“In the summer of 2001, a little boy in Mississippi lost an arm in a shark attack. The media went absolutely crazy. For weeks and months they highlighted every shark attack on the evening news. They ran aerial footage of sharks in the water near beaches. They coined the term ‘Summer of the Shark.’ … Bombarded by such coverage, most Americans responded to polls by saying they were concerned about the uptick in shark attacks. In fact, there were actually about 10% fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. Our perceptions were severely biased by the coverage. Similarly, every bit of severe weather now makes the news, so the American public can be forgiven for thinking that maybe such weather is increasing. … Sure we had some 100-year high temperatures in the US in March. But in the same month the rest of the world was at or below its average temperature for the last couple of decades. The reality is that the US makes up about 2% of the global surface area so that on average, an area the size of the US somewhere in the world should be having such a 100-year high month six times a year. For these reasons, and others, it is really, really hard to detect shifts in the mean of a data set like climate outcomes from just a few samples.” –Forbes contributor Warren Meyer
The Gipper
“The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all.” –Ronald Reagan
Patriot Post