Anti-Gunners Claim the CDC is Wrong

Why? Because it doesn't support their narrative. What happened to "Trust the Science™?" Anti-gunners hilariously claim the CDC is wrong, the Gun Violence Archive is right

Who are The Gun Violence Archive (GVA), and its executive director Mark Bryant?

You’ll remember GVA, Mr. Bryant and his faulty numbers. He claimed there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses a much narrower and more realistic definition.

Lies, Damn lies, and Liberal, anti-gunner statistics.

Click thru for the web of lies, the web of organizations all tied to The Trace, and Bloomberg, and more.

Do You Trust the Statistics Around COVID-19?

It is hard to believe numbers when it is clear everything else the government told us about the pandemic was a lie. Almost everything else. Lies, Damned Lies, and COVID-19 : The Other McCain

I have been ignoring (almost) everything about COVID at this point. I don't expect Fauci, or anyone else really, to be held accountable for the insanity. Apparently the recent kerfuffle is about a statement from David Frum. The Other McCain dug a little deeper into what his statistics were.

THE PEW RESEARCH CENTER? You’re making arguments about medical policy based on work by a polling company?

Public opinion is a funny thing. Even "expert opinion" can be an issue. If 2/3rds of the population of the Earth believe that the world is flat, does that make them right? Look up what "expert opinion" was during Galileo's day, and what they did to him for daring to challenge that opinion.

As for the details, click thru for those. I will leave you with only the following.

Some people are herd animals by nature, and these were the people most eager to comply with the crazy lockdown rules of “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” without ever questioning the logic of those rules.

Why Does the Smith Chart Scare Engineers?

Is it really the scariest chart in electrical engineering? Maybe not.

It's scary, but it's also damn useful.

I think there are 2 reasons that engineers find the Smith Chart intimidating. The first is simple. People learn Cartesean Coordinates in middle school. They get exposed to just enough of the Polar Coordinate system to hate it, and not enough to know when it is useful. So in the end, they don't like anything that doesn't look like a standard X-Y plane.

The second reason is that the chart itself is based on Imaginary numbers (the Square root of -1), and they don't trust the math enough to just use it. even though it has been shown to work.

This is the Veritasium video The Scariest Chart in Electrical Engineering

Well, and a fair number of the charts do say "Black Magic Design" on the chart itself. It does simplify certain calculations around antenna design; that can seem magical.

We've verified that this crazy map switch from the complex plane to the reflection coefficient plane leading to these insane appearing circles, they actually mean something. Like, in real life we've used it to increase the power. Crazy. It is crazy.

I first encountered the Smith Chart in college, and later when I was getting/upgrading my Ham radio license. The video is long, at 40 minutes, but I enjoyed it.

Demographics of Murder

I expect that people will say reality, and statistics are racist. A deep dive into murders, who murders whom - Crime Prevention Research Center

We have updated our data on who extremely concentrated murders are in the US. The worst 1% of counties (the worst 31 counties) have 20% of the population and 41% of the murders. The worst 2% of counties (63 counties) contain 30% of the population and 54% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 46% of the population and account for 71% of murders. But even within those counties, the murders are very heavily concentrated in small areas within those counties.

Click thru for graphs and details.

School Gun Free Zones - Look At the Data

This is part of a discussion between Dr. Drew and John Lott of the Crime Prevention Resource Center. The enter video is 20 minutes long, but I have it cued up to the 5 minutes, or so, on school shootings, and public mass shootings.

This is Crime Prevention Resource Center video On Ask Dr. Drew: To Discuss the Lie of Decreasing Crime

We have about 14,000 public schools in the United States that allow teachers and staff to carry out of about 100,000. Some of these schools have had it for decades. And you look at the legislative debates, people will say things. They're worried that uh a teacher may lose their temper and shoot a student or a student may get a hold of a gun and and go and harm others. Are those possible? Yeah, sure they're possible.

But we don't need to guess. You can go and look at all those cases. And looking at the data from 2000 through the end of last year, there's not one single case like that that's occurred. In fact, if you look at the data, what you find is that all the shootings at schools where anybody's been wounded or killed in an attack have all occurred in schools where teachers and staff are banned from being able to go and have guns.

The entire interview is worth the time, if you have 20 minutes.

International Suicide Rates versus Gun Ownership

The following article has been boiling in the back of my brain, for some time. During his recent trip to SHOT Show, Professor David Yamane reported on a suicide prevention seminar at the show. From his Light Over Heat substack: Suicide Prevention on the Gun Culture Agenda

Significantly, the NSSF organized the SHOT Show’s first-ever general session on suicide prevention - the SHOT Show Suicide Prevention Town Hall. According to NSSF Senior Director of Communications Bill Brassard, while the show has previously offered educational seminars on suicide prevention for retailers and ranges, this is the first general session open to all attendees.

Now I think that suicide prevention is a fine thing. It is why I have such a problem with way Medically Assisted suicide is going in Canada, and in some states, though Canada is by far the worst.

But there is an assumption that bothers me. That assumption is, or at least seems to be, "Access to guns, causes suicide."

In what follows I am going to compare suicide in the US to suicide in Japan. I am only picking on Japan for 1 reason. They have Draconian gun control laws.

In the late 1990s, or early 2000s, the suicide rate in Japan was 2 or 3 times higher than that of the United States. How can this be? Private ownership of firearms is virtually banned in Japan. Japan has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world. TheGunZone described the situation as "Unmatched Strictness." And yet they had what could only be described as a suicide epidemic.

Consider the study Comparative Study about Methods of Suicide between Japan and the United States (from 2005). That is from The National Center for Biotechnology Information and The National Library of Medicine.

Age-adjusted mortality rates from suicide in Japan were about 2 times higher for males and 3 times higher for females compared with the United States. The most common method among both genders in Japan was hanging, followed by jumping from a high place.

Use of firearms was the most common method in the US, which I suppose accounts for the seminar at SHOT Show. I still think it misses the point.

Trading Economics allows for creation of comparison charts on various dimensions. The following chart shows the suicide rates of Japan versus the United States for the years 2016 through 2021.

The Japanese rate is consistently higher during that period. (During a longer period, but without a subscription I am limited to 5 year graphs.)

Since the early 2000s, Japan's rate has come down considerably, and the US rate has trended higher. The information I can find says that the rates crossed, and the US now has a higher suicide rate than Japan. The US stands at 16.10 per 100,000 and Japan at 15.3 per 100,000 people, as of 2024.

That isn't to say that different sources, or different methods don't arrive at different rates. World Population Review shows Japan have a rate of 18.59 per 100k versus 17.43 per 100k in 2021. World Population Review shows that the Japan rate increased to 21.46 per 100k in 2023. (Click on the graph to enlarge.)

So why am I taking issue with the suicide prevention seminar?

Access to guns in the US does not cause people to kill themselves any more than access to rope in Japan does. People who are, for whatever reason, bent on self-destruction, select a method that they believe will be effective based on what they have access to. People with access to guns select guns. People without access to guns select rope. Or high places from which to jump. Is suicide somehow worse if a gun is used?

Again, I don't have an issue with suicide prevention. Some people in my life have chosen to end their lives, and I have been witness to what it leaves in its wake.

Given that, we could probably learn something from Japan on the topic of suicide prevention. Those rates didn't come down on their own. But that is story for another day.

More Guns, Less Crime

The Left wants you to be afraid of guns and crime. Probably others as well. Fear makes it easy to control people. Disarming people makes it easy to control them. Deflating Another Gun Control Bogeyman

First of all, the term "Gun Violence" is in itself a problem.

Violence is violence regardless of the weapon or method used.

Gun violence is a handy bogeyman for gun control and other groups advancing similar agenda. By lumping homicides, suicides, and accidents together, gun grabbers of every stripe can use this family-sized phantasm to alarm the public.

There is a problem of course. "Gun crime" of all kinds has been going down. Even with the recent surge, as Democrats wage war on Police and Law & Order.

FBI statistics for the 65 years from 1960 to 2024 prove this. The decade from 2010 to 2019 had a lower average murder rate than any comparable period going back to the last year of Eisenhower’s term. In fact, the 2010-2019 average was 12% lower than in the previous decade.

COVID-19 and widespread civil unrest in 2020 produced a sharp spike in the rate that peaked in 2021. However, the rate fell in 2022 and has continued to fall.

Click thru for the details. (Hat tip to MaddMedic at Freedom Is Just Another Word…)

Lies, Damn Lies, and COVID Infection Statistics

Are we shocked that governments inflated the statistics around COVID, or is it that the medical-industrial complex inflated the statistics? BREAKING: 86% of PCR-Positive “COVID Cases” Were Not Real Infections

New study finds that during the early pandemic period, only 14% of PCR “COVID cases” were real — proving that lockdowns and vaccine mandates were built on a fraudulent testing illusion.

86% false positives from the PCR test. (That nose swab from hell.)

This is the science that we are supposed to trust.

A bombshell peer-reviewed study out of Germany just dismantled the scientific foundation used to justify lockdowns, social distancing, and vaccine mandates.

Researchers analyzed data from the Akkreditierte Labore in der Medizin (ALM) — a nationwide consortium of authority-accredited medical laboratories that performed roughly 90% of all SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests in Germany between 2020 and 2023.

A couple of the conclusions:

• Mass PCR testing grossly inflated case numbers worldwide.
• Lockdowns and mandates were built on a false metric.
• Authorities suppressed representative serology data.

That government that was suppressing data was the German government, but I'm pretty sure that the US, Canadian, Australian, and British governments were also suppressing the data.

It was all a lie. All of it. There is more. Click thru.

There are Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

And then there are anti-gun and government statistics. Ben and Bawb's Blog: Bear Spray Versus Firearms

There are other old adages which are also apropos, such as, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” And my personal favorite: “Torture numbers and they will confess to anything.”

Although the pepper spray advocates always say studies or even numerous studies prove the effectiveness of bear spray, when you seek out this plethora of studies (plural) they pretty much boil down into a single study (singular) that has appeared in a couple of different forms. The 2012 study that started it all was researched primarily by BYU professor Tom Smith and author Stephen Herrero and published in the Journal of Wildlife Management under the title of “Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska.”

And there are problems with that study. Click thru of the details. I will note, as Bawb does...

Consider that the researchers found fewer than 200 incidents of bear attacks involving guns in Alaska over a 126-year period to counter-balance the pepper spray accounts. Nor were these incidents random samples; they were deliberately, carefully, and selectively cherry-picked.

It isn't hard to find more firearm v bear incidents. Those details are presented.

If I lived in an area where bears were an issue, I would carry something really big, like a BFR (that's an actual firearm, that is not called Big F-ing Revolver, but Big Frame Revolver) in something like .45-70 government. (Bears are tough, or so I've been told.)

Anyway, click thru. (A photo of a random bear is above.)

Chicago Pensions Are in Deep Yogurt

Math is hard, but it isn't this hard. From Meep: Chicago Pension Artificial Sweeteners

How do you spell, "Negative Amortization."

You can't continue to promise gold-plated pensions, and then fail to fund them. Eventually the bills must be paid.

Meep at STUMP is an actuary. Her job is literally to evaluate this kind of thing. Not that the politicians will listen to the actuaries.

Unsurprisingly, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Chicago police and fire Tier 2 pension sweetener, bringing it in line with the downstate plans. However, this is not much of a gift to Chicago… or those pensioners… if those promises are never fulfilled.

They are adding extra costs onto the city's pensions, but no one is doing anything to actually fund those pensions.

UPDATE: Not sure what happened to the end of this post... but there was more aside from MEEP. I just can't remember the source right now. (Note to self: Don't edit posts when you're in the throws of insomnia... things won't end well.)

10 Fun Facts in Mathematics

Sabine Hossenfelder is one of my favorite YouTube creators. She makes me think, she occasionally reminds me of why I am glad I didn't go into academia, and she usually teaches me something.

This is Sabine Hossenfelder's video These 10 Maths Facts Will Blow Your Mind (I Promise)

Mathematics is amazing. Because it reveals truths, unambiguous, provable truths, that defy expectations. Today I want to tell you my favourite mind blowing maths facts. Starting with number 10, the P-adic numbers.

The video is 10 minutes. You might learn something.
(It will only hurt for a minute, I promise.)

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

In this case, anti-gun statistics. I tried to solve the great gun mystery at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. It didn't go well | Opinion

This story is was published a few months back, but I think it is still worth a look. There are not too many stories like this that make me smile; they usually just make me mad.

The anti-gun crowd always talks about "Children and Teens," an age group of 1 to 17. They used to throw in 18 and sometimes 19 year olds, but they have gotten beaten up enough to stop that. 18 year olds are legal adults, not children.

You wouldn't think it would be hard to get the world's leading gun violence researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to tell you what the leading cause of death is for children. At least, you know, if it actually was firearms.

That Johns Hopkins organization is the Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions. The name is important to note, because it indicates that they may have a particular bias. (They do.)

Maybe I should have issued a spoiler alert, because as you might guess firearms are NOT the leading cause of death in children 1 to 9 years of age. But this isn't really about the data, though it is included, this is about how much people with an agenda will do to cover up the data if it disagrees with their premise, and that they will not answer simple questions that don't slant in a particular way. In this case the author of the piece, David Mastio, asked for a simple clarification of some of the data.

The first thing officials did was dispute that they had said anything about children age 1 to 9. "I am not quite sure where the age range you‘re mentioning is coming from," wrote their PR guy, a former TV journalist. So I told him it was hidden on Page 1 of the 22-page report.

They scheduled conference calls that got canceled. They ignored emails. They stonewalled.

When he showed up to get an interview...

Two very polite and very plump ladies from campus security complete with official looking badges came to escort me from the building.

I headed back to the school's garage, walking by red banners that said in big white letters, "BLOOMBERG SCHOOL PROUD TO BE IN PUBLIC HEALTH." This was surely a proud day for the Bloomberg School, I thought.

In the end he did get the data, but not from the Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions. The Center on Injury Research and Policy got him the data in a matter of hours.

There is more, and you should click thru for the answer to, What is the leading cause of death in children 1 to 9 years of age?" It isn't firearms. You should also click thru because what he had to go through is presented in an entertaining fashion, and it is a short read.

the Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions clearly has an agenda to serve. (Hence the Warren Buffett quote at the start of this post.) If they told you that the primary cause of death for teens, 10 to 17 years old were firearms, you might associate that age group with bad behavior in general and gang activity in particular. And that wouldn't help them convince you to give up your liberty. But if they throw 1 to 9 year-olds into the mix, then they can scream, "Won't anyone think of the children?" That will usually move people who are not paying attention.

Do You Really Think Journalists Understand the Physics of Electric Vehicles?

A typical journalist hasn't taken a science course since high school, probably didn't do too well, and thought it was stupid. "When am I going to use this?" The only difference for math, is that they may have been required to take a math course in college, though even that is doubtful today.

Well, since they only pretend to be experts in stuff they report on, they haven't thought about science, even when writing about science and engineering.

Leith van Onselen at Macrobusiness has an article that points that out. EV battery hype fails basic physics

The latest greatest announcement that someone has developed a battery that can be charged in 5 minutes, or whatever. But what they haven't announced is the electricity grid that can provide that power.

Australia cannot achieve these types of charging times in practice; they are purely theoretical.

Why? Because of the inextricable link between the power of a charger and the duration required to charge an EV battery.

Existing Australian infrastructure also cannot achieve the necessary electricity throughput to charge an EV battery in five minutes. To do so at scale would require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in new poles, high-capacity wires, transformers, substations, etc, which is cost-prohibitive.

That doesn't even cover the issue of load balancing on the grid, which is something grid operators are already struggling with given the problems introduced by solar and wind.

The article does mention the problems of cold-weather charging that EV batteries face, and notes that the latest breakthrough does achieve charging at -10 degrees Celsius. Which is cold by some standards, but not Midwestern standards. -10 degrees Celsius is +14 degrees Fahrenheit. As far as I can tell they still haven't addressed temperatures in the -20 degrees Fahrenheit range.

This the MGUY Australia video Fast Charging: The SIMPLE fact EV zealots ALWAYS forget.

Math Is Racist Again (According to The Left)

Or maybe that is "still racist." This is from someone planing how we should teach math in schools. Or not, as the case may be. Math Is Racist? Curriculum Writer Says It Upholds White Supremacy - Liberty Affair

Michael Lolkus— who holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University — made a number of concerning claims in his recent paper, which he published in the last issue of the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, the same journal I was assigned to read when I studied at Barnard College.

In his essay, Lolkus begins by arguing that “educational spaces, particularly those centered on mathematics, uphold and promote whiteness,” and that efforts to fix this are still marred by “white liberal ideas” of what mathematics should be.

Mathematics doesn't care what "you think it should be." You are free to say that 2+2=5, or that there are no right answers, if you're an artist or a dreamer or a politician, but if you don't get the math right when you are building bridges, they will fall down.

Here's an example from 2018, from the National Transportation Safety Board on the collapse of the Florida International University pedestrian bridge in Miama. Pedestrian Bridge Collapse Over SW 8th Street, Miami, Florida

We determined that the probable cause of the Florida International University (FIU) pedestrian bridge collapse was the load and capacity calculation errors made by FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc., (FIGG) in its design of the main span truss member 11/12 nodal region and connection to the bridge deck. Contributing to the collapse was the inadequate peer review performed by Louis Berger, which failed to detect the calculation errors in the bridge design. [my emphasis. Z-Deb]

Six people were killed and ten were injured when the FIU bridge collapsed, and it collapsed because the math was wrong. And yes, the engineering firm in question was hired because they were "diverse." FIGG was removed from several projects, and at least one bridge under construction had to be redesigned for similar issues.

The law of gravity, and the rules of engineering for bridges (like Müller-Breslau) don't care about who you're attracted to, your pronouns, or anything else about YOU. Get the math right, or you will kill people. There are plenty of examples.

• Dashcam Video of the FIU Bridge Collapse in Miami.
• The I-35W Bridge Collapse in 2007 in Minneapolis.

  13 people died, 145 were injured. This was a combination of design issues, construction issues, and a maintenance crew parking a load 4 times the designed load on the bridge before resurfacing the roadway. (Staging the equipment and the material on LAND would have been "inconvenient.") There was probably also an opportunity to fix one of the problems from the construction issue, but that would mean spending money on a bridge that "looked fine" and had stood for 50 years.

• The Collapse of the Silver Bridge – December 15th, 1967. A bridge between Ohio and West Virginia.

  This was caused, in part, because the conditions changed, and no one revisited the load calculations under those new conditions. 46 people died. There were also some issues with the design, and probably with maintenance.

That doesn't include the bridges that have killed people because politicians don't want to spend money on maintenance, even in the face of impending collapse. There are even more examples that fall into that category.

And I Missed Pi Day

Well, almost... The Political Hat brings us Happy Pi Day

Happy π Day everyone!

3.14. It is also Einstein's birthday.

Demonstrating that innovative thinking can save you decades of time, energy, and sanity, here is an explanation of how Isaac Newton revolutionized the number π!

Click thru for a video from Veritasium on how Pi is calculated. How it was calculated in antiquity, and up to the time of Sir Isaac Newton, and how Newton changed the way we calculate pi, literally saving decades of effort to expand accuracy. And develop a bit of mathematical insight along the way.

When They Cancel More Insurance Policies They Will Be Evil

State Farm can't afford to do business in California. Big homeowner rate hike from State Farm shot down by California regulator

State Farm has said that it needs a 22% rate increase due to the wildfire risk, which is elevated because the State of California can't be bothered to do things like put electric lines underground, and clear brush from their forests. They are too busy spending billions of dollars on high speed rail to nowhere.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara today rejected State Farm’s request for “emergency” rate increases, setting up what could be a highly consequential showdown with the state’s biggest insurer — and going against the recommendation of his staff experts.

Lara, who has been urging insurance companies to write policies in the state again despite increasing wildfire risks, says in a letter to State Farm executives that he needs more information before he can approve an increase.

So the lack of policies being written is a problem, and the problem is wildfire. So why doesn't the insurance commissioner want to fix the problem? "Urging" insurers to write policies guaranteed to produce a loss is stupid. You can urge all you want. They won't write policies until they believe that they can make money. That is how capitalism works.

State Farm said in a written statement today that it “must seriously consider its options within the California insurance market going forward.”

Translation: We are figuring out how to cut our losses and run for the exit.

Seattle Is Struggling with Math

If the minimum wage is $20 per hour, and the company you work for goes out of business, how much do you make? From the Vodka Pundit: Seattle Set Minimum Wage Over $20 and You'll Totally Believe What Happened Next

Bebop Waffle Shop threw a big party on Dec. 31 and permanently locked its doors on Jan. 1. My shocked face was last seen sipping a brandy by the fire and reading a dog-eared copy of Milton Friedman's "Why Government Is the Problem." That's my amusingly wordy way of saying that I totally believe it happened.

Why did Bebop Waffle Shop close? Because they can't afford to pay people $20.76 per hour, and give them an extra week of paid vacation sick leave every year.

My second favorite part of the Seattle Times writeup was when [Seattle Times reporter Jessica] Fu wrote, "Others expect the effect on businesses to be more modest, pointing out that the exact amount of the wage increase has been scheduled since the fall." Jennie Romich, a professor of social welfare policy at the University of Washington, explained, "People knew this was coming."

People knew the giant comet was coming in "Deep Impact," too, and made all kinds of preparations — but it still wiped out the entire Eastern Seaboard. Just because an event is foreseeable doesn't mean its ill effects can be completely mitigated.

The owner of Bebop Waffle Shop knew it was coming, and took appropriate action.

A Mathematical Pattern in Nature We Just Found

This is an interesting finding. Filling a plane (or 3 dimensions) with shapes that have soft corners. (See the video for how that "soft corner" property is defined.)

Mathematicians have for the first time described a new pattern in nature. I don’t want to say they “discovered” it because it’s been there all along. Probably sipping tea and quietly judging us for taking so long to notice.

This is an interesting finding, because since these shapes are used a lot in nature, it likely means that there are structural reasons for their use. This might have uses for man-made structures.

This is Sabine Hossenfelder's video A New Pattern in Nature

Math Is Racist

Because of course it is. DOJ Tells Four Police, Fire Departments That It’s Racist To Expect Employees To Know Basic Math

Firefighter test asked job candidates how many 60-foot hoses they'd need to bring if a fire was 350 feet away.

Are they actually saying that minorities are not smart enough to learn basic math? It sure sounds that way to me.

The Biden-Harris Department of Justice has undertaken a slew of lawsuits against local police and fire departments alleging that it is racist to require hires entrusted with public safety to know basic math.

I can't even stomach this.

Hat tip to Maggie's Farm:

Umm, basic math is handy

Lies, Damn Lies, and Government Statistics

I'm shocked - Shocked, I tell you - to find that the government can't count. Biden's FBI quietly revises 2022 crime stats for the worse

Actually I'm shocked that they updated these statistics prior to the election.

Yet, with crime a central issue in this year’s election, he and the mainstream media have carefully ignored evidence that the FBI may be fudging its numbers — much like the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics massively overestimated the number of jobs created during the Biden-Harris administration.

You're not saying that the government is LYING to us, are you? Oh, sorry, of course they are lying.

But at the same time — and much more quietly — the FBI revised its earlier data for 2022, turning a reported decrease into a worrisome increase in violent crime.

Click thru for details.

Hat tip to Second City Cop: The feebs Lied Again?

"Crime is down" democrats claimed....in campaign ads, at the debates, in interviews. We joined in the rebuttals pointing out that crime stats gathered by the feebs did not include New York City, Los Angeles and dozens of other jurisdictions.

More signs that the Deep State is not a conspiracy.