Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | No ifs, no butts: “California’s lung cancer rate fell by over 16% between 1988 and 1997, compared with a drop of 2.7% in the rest of the US. The number of smokers in California fell by 40% in the decade after the first tough measures were introduced, and rates of smoking in the state are lower than in the rest of the US with only 18% of Californians smoking compared with 25% of the... Read more
Now hears the rub. If power laws occur purely when many people choose between many options, how come they don’t apply in politics? In an election under power laws, there should ALWAYS be a front runner by a mile! Maybe there is another factor- competing for a scarce resource thats what kottke.org thinks: “The scarcity of people’s time results in the distribution of links that can be described using power laws.” Read more
Technocrati has found a way of “Breaking the (power) law “. He aims to use maths to find interesting blogs that are not already A list blogs! Read more
The Curate born with a cleft lip has won the right to a juidicial review into the decision by the police not to investigate whether aborting a child late because they had a cleft palate had broken the law. Read more
One of the delightful things about children is their inability to wait. My 6 year old knows that Christmas is less than a month away and is thrilled. She also keeps asking me ‘Did you win dad?’ and can’t seem to understand the delay in deciding who is going to be the king of blogs. I think she needs her own blog one day- but maybe I will make her a guest blogger here. Some of my most profound thoughts... Read more
Here at my site, things are starting to look a little jaded…..I am aware that there are other blogs out there that are somewhat nicer looking than this one. Here is the challenge…. Redesign this blog, without loosing any of its features. The prize- well nothing more than seeing the blog here! Any takers? Email me, and I will email you my blogger template to play around with!!! Why do I suspect that there will be fewer takers for this... Read more
Its nice to get comments like this about your blog….Madfish Willie’s Cyber Saloon described this blog as having “an articluate viewpoint, well thought out and lots of supporting linkage” Read more
If you want to understand why 20% of people own 80% of the worlds wealth and why one blog has most of the traffic and links then Power laws seem to be a major answer. “Power Law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options. We also know that as the number of options rise, the curve becomes more extreme. ” This is fascinating as it appears to be the opposite effect... Read more
Barna Research Online reports less than four per cent of Americans have a biblical worldview which was defined: “as believing that absolute moral truths exist; that such truth is defined by the Bible; and firm belief in six specific religious views. Those views were that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He stills rules it today; salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned; Satan is real;... Read more
There can be very few people in the UK today who would not gladly see the death penalty restored, if only for the man standing trial for the murder of two 10 year old girls. Today Huntley took the stand and claimed “I did not intend to kill girls “. His description of the ‘accidental death’ of the two girls followed by his disposal of their bodies- which included burning them with petrol to ‘remove evidence’ will have rocked a... Read more
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