into an argument over statistics is pointless. If you want to play a numbers game, then you are *far* more likely to die in a car crash, whether in the United States or Canada. Note I didn't say car "accident" but car *crash* as they are usually not blameless things.

Even a police officer in the United States is far more likely to die in the line of duty due to a car crash or being unintentionally struck by another car than being shot by a felon.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, since 1978 about 79 police officers were murdered each year, though the number is declining. Usually, +90 a year are in fatal car crashes.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/ph98.txt

There is also a fascinating PowerPoint presentation on the subject:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/denver20...02/Jefferis.ppt

In the United States you do *not* have the automatic right to use Terminal Force to defend property or life. Every state is different with respect to gun law, and some states have gun laws just as strict as the UK and Canada. Get caught with a sidearm in DC and you'll know what I mean.

However, I used to live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and compared to Winnipeg, it is *much* safer overall to live in. I would much rather live in SLC than Winnipeg, just because of the much lower crime rate.

Despite being a larger city, the rate of car theft is a fraction, and the total number of homicides is 1/2. All this despite "easy" access to firearms. One thing the State of Utah isn't required to report is "justifiable" homicide or the legal defense of person or property.

In rural areas of Utah, one should assume that every homeowner has a firearm. Probably several rifles and a sidearm too. Yet homicide and assault is remarkably rare in rural Utah. So rare it makes headlines when it does happen.

I think it's *very* important to ask why that is so. One would think that a large number of firearms around would automatically increase the homicide rate *and* the overall crime rate. Yet this isn't always the case, much like the "Swiss Paradox."

CBS and Dan Rather are not exactly known for jounalistic integrity. I think it's unfortunate this incident has turned into a p****** contest. Tourists have experienced crime visiting the United States, Canada, the UK, and virtually every other country on earth.

 

Well Nate it looks like your interesting thread has been irretrievably hijacked. Nice try!

 

Re: Iranians Loves Americans

It has been hijacked.

But the faux patriots and neo-cons seem to have a knack for framing the discussion. They cite all kinds of statistics and websites (mostly theirs) that back up the fact that:

a) You are not as patriotic as they are.
B) Every other country of the face of the earth is vastly inferior in every way shape and form than the US.
c) You are an idiot.
d) They are right and you are wrong.
e) You are even more of an idiot.

It is a sad statement that the constitution that so many brave men and women fought to protect is being so easily usurped. It is equally sad that the debate has been left to intellectually challenged hate-mongers.

Reagan must be whirling in the grave.

 

Re: Iranians Loves Americans

The www.nationmaster.com URL is very interesting. I didn't even know it existed but have had some fun with it.

Clicking on the most popular topics, eg murder, at:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap

gave the following statistic. The United States has 0.04 per 1,000 murders, while countries like the UK and Canada have 0.01 per 1,000. Swiss are ranked below 0.01.

As far as that cute caption "Most Trigger Happy" at :

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mu...mur_wit_fir_cap

The United States is reported to have 0.02 per 1,000. Canada and the UK are reported to have 0.00 per 1,000.

Oddly enough, Mexico with her strict firearms laws is reported to have 0.03 per 1,000. Switzerland, fiercely independent with an armed populace, has 0.00 per 1,000.

At what point is the deviation statistically significant? That is, is a range of 0.00 to 0.09 an "expected" range due to outliers and statistical noise? Would we have to consider a range of +/- 0.10 a "significant" difference? I don't know, that's why I'm asking the question. And I've had all 4 years of college stats and Calculus too.

It makes me wonder if autocorrelation is occurring here, or if another interdependent or independent factor is involved. Otherwise you'd expect firearms ownership alone to account for uniformly high per capita murders. Once again, the "Swiss Paradox" enters.

Much like when you compare numbers, rural murder rates are usually a fraction of urban murder rates, per capita. Again, there are exceptions.

I suspect cultural, ethnic, even climatic factors are involved. Like how odd it is that a disease like MS only appears to target people who are born and/or live in Northern latitudes for most of their lives.

Factors like culture, ethnicity, climate, etc, are very difficult to quantify and build into a model with more than suspect reliability. For example: a flock of pigeons was flying overhead during a shootout. Are the pigeons in some way correlated to the event? Or are the pigeons no more than incidental, not even having any relevance??

This is something that Dr. Lonnie Athens commented on with his thesis "The Creation Of Dangerous Violent Criminals." His thesis was sponsored by DOJ. Are firearms a contributing factor or an incidental factor?

For example, I know very well I am *far* more likely to croak in a car crash than to get blown away in a drive-by shooting. In the vast majority of car crashes, alcohol or another intoxicant are involved.

Since I don't use alcohol or any other intoxicant, could you therefore assume in the event I'm involved in a car crash that I'm automatically blameless? What if I was falling asleep, not paying attention, didn't notice the light turn red, or the pedestrian step into the crosswalk? Tricky.

Pop quiz: what do we "blame" for car crashes? The car? The driver? Relatively easy access to intoxicants?? Is there correlation among all three? Maybe more factors are involved eg design of road, road conditions, age of car, etc? Is the car the suspect device or an incidental device? That is, would the event have happened even if the actors involved had been riding bicycles or riding horses?

You see how difficult it is to now sort out something as "simple" as a car crash. We can however examine data from a much more tightly controlled data group: aviation crashes.

Aviation crashes and incidents are far more tightly investigated, and those involved in aviation have much more uniform training. With aviation crashes and incidents, we know the vast majority of them are caused by human error, which has come to the spotlight thanks to Human Factors Analysis.

So in the two camps of "Anti gun" and "pro gun" there appear to be simplistic assumptions and unsupported conclusions. Yet has there ever been a Human Factors Analysis performed to determine what the correlation (Positive, negative, incidental) is?

Getting back to the raw numbers, there are also differences in how crime is reported. Let's face it, a lot of "minor" crime is no longer investigated or even reported. If you "raise the bar" for property crime from say $100 up to $1,000, your crime "rate" will magically decline. Raise it further to $5,000 and you will have one of the "safest" communities on earth.

The reason I'm suspicious of studentized data - or sorted data of any sort - is that the persons sorting the data usually don't explain how they treat outliers. And they usually refuse to show results of ANOVA, F and T values, Chi Square, Weibull, heteroscadesity and homoscadesity if present, autocorrelation, etc etc.

Even something as "simple" as a property assessment is suspect when you consider the model used. I've always been able to appeal and *win* my property assessment as I show up at the hearing armed to the teeth - hehe - with numerous statistical models and theory.

I've even had one property assessor forced to admit in the hearing that - at the end of the day - they just *guess* what the property value is. I had to make a serious attempt to refrain from chuckling.

Cha-Ching! JayMan is now a happy camper. Next!

So the moral of the story is that you can subtly manipulate raw statistical number and even "noise" to provide support for whatever viewpoint you take.

 

Doesn’t surprise me that ssmithri would show the one chart that can be construed to show that the USA is overwhelmingly the most crime plagued place in the world.

This one is a little more telling of crime in the USA:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pe..._saf_wal_in_dar


But by far my favorite is:
http://www.nationmaster.com/plot/gov_cor/a...ra_con_cap/flag

Now where did they put that Price of Tea in China plot????

 

Patrick:

Thank you for taking the time to do further research on this. Much appreciated.

Again, depending on how the data is studentized (That is, sorted with "extraneous" data purposely removed), you can get the results to prove anything you want. That is why I get suspicious when somebody with an obvious political agenda makes a blanket statement about "X" being the root cause of all things Bad.

It's truly a giant PITA to find all the raw data and run statistical diagnostics such as: ANOVA, F & T values, Chi Square, Weibull, etc etc. You can fiddle data to the point that you have so much autocorrelation that you could "prove" the sun rises in the West and sets in the East.

Here is a good primer on Multiple Regression Diagnostics when studentized data is involved. The commands assume Minitab, which is ok as far at that goes. I prefer SPSS but to each their own:

http://www.cwu.edu/~chueh/math410_17.htm

I also like the fairly simple explanation at:

http://espse.ed.psu.edu/espse/hale/507Mat/...ap9/Chapt9.html

The cartoon cop is nice: "To ignore outliers by failing to detect them is DISHONEST." I placed the emphasis.

 

Sufferin',

You took the bait and performed beautifully. Thank you for making the point.

Peace brother...

 

The point being . . .

. . . that bad statistics can be countered with equally bad statistics?

. . . that a politically bent flamebait post will be met with an equal and opposite reaction?

Everything has a point. I’m curious as to what you think the “point†was.

[Broken External Image]:http://picpal.com/pointie4.gif

 

Re: Iranians Loves Americans

Just found this thread...I guess you could read a lot of subtext into the situation, but the plain fact is that President Carter got a submarine named after him primarily because he IS a former nuclear submarine officer (and because we're not really building any large capital ships anymore that could be named for him). Also, submarines aren't perceived as non-threatening, particularly not by sailors on surface ships, who fear a silent nuclear attack submarine more than just about anything else.

BTW, I'm a retired naval officer who started out as an instructor in the nuclear propulsion program...

 

I believe you selected (B) and (e).

 

Just to dispel some of the ignorance here:

(now, do not jump to conclusions yet, ignorance is just as state of not knowing, it does NOT mean that a person is stupid nor does it demean anyone at all)

1. machineguns are legal to own and fire in the USA. You must pay a one time tax of 2 or 3 hundred dollars and have an FBI check run. The prices for them go up at an incredible pace, but they are legal to own and shoot. The History Channel reports that the citizens of America own more machine guns than the US Army has.

2. It is legal to own a cannon. A full sized cannon. BUT it cannot legally shoot exploding shells or be breech loading. You may build your own, following government guidelines or buy one cast by a number of founderies doing good business casting Parrot rifles, Mountain guns, siege mortars, etc. Be prepared to spend big, and that just for the tube. The carriage to haul it around with is going to cost serious dollars as well.

3. You may own a .50 caliber rifle. There are a number of long range target clubs that shoot them. Again, be prepared to shell out serious money. A decent single shot Browning .50 caliber rifle will weigh in at 36 pounds or so.

4. Silencers and suppressors are legal as well, you go through the same stuff as machineguns. These weapons are called Class III by the federals.

5. You can build your own gun, many do. There are guidelines to follow on this. The manufacture of firearms is not rocket science. A great many number of people can manufacture revolvers, for example. A few thousand spent on some machine tooling and some bar stock will produce all you want. I have heard of no serial number revolvers produced locally in my state for sale. Yes, it is illegal but it is easily done. The nation won its freedom from King George due in large part to the fact that the flour and grain mills made rifles for sale when they were not employed in the milling of grain. The United States has a long history of its citizens making large numbers of firearms.

6. The average lawfully sold firearm in America gets shot seven times in its owners life.

7. Other than law enforcement officers, no one has committed a crime with a machinegun or other Class III weapon. The cops are more criminal than the citizens when it comes to these weapons, historically.

8. No one is using the cannon to commit crimes with.

9. No BMG .50 caliber target rifle has been used in a crime, not that we know of for sure. Gangbangers have no use for 36 pound single shot rifles.

10. No amount of legislation will ever get Americans to cease making firearms. So they are here to stay. You can get rid of those illusions that the guns of Americans are going to be rounded up by anyone. They won't be. Seizure of guns would create a basement manufacturing boom of firearms, even if enough survived the attempts at confiscation to keep going at it. Every gun owner I know says that they will surrender their arms one bullet at a time. America has more guns than people.

 

Re: Iranians Loves Americans

You and I both know that when it really comes down to it, submarines rule the seas. That is why a typical Carrier Task Force has at least one attack submarine in its mix . . . to protect the carrier’s nice person.

I wrote: “A submarine is perceived as non-threatening because it is not seen.†The US Navy could have placed every one of its submarines in Iranian territorial waters on January 20, 1981 - the day of Reagan's inauguration - and the Iranians would not have perceived a threat, because they would never have detected even a single submarine.

On the other hand, on Inauguration Day, two carrier task forces steaming closer than ever to Iranian costal waters sent a very clear signal. Minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages flew out of Iran. The hostages were held for 444 days under Carter’s reign.

Until now, with the naming of a sub for President Carter, the Navy had never placed a president’s name on anything except an aircraft carrier.

USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CV 42) (retired October 1977)
USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67)
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69)
USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71)
USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72)
USS George Washington (CVN 73)
USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75)
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76)
George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) (keel laid 6 Sept 2003)

And with two more carriers are on the way . . .

CVN 78, is programmed to start construction in 2007
CVN 79 is programmed to begin construction in 2012

. . . you can’t say there are no other carriers to name for Carter.

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfi...ps/ship-cv.html

Modern submarines, with the exception of the SEAWOLF, were named after cities, states, and leaders who helped shape the modern US Navy submarine fleet like:
Admiral Hyman Rickover. The “father†of the nuclear submarine. (Im positive I didn’t need to tell you who he was ) and
Senator Henry M. Jackson. Armed Services Committee member who was a strong proponent of the TRIDENT submarine program.

I think it was a backhanded compliment to President Carter not to name an aircraft carrier in his honor. I think the Navy - considering how ineffectual Carter was as a Commander-in-Chief - did not want his name on an aircraft carrier, but was more than happy to compromise and place his name on a submarine.

Hummm. I wonder what the Navy would have done if John (no, I’m now a war hero) Kerrey were elected president???
Aircraft carrier? No.
Submarine? No.
River Patrol Boat! Yea, that’s the ticket.


.

 

I think it all depends on what state you live in. In Minnesota, machines guns are illegal, or at least they used to be last time I checked. Individual states and local jurisdictions appear to be free to determine what is legal or illegal wrt firearms.

In Idaho, Utah, and Nevada, like you said, you go through the BATF thing pay the federal tax and take it home.

With the exception of those illegally-converted AK-47 clones (SKS??) used to rob that bank in LA a few years ago, you really don't see the "big guns" used in crime.

Friends of mine in Utah are big into HK 91's and G3's. For the very simple reason they are so much easier to take apart and clean. Ever try to take apart a regular civilian Winchester with a million screws?

In Utah I had a nice Glock 22 that was traded by a Utah Highway Patrol officer, it was impossible to import that sidearm into Canada so I had to sell it.

Ironically, I sold it to another Utah Highway Patrol officer.

 

Hmm, SKS in my post does *not* mean "Smart Key System" but is the name of a Chinese company that makes cheap clones of rifles like the AK-47.

 

ssmithri',

You took the bait and performed beautifully. Thank you for making the point.

The point being . . .
Those who go around throwing hateful politically charged phrases like “faux patriots and neo-cons†without at least making an attempt to understand the other person’s point of view, while at the same time using the same deceitful tactic of using statistics to “prove†your point - which you had just finished admonishing “them†for using - is in itself exhibiting the “intellectually challenged hate-mongers†status you describe.

The first chart I refereed to shows the USA tied with Canada, but behind Sweden, for countries where victims of crime still feel safe to walk the streets at night. So no, my chart does not fulfill your item (B) requirements. I never said the USA is vastly superior in every way shape and form to every other country of the face of the earth. It is your chart that blatantly tries to use bad statistics to prove just the opposite.

My second chart shows the relationship between per capita consumption of course grains and government corruption, which by the way is quite nonsensical - that is unless you are a conspiracy theorist who believes it is a ploy by the USA and Canada to destabilize the economies of the world by withholding course grain from export, thereby spreading constipation . . . which then leads to corruption in governments. [I now totally expect some intellectually challenged hate-monger conspiracy theorist type to take that torch and run with it]

Peace brother...

 

Patrick:

I "got" that immediately, though I was too busy ROFL to immediately comment.

I'm not sure if "bad" statistics is quite right. Maybe "deceitful" statistics?

An important point in this discussion of statistics is that the average person has absolutely no clue how data is studentized and presented. Without an understanding of ANOVA, F & T tests, Weibull, etc etc you also can't depend on something like Intuition to determine if the data presented is "good" or "bad."

If you ever play around with things like Monte Carlo Simulation, you will understand more of the guts that proper statistics depends on. Though for outright humor value, those "random" Opinion Polls are hard to beat!

I also have not said, at any time, that the United States is Number One across the board. I have carefully chosen all available alternatives and, using my personal guidelines, rank the United States at the top of a narrow grouping. Living here in Canada is ok as far as that goes, but contrast Winnipeg to Salt Lake City and there is no fair comparison.

About the only thing Winnipeg can offer over Salt Lake County is air quality.

 

Jayman... exactly.

But I am afraid you are going to have to "dumb it down" a bit. It is still way over head.

Patrick, I have learned my lesson... I surrender. You have an inate ability to position your politcal and life views (and back it up with statistics) so that only a complete hate-mongering idiot would see things differently.

Thank you. By the way, have you taken the quiz?

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/q...neoconQuiz.html