Interesting Links for 3-10-2011

[andrewducker]

• This is how they gerrymander homeless children
  (tags: uk homeless housing politics)


• Why the world envies Mr Osborne
  (tags: GeorgeOsborne finance politics uk)


• Rick Perry's hunting ranch is called....Niggerhead.
  (tags: usa RickPerry racism politics)


• Homemade GPS Receiver
  (tags: GPS Electronics)


• Judge rules against Bayesian probability
  (tags: statistics law uk)


• Why This Year's Doctor Who Finale Was (Mostly) Better than Last Year's
  (tags:)


• The Pinboard people talk about the fallout from how badly Delicious fucked up.
  (tags: avos bookmarking fanfiction del.icio.us pinboard taxonomy)


• Cameron wants to scrap the Human Rights Act but Clegg won't let him
  (tags: libdem Conservatives politics rights uk)


• Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions
  (tags: TheOnion satire funny history)


• USA now assassinating its own citizens without due process
  (tags: usa law assassination murder)


• How cat videos get onto the internet
  (tags: cats videos youtube funny comic)

Comments

[supergee]

Perry really is stupider than Dubya.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

That story on legal statistics is depressingly misleading - I'd hoped for better from Guardian - as the ruling said nothing at all about whether Bayes' Theorem was right or not. Rather, the court expressed concern about how valid its application was given issues about the assumed probability distributions.

The actual judgment, which again I am disappointed to see that the story doesn't refer to, is available at BAILII. It's redacted to protect T's identity, but the full discussion of statistics and evidence is all there.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I was interviewed by a journalist looking to dig up some dirt about George Osborne on Saturday. I'll post about it if I get the chance tomorrow.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Seriously that guardian article about statistics and the courtroom is extremely annoying. It completely confuses Bayes Theorem (uncontroversial established fact) with Bayesian statistics (controversial way of doing things where the outcome relies on your prior belief). I looked a the judgement made which actually seems to be about Bayesian statistics not about Bayes Theorem -- hard to tell as it is highly redacted.

But the guardian article... nightmare. It talks about two things, one 100% correct the other 100% contravesial and doesn't realise they are different because they have very similar names.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

The Onion:

continually pointing out that The Stupid is there, but really doesn't have to be.
i find the closing statement particularly poignant.

and speaking of which, I haven't checked how BP's legal action against Halliburton is going. That whole 'hire the worlds most incompetent contractor to oversee site safety' thing didn't work out too well.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Just about any fiction with time travel ends up inventing a sort of meta-time.

Eg, the Cybermen are in the year 1800 and the Doctor is in the present. Stuff happens in one timeline that progressively affects the current one. Hence there's a meta-time that changes to the timeline take place in...