According to the BBC, astronomers have found a void in space that measures nearly a billion lightyears across. It contains no stars or galaxies. In fact, it lacks both normal matter and dark matter. Perhaps the Vogons are building a hyperspace bypass. I’m keeping a towel handy, just in case.
When I first saw the Google Trends graph comparing searches for different Linux distributions, I drew the same conclusion Duncan McLeod did in his post “Ubuntu winning the Linux wars.” The chart is certainly striking:
Problem is, search volume as a measure says nothing about why people might be searching for a term. It is quite possible, for example, that people search for Ubuntu because they’re having a lot of trouble with it. Maybe it breaks a lot. Maybe Red Hat or Fedora users are smarter. Maybe Novell SUSE users get better support. Perhaps users of other Linux distributions go to their community forums before hitting Google. Such alternative explanations cannot be made with any more certainty, but the Google Trends chart is of no help in deciding who is right.
It is also possible that multiple explanations are valid. Ubuntu might confuse a lot more people because it really is winning the Linux wars. Again, the Google Trends chart is of no help, but the DesktopLinux.com 2007 Desktop Linux Survey is:
Now the interesting part is the difference between the two charts: There’s no scale on the Google Trends chart, but the Ubuntu line ends at 5.7 times the height of the Suse line. I assume this correlates with 5.7 times as many searches against the respective terms. Yet in an actual survey, Ubuntu is only 1.4 times as popular as Suse. That leaves a lot of Google searches for Ubuntu unaccounted for merely by its popularity, suggesting that at least some other cause is at work here.
And that really is interesting, because when I came up with the possible alternative explanations, I didn’t believe them myself. I was just trying to be argumentative about what I thought was an interesting blog post. That just goes to show, first impressions and preconceived ideas can be dangerous when interpreting what statistics might mean.
Any other ideas? The stats are there. Speculate away.
Well, let’s call it ten things that Wikipedia doesn’t think you know about Wikipedia and would like to claim about itself. Believe it at your own risk. The only thing this list has going for it is that it is actually citable and from a credible, primary source, namely the Wikimedia Foundation.
Zimbabwe’s ambassador to the US, Machivenyika Mapuranga, speaks to Foreign Policy TV about his nation and its inclusion in the 2007 failed state index at number four, after Sudan, Iraq and Somalia. (Hat tip: This is Zimbabwe.) It’s all a plot, of course. Things are just fine. In fact, Zimbabwe is one of the strongest and well-organised states in Africa. It rocks, it rolls, and shimmies to the beat. If racist homosexual colonialist imperialist in Britain and the US didn’t ban the export of harps to Zim, it would be heaven!
Sadly, the fellow speaks some truth:
In Africa, Zimbabwe is not regarded as a failed state. We are greatly loved and admired by the other 53 African countries.
Including by Zimbabwe itself, one assumes.
The United Nations voted Zimbabwe to be the chairing country of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. … They wouldn’t do that to a failed state!
Actually they would. And they did. Someone should abolish that impotent, corrupt and downright offensive charade of an organisation.
This isn’t very good for darts players, but if your favourite sport involves small, light arrows or something, this could be just what you need. Modern-day dwarves may work aluminium, but one benefit of their materials science progress is that they make shirts that weigh only 10kg.
Granted, ordering one means you’ll probably have a hard time explaining to customs officials why a t-shirt weighs 10kg, and arguing whether you need to pay the 40% textile import duty or whether the regulations on arms sales would apply. You may get arrested. At least you’d have a story to tell, though I’m not sure it will impress the numbers gangs in prison.
Do read the instructions, though. It seems chain mail requires some special dressing and undressing techniques your mother probably didn’t teach you.
Some time ago, I posted a few links on the question of aid to Africa, and included a pointer to some fascinating statistics maintaned by Rav Casley Gera, who runs African Development for the Completely Bloody Ignorant. Rav informs me that the data has been updated. Instead of just detailing the history of government in Africa by country, the new and improved African History in Ten Seconds chart is weighted by population, to show the proportion of Africans living under various forms of government. Since a prerequisite for prosperity is liberty — to work, communicate and to trade — this graph makes for uplifting reading:
Do visit his site for more detail, including lots of data, analysis and different views on African development. (Apologies to Madiba for stealing his book title.)
Quote of the day, from Simon Grindrod (yes, that one):
Table Mountain is under attack. If the mountain is under attack, we are all under attack.
He knows all about being under attack, having been shafted once or twice himself.
A week or so ago, I noted the release of a clever new tool that tracks changes to Wikipedia entries and the IP addresses where they originate. Some red faces ensued, as predicted. ITWeb journalists Paul Furber and Kim Guest have discovered a crude bit of vandalism to the entry on HIV/AIDS in South Africa. To wit:
Wikipedia`s edit history for the article “HIV/Aids in South Africa” shows repeated vandalism from IP address 164.151.130.36. This address resolves to a machine called mx1.statssa.gov.za, located just off the Ben Schoeman highway in Centurion, and is owned and operated by the South African government.
In the first change, the person removed the introduction to the topic along with supporting references.
This was replaced with the comment: “I think that was all bullshit, thats why i deleted it. Thank you motherf***er! [sic]”
The second edit sees the “effects” section of the entry removed. The third and fourth edits remove references to Pieter Fourie`s article: “The Political Management of HIV and Aids in South Africa: One burden too many?” and the Aids Portal SA Web page respectively.
What remained of the entry was the section describing the actions being taken by government to curb the spread of the disease.
Nice work. On Paul and Kim’s part, I mean.
Some people have too much time on their hands. Watch how this production line, built from Lego, is started by selecting a colour scheme, and then builds a car to order. It uses Lego Mindstorms programmable robotics. From Jalopnik, via GeekPress. Too cool for words.
That’s the title of a new film in which Kevin Leffler, an old schoolmate of Michael Moore’s, turns a camera on Moore himself. The thought of Moore waddling away from ambush interviews, which he abuses so frequently himself, is just priceless.
The film, according to Henry P. Wickham Jr. over at the American Thinker, is “a commendable documentary that shows Michael Moore to be something other than that self-anointed, compassionate advocate for the ‘little guy.’”
Wickham compares the propaganda techniques of Moore with those of the classic propaganda master, Joseph Goebbels, who wrote that arguments must be “crude, clear, and forcible, and appeal to the emotions and instincts, not the intellect”.
Having seen a few of Moore’s films — notably Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911 — and knowing something more about the subject matter than what I saw in those films, I can only concur with this characterisation of his work.
I dislike Moore not because of his hypocrisy or outright lies, however. In fact, I grudgingly admire his ability to make a killing out of the gullibility of his audience, and that this audience has at times even included senior political figures, presidential candidates, and a veritable bevy of Hollywood All-Saints. The reason I dislike Moore is because so many people take him seriously. His hateful lies, partisan distortions and paranoid conspiracy theories infect popular political culture, to the detriment of sane and rational policy choices everywhere.
Michael Moore isn’t brave. He’s a shrewd exploiter of the left-wing lumpenproletariat, which is primed to believe everything he says, and takes even the most obvious misdirections at face value. He uses most — if not all — of the techniques in the famous Skeptical Inquirer essay, How to sell a pseudoscience. (Hat-tip: The Reference Frame, where Luboš Motl aptly applies the pseudoscience essay to the “science” of anthropogenic global warming.)
In short, Moore is a quack, and if he deserves any respect at all it is for his success at parting so many fools and their money.
That said, I can see where Wickham is coming from when he writes:
Shooting Michael Moore is a worthy rebuttal to Michael’s Moore’s pomposity, avarice, and dishonesty. The film helps us understand why Michael Moore, so filled with contempt for much of what is good, is himself so utterly contemptible.
Neil Blakey-Milner asked the following, in response to my previous post on fear of trade with China and protectionism. It’s a good question, worthy of a detailed response.
What should a country do about imports from countries that are known to be or highly suspected of using child labour or other forms of “slave” labour or other techniques that are banned by that country?
First, let’s stipulate that only a small fraction of the trade that ends up being restricted by tariffs or other forms of protectionism is, by this standard, objectionable, and that this fraction represents an extreme-case scenario. I’ll focus mostly on child labour in my response, but similar arguments go for other forms of labour policy on which prosperous nations frown.
Let me first try to be somewhat specific: Africa, not Asia, has the highest child labour force participation rate in the world. According to UNICEF, almost one in three African children work, while the corresponding figure for Asia is one in five. That Asian statistic is not much worse than that in Latin America or the Middle East. Why China should be singled out for censure is unclear to me.
Moreover, child labour below the age of 16 is illegal in China. The International Labour Organisation recommends a minimum working age of 15, and China has ratified the relevant convention. So the problem is not one of legal labour standards either.
