Recently in the Rhetoric Category

A man and a wife saw what happened and the man ran with the baby's mother to help her pick the child up from the ground, police said. CBS Chicago

I presume this was the level of detail in the police report, so the journalist is just echoing what's in the report.  But "husband and wife" or "man and woman" would be more parallel. Given the context of this particular story, "two people" would also be fine.

I just excerpted and linked to a story from the Huffington Post Blog, and after I checked my blog I found a strange link floating above all the rest of my text, making both my own text that was under the link and the link itself illegible.

I had already included a link to the HuffPo. I had to spend extra time locating and removing this extra crap that appeared in my clipboard buffer.

<div style="position: fixed;"><div id="new_selection_block0.017883485913577468" style="border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br /><br />Read more at: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lenore-skenazy/as-goes-halloween-so-goes_b_340163.html" target="_blank_">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lenore-skenazy/as-goes-halloween-so-goes_b_340163.html</a></div>

I feel bullied, or at the very least treated with the assumption that anyone copy-pasting from HuffPo intends to steal the content.

The next time I think of driving traffic to The Huffington Post, I'll remember how their CSS trick messed up my layout, and I'll probably pass.

These numbers are a bit sad.

So let's see. Assuming their number is right -- 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that "calculator abuse."

He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 -- but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010. --Jake Tapper, ABC

In California, the governor's office reacts to hearing of a vulgar message hidden vertically in the first row of letters in this gubernatorial veto. As The Swamp puts it:

"My goodness. What a coincidence," a shocked, shocked Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear is quoted by the Associated Press as saying. "I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen."

Great stuff from Mark Marino... not only is the content fascinating, but the blog-sized presentation, for discusison, of a fundamental theoretical concept is a great example of what the blogging medium can do for (and to) scholarship.

Item for today: =

In Donald Knuth and Luis Trabb Pardo's article on the history of computers, the note the moment at which = moves from equivalency to assignment. Here is a moment where mathematical notation and code separate on the basis of assignment, where it moves from a real that represents abstractions to a realm that controls memory locations.

For all intents and purposes
Algebra: x = 0; and computer code: x=0;
seem to mean the same thing.

However, on the most fundamental levels, they are not. The one establishes equivalence of signs. The other tells the computer to store the value 0 in the location represented by x.

In CCS, we have not just a mathematical system, for surely much of algorithms is mathematical. However, when critics talk about the materiality of these performative declarations in programming languages, they are talking about this latter notion of x=2.

Again, I don't want to rule out the possibility of critically analyzing mathematics. I just want to talk about this moment of the separation, where the computational instructions gain additional semantic meaning because there signs are not just representations, but commands with material ramifications. --Mark Marino, Critical Code Studies

I'm gearing up to introduce my journalism students to a news project that requires a basic knowledge of math. I don't want to make it too frustrating to them, but I do want to emphasize how easy it is to be misled by the math.

Margin of Error deserves better than the throw-away line it gets in the bottom of stories about polling data. Writers who don't understand margin of error, and its importance in interpreting scientific research, can easily embarrass themselves and their news organizations. --Robert Niles

via

I assigned book one of Maus: A Survivor's Tale to a "Writing About Literature" class, the designated writing-intensive course for our English majors.

The students discussed the abrupt ending, the use of ethnic stereotypes, and of course the comic book medium itself. One student's "Hearing through Yiddish... Seeing in Ink..." is particularly thoughtful.

About a third of the class went on to read book two, even though it wasn't on the syllabus; one student read the book aloud to her nine-year-old sister.

This weekend, Seton Hill is home to a conference sponsored by the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education.  I'm canceling all my classes during one day of the conference.

Although I explained how I track and archive my students' Twitter activity, I didn't describe what they actually do on Twitter.

That's because I wasn't sure myself what they do.

I mean, of course I've reading their tweets and sending my own, but I hadn't considered in a systematic way how my students use Twitter. That lack of reflection on my part echoes my initial guidelines to the students: my instructions were only that students should tweet several times a week at a minimum. I was deliberately vague about what they should tweet about. I didn't want overly specific guidelines to constrain what might be possible with Twitter. I wanted my students' Twitter use to evolve organically.

Now, six weeks into the semester, clear patterns are discernible and I can begin to analyze the value of Twitter as a pedagogical tool.

My most surprising find? Twitter is a snark valve. --Mark Sample

I'm not quite sure why anyone would be surprised to find snark on Twitter, but I think Sample's greater point is that snark requires some level of engagement. A student in my journalism class tweaked me for publishing an editorial a few years ago that didn't follow all the guidelines I provided to the class. The result was an opportunity for me to model an appropriate response to criticism, and I ended up revealing a bit more to the class about my reasons for writing that editorial.

BTW, I would not say the student was being snarky; his oppositional stance does, however, demonstrate the kind of energy that an opposing view brings to the discussion, which is part of the reason Sample recognizes and celebrates snark... not to encourage meanness and the knee-jerk rejection of nuance, but rather in the line Matt Barton's celebration of plagiarism as a means of forcing those of us who teach writing to confront our own limitations as authors and our need for power structures to wall of what counts as unacceptable stealing of ideas, so that we can continue the very different kind of stealing of ideas that we can masque with citations and present as acceptable academic discourse).

I just drafted a new handout on writing editorials. I couldn't find anything online pitched at the proper level, so I had to write it myself. (I'll probably be able to use a version of this in my freshman comp class too.)

Presume that your opponent has good reasons for disagreeing with you. Talk to people on the other side, and include some of their eloquent, well-argued points. Carefully and respectfully explain why your position is nevertheless more accurate (or ethical, or practical, or inspirational, or whatever).

• Avoid trying to make your opinion seem stronger by distorting the other side, either through exaggeration ("Animal rights groups would rather millions of people from cancer than have one animal die during a scientific experiment") or by using unflattering labels ("nicotine addicts who oppose my right to breathe fresh air..." "reactionary tea-baggers whose pathetic world-view is threatened by Obama's heroic economic vision..." ).
• Making "the other side" look evil or stupid may fool people who don't know what you are talking about, but people who do know something about the subject can (and will) write a letter to the editor correcting your misrepresentations.

Yesterday in my journalism class, I asked everyone in the room to take out a coin and flip it twice, and raise their hand if it came up the same.  Then I asked the ones whose hands were up to flip again, and keep their hand up if the coin came up the same yet again.  As it happened, the ones with their hands still up were women, and they both had a big shoulder bag on the table right in front of them.  So I made up a headline about a connection found between women carrying handbags and magical coin-flipping abilities. 

Beware of activists bearing statistics, I told them.  The activist sincerely believes that the statistics prove the issue, and has only the best intentions in mind when he or she uses numbers to answer your questions.  If an activist walks into a room and finds fifteen scientific studies on a desk, and 12 of them are inconclusive, and two of them contain evidence that contradicts whatever's on the hand-painted protest sign he or she is carrying, and one study supports the cause, which study is the activist going to try to get into the journalist's hands?

The same goes for governments bearing statistics, corporations bearing statistics, and, for that matter, statisticians bearing statistics.

The public prefers its science news cut-and-dried. Over the past few years, I've tracked the global warming debate as it appears in the media. According to this BBC article, the hottest year on record was 1998, and temperatures have actually been dropping for 11 years.  The Pacific Ocean seems to be headed into a cool cycle, which will likely affect global temperatures.  Is this a brief natural cooling cycle, only temporarily offsetting the effects of carbon emissions, or was the rise in global temperatures that set off the "global warming" panic just the upswing of a natural temperature fluctuation? 

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely. --BBC

I've blogged on this before.

Ms Watts, from Islington, north London, said: "I asked why I couldn't borrow a pair of scissors and she said, 'they are sharp, you might stab me'.

"I then asked to borrow a guillotine to cut up my leaflets but she refused again - because she said I could hit her over the head with it!"

She added: "It's absurd - there are plenty of heavy books I could have hit her with if I wanted to.

"I hardly look very threatening - it's really sad she could not make a commonsense judgement." --BBC

Thanks for telling me about this bizarre, sad story, Robert.

In all media that boasts your byline remain impartial, and don't do anything stupid. But is it in the best interests of the paper? Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander points out the the Post (along with just about every other mainstream publication) has at times come under fire for being partisan. These guidelines aim to cut off those accusations before they can be made (and already senior post editor Raju Narisetti has closed his account). But in this age of self-branded journalists, where power and readership loyalty is often the result of an audience's personal connection with the writer is it really a good idea to remove all evidence of personality from the reporter's product? --Glynnis MacNicol

I'm looking for a current book that presents gaming theory at a level appropriate for a 200-level undergraduate course.  I have only scanned through the section of Tanja Sihvonen's work, Players Unleashed! Modding <i>The Sims</i> and the Culture of Gaming (PDF), that deals with Colossal Cave Adventure. I'm not too happy with what I found there, since it seems I disagree with a Wikipedia article. (See footnote 251.)

Yes, it is true that several of my sources claim a 1975-76 date, but the phrasing suggests that some of my sources might agree with the 1972 date.  In fact, except for people who were simply repeating what they had read about the creation of Colossal Cave Adventure, not a single one of the sources I interviewed specified a date before 1975, and the earliest digital evidence is dated 1977.  To put it another way, every single one of the sources who played Crowther's original game specified a date of 1975 or later.

Those "written sources, including the Wikipedia entry" that mention the 1972 date are wrong, as I explain in the article Sihvonen cites. (Why do I suddenly feel empathy for every B-movie mad scientist who shouts "Fools! I shall crush them all!"?)

I can, and do, regularly edit the Wikipedia entry to remove the factual errors, but what can I do to combat the errors that made it into print before I published what I found out about the timeline?

Of course, Sihvonen is right -- it is a fact that many sources have printed the 1972 date.  I listed several of these sources in the section of my article where I thoroughly debunk them.  And who am I to argue with ink on paper?  All I have on my side is thoroughly cross-checked oral testimony and e-mail messages from people who have first-hand knowledge of the events in question. How can that stand up against "many written sources"?  What was I thinking!

One day, perhaps I can spend months and years gathering primary information, carefully assemble it all in a coherent, insanely detailed package, get it peer reviewed by scholars who know what they are talking about, and then somehow, if fortune blesses my efforts, find a magic way that the full text of my findings could be available, for free, somewhere in an online digital network, so that I could direct interested readers to paragraphs 79-83 of a document located at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/001/2/000009.html.

I am not too happy about the way wild conclusions drawn from this self-published research periodically pop up in the media. Kudos to Liberman, from Language Log, who tries (yet again) to explain.

The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness

The best way to describe this, I think, would be to say something like:

In the early 70s, women self-reported their happiness at levels somewhat higher than men did. Specifically, 5.1% more of the women reported themselves "Very happy", while 1.5% fewer reported themselves "Not too happy".

30-odd years later, in the mid 00s, women's self-reported happiness was closer to men's, though it was still slightly higher. 1.4% more of the women reported themselves "Very happy", while 0.1% fewer reported themselves "Not too happy".

To Arianna Huffington, this means that "women are becoming more and more unhappy", while "men ... have gotten progressively happier over the years". To Maureen Dowd, this means that "Before the '70s, there was a gender gap in America in which women felt greater well-being. Now there's a gender gap in which men feel better about their lives."  Ross Douthat described these numbers with the generalization "In postfeminist America, men are happier than women."

All of these statements are either false or seriously misleading.  Maybe, if you look at the data through a sophisticated statistical model, you can support a conclusion about the relative signs of the long-term-trends for males and females.  But any way you slice and dice it, there's not much there there.

I've cited the earlier stages in this discussion as motivation for a moratorium on using generic plurals to describe small statistical differences.  The contributions of Arianna Huffington and Maureen Dowd are, if anything, even better arguments for this (hopeless) cause. --Mark Liberman, Language Log

Kanye West has tried to apologize twice, once on his blog and once on Jay Leno. He blew it both times. In each case he referred to having stolen Taylor's moment. West doesn't understand that what he did was wrong, threatening and self-centered. He simply acknowledged that his completely narcissistic behavior cut into another celebrity's moment of self-centeredness!

Ms. Williams, having nobody famous to whom to apologize, has yet to properly acknowledge the implications of threatening a line judge with bodily harm. Like Mr. West, Ms. Williams fails to understand that it doesn't matter how much pressure she was under, it's not about her! She was wrong and she should simply say that, apologize for it and shut up. The storm would pass and she would be forgiven. But that seems to be beyond her.

Apparently, it's beyond Joe Wilson also. He apologized to the President and he has no plans to apologize any more, not to his colleagues and not to anyone else. Like Kanye West, Wilson seems to think that his words caused a personal hurt to the President and he is willing to apologize for that, but not for anything else. --Brad Hirschfield

Last night I came across the text of the statement by Serena Williams, which a headline writer had identified as an "apology," but the statement begins by praising Serena for her passion, it repeats the claim that the judge's call was unfair, it confuses the concepts of "passion and emotion" and "foul-mouthed tantrum, and it imagines that the continued adoration of her "fans and supporters" -- rather than any change on her part -- will help her to "move forward and grow".

Last night everyone could truly see the passion I have for my job. Now that I have had time to gain my composure, I can see that while I don't agree with the unfair line call, in the heat of battle I let my passion and emotion get the better of me and as a result handled the situation poorly. I would like to thank my fans and supporters for understanding that I am human and I look forward to continuing the journey, both professionally and personally, with you all as I move forward and grow from this experience.  --Serena Williams Issues Apology Statement

"The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook -- and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent -- the more Facebook can and does abuse us," Harmsen explained by indignant e-mail. "It is not 'your' Facebook profile. It is Facebook's profile about you." -- Virginia Heffernan, New York Times

Listen to a short news broadcast, such as the NPR Hourly News Summary. These stories will typically include audio clips from newsmakers, and perhaps the noise of crowds or nature. But we're just focusing on the sound of the radio journalist's voice.

Don't try to sound like "an announcer."  Forget the barking style of voice that radio announcers always seem to have in movies when they "interrupt this program with a special bulletin."
 
Radio News Delivery.mp3
(By the way, a typical radio story is just 50 seconds long, which is about how long it took me to read the following.

A radio newscaster's voice begins each story on a high pitch, with the first sentence of the story ending with a slight drop.
 
The second sentence starts at exactly this same pitch, which is an important audio cue that we're still on the same subject.

Note this slight boost of energy in the third sentence, which is important because the tone can't keep dropping forever.

Although I wouldn't do it when delivering a hard news story, I'm about to hang my voice, indicating I've got plenty more to say.

My speech is formal but conversational, with both high and low pitches within each sentence, though the general trend has been downward.

You can always tell the final sentence in a radio journalist's story; it slows down just a bit, and its pitches are the lowest of the whole piece.
 
For the New Media Journalism program at Seton Hill University, I'm Dennis Jerz.

Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., recently introduced a grade called FD to deal with cheaters. The letters stand for failure with academic dishonesty. --Calgary Herald

FD for cheaters? Why not FU?

(Thanks for the suggestion, Josh.)

Interesting pair of essays in The Chronicle Review. I may use this in my journalism class for a unit on statistics, advocacy, and the importance of open-minded skepticism in the reporting of the news.

Christina Hoff Sommers, in her essay "Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship" (The Chronicle Review, online edition, June 29), criticized Nancy K.D. Lemon, a lecturer in domestic-violence law at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law, for publishing errors in the popular textbook she edits, Domestic Violence Law, and for not taking seriously her continuing criticisms of the book. "One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack," Sommers charged. Following is Lemon's response to those criticisms and Sommers's rebuttal. Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Political message? You decide.

Blip from Sean Mullen on Vimeo.

Imagine if all teaching happened like this... if all persuasion came from demonstrations like this.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival.

I've watched it three more times since blogging it, and it still makes me smile.

David Stanley pointed me to this thoughtful essay.

Modern librarians who prioritize information over knowledge perpetuate a distraction from the real purpose of a library. A library facilitates the patient gathering of knowledge - whose acquisition is superior to almost every other endeavor. Religions have adapted to technology for the most part without being destroyed by it, so why can't libraries? It might not be too late.

Information on the Internet may come across as authoritative, but much of it is one giant Ponzi scheme, especially in the hands of the young, where it can become a counterfeit for the reading and memorization that true learning requires. Scholars are made through the quiet study of one chapter at a time. For that we need silence. We need to restore an appreciation for the close study of words.--William H. Wisner, Christian Science Monitor

And you thought the secrets to academic success would involve sensible stuff like "Study for two to three hours for every hour of class" or "Keep up with the readings" and "Meet all the deadlines your prof sets."

But those won't help you game the system, which is the strategy Don Asher presents as the real key to success.

• This is not about being smart. This is about being savvy.
• Sign up for more classes than you can possibly take, and drop boring or difficult professors sometime in the first two weeks.
• If you get a bad exam or quiz score, ask the professor what you can do to earn extra credit. Reading an optional book, writing a one- or two-page paper, or even just helping the prof out with mundane tasks such as setting up for class can push you back into the A column.
• Professors are people, too. They worry about being liked, whether they're gaining a few pounds and whether or not they're good at their jobs. So go visit them.... It's probably not a great idea to focus on grades only, as in "What do I need to do to earn an A in your class?" Get your professors to help you be a better student. And maybe ask, "Have you lost a little weight?"

The truly savvy student would recognize that pushing chairs around for profs will probably make the profs gain weight, therefore making them even more susceptible to weight-loss flattery.

Clearly by "Them" the sign means "dogs," but the since the sign refers instead to "Your Dog," so it was already in need of some attention even before this alteration took place. Via Bryan Alexander.

The following started out as routine e-mail feedback on a freshman essay, but I thought it came out well enough that I might want to use it again.  I don't want this to get buried in my existing handout on thesis statements, so I figured I'd just post the good bits here.

A good academic thesis is precise -- it makes a specific claim, backed up by concrete, verifiable evidence.

As you begin the writing process, you may have no idea what your own attitude towards your topic is.  Or, you may have a strong emotional reaction to a subject.  Either way, your thesis will grow stronger as you supply concrete details that move it away from the general and towards the specific.

Sample Thesis: "Money as encouragement for good grades, many teachers believe it can be useful."

Let's start by revising so that the thesis makes a claim about the topic (the value of rewards in education).  At present, the thesis simply claims that "some teachers" happen to hold an opinion about the topic of money rewards.

Slight Improvement: "Many teachers believe financial rewards can be a useful educational tactic."

It's not clear from this statement what claim your paper is about to defend.  Either of the two following revisions would be clearer.

• "Although many people believe X, recent studies show Y is a better solution than X."
  
• "Recent studies have confirmed the practice of doing X is more effective than Y."

Of course, you'd have to follow up with specific reference to the "recent studies" that you mention. (Note -- a news article or random website that refers to the "recent studies" is a very weak citation; most professors will expect you to be able to refer to the specific academic publication, government report, or other authoritative source.)

Some People Say...

Of particular note is the vague reference to what "many teachers believe."  In casual conversation, or during a classroom discussion, it's fine to use a general phrase like this to introduce ideas that you know you've heard somewhere before, 

But in academic writing, a phrase such as "some people say" is far too vague.  Your instructor will expect you name the specific teachers, to quote their exact words (if you interviewed them yourself), or cite the page numbers of their published opinions (in academic journals, or possibly news interviews or statements they have posted on their own websites). 

Introduce the opinions of credible authorities by naming names and citing a good source.
 

Instead of saying "many teachers believe it can be useful," actually state two or three good things about debate. 

Compare:  Which gives you a better idea of what the author is saying?

A)     "Many people believe that video games are worthwhile, but there are problems with too much gaming."

B)      "While the claims that video games teach hand-eye coordination are sometimes overblown (Smith 123; Perkins 234), multi-player games teach teamwork and leadership skills (Brown 213), and simulation games exercise the kind of problem-solving skills employers say they want in their new hires (Speer and Lee 23).  Nevertheless, the most hardcore gamers (defined by Jones and Green as playing more than 20 hours per week) run a greater risk of being overweight (Lincoln 232), spending less time outdoors (Johnson 12) and exhibiting anti-social behavior (Young 130).  For these reasons, the Johnson County School Board's May 2009 decision to put a gaming lounge in the library lobby is not a responsible use of taxpayer dollars." 

If your thesis looks like A), try to make it look more like B. 

Weaknesses of the "some people believe" approach... what's the real problem?  Are these unnamed people wrong to believe this?  Are they not really credible authorities, so the problem is that these people aren't the most reliable source of information?  Do "they" have an ulterior motive that would keep them from giving sound, trustworthy advice?  Is their value system actually flawed (like someone who wants to let his pit bull roam through a daycare center's backyard), or are we talking about perfectly respectable but conflicting value systems (early risers who complain about parties at midnight, or late risers who complain about lawnmowers at dawn?)

Revise for Detail

"Although some people believe X, they don't realize the problems X really causes."

"Although [detail P] and [detail Q] may at first make option X seem attractive, a closer examination of X reveals that [detail L], [detail M] and [detail N] all expose X as a faulty solution.

You might be asking yourself, "Where do I get all those details to add to my paper?"

If so, you might still be thinking of research as something that you do at a fairly late stage.  If you first write out your paper as an opinion piece, and only start "looking for quotes" after you've already written out your conclusion,  you'll only be skimming for details that already support what you've written.  Human nature will cause you to ignore those details that challenge your opinions.

Embrace the thought-altering possibilities of a fact or claim that doesn't already fit your world view.  Your instructor is less interested in seeing you supply facts that back up the opinions you already have, and far more interested in seeing how you form new opinions about issues that you would never have thought about before, had it not been for the new stuff you learned while you were doing your research.

When you can spell out the complex relationship between specific details that youv'e learned, you're probably ready to start churning out the paragraphs. 

"Although details P and Q challenges claim X, supporting details A, B, and C make a stronger case in favor of X."  

This is just one possible way to organize a paper -- it's not the only way. 

If you're still at the vague "some people say" or "there are pros and cons to topic X" phare phase, then a little more research is still in order.

She said the manhole she fell in to was left open and unattended with no warning signs or orange cones. She said two workers with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to secure the area as they prepared to flush the sewer.

"It was just really gross and it was shocking and scary," she said. "Because of their careless mistake I got hurt." --WCBS

It does sound like the utility workers created an unsafe environment, but the words "careless mistake" pulsate with irony. Thanks for the suggestion, Mike.

At the recent Computers & Writing conference, I found myself, in the Q & A during several sessions, strongly advocating coding skills as a 21st-century core literacy.   (See Ian Bogost, Procedural Literacy. In the following reflection, I talk mostly about my use of Inform 7, but I also touch on Scratch.)

Here at Seton Hill, all students must fulfill a computer science requirement, but it's really set up as a "how to use Microsoft Office" course.  Students who can already use a spreadsheet or make a slideshow can pay to test out of the course, but I've heard from many students who don't want to pay for the test, preferring instead to take the course and get an easy A by being "taught" how to do stuff they already know.  (One faculty member has a special section of that course in which students learn how to program little table-top robots, but they still have to work in all the Office applications along the way.)

But even after students have taken this course, I regularly see evidence they have no idea what's happening when they click an icon or connect to a network drive.  They regularly lose files, saving their website projects onto thumb drives with pointers like "file://c:/Documents and Settings/My Documents/myphoto.png". They're mystified when I ask them to rename a text file with an ".htm" extension, because most have never even *seen* a file extension.

While it's good that the graphical user interface has brought the power of computing to the masses, at the same time, hiding all the working parts behind a streamlined interface turns coders into a priesthood of the elite, and that's not good for culture at large.

I'm always on the lookout  for interesting stories that one can tell with statistics -- and cautionary tales about misusing statistics in order to create news where there isn't any.

Via MetaFilter -- this OK Cupid article breaks down responses to user-generated dating profile questions. Green states were more likely to answer "yes" than the national average (yellow), and red states were more likely to answer "no".  Note that this doesn't even come close to representing a statistical average of the population -- just the answers collected by the OK Cupid dating service.

Would you date someone just for the sex?

data set: 448,000 people answered

The answers to the question about daily showering are also worth a look.

Woah! Trying to charge bloggers who quote more than 5 words was bad enough (I no longer quote from or link to AP stories).

But the most contentious element in the new policy, which the union also decried as "vague," gives this instruction to employees using Facebook: "Monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn't violate AP standards: any such material should be deleted."

"That's the part that makes us cringe," Winton said, adding that the union is "reviewing it with legal counsel."

That means AP reporters, and all other AP employees, are held responsible for any comments posted by their friends to pictures or links on their profiles. -- Wired