I don’t think so.
The coverage of Ted Kennedy’s death is preventing the claims of Mohammed Jawad from getting wider media coverage in the US. Jawad states that he was sent to Guantanamo at the tender age of 12:
In December 2002, when he says he was only 12, he was arrested on suspicion of throwing a grenade into a Jeep carrying US special forces soldiers through Kabul, wounding two of them and an interpreter. He was taken first to an airbase north of Kabul, then to the US prison in Guantánamo Bay…
He has a bit of a credibility problem though – he claims his father died in the 1980s while fighting the Soviets, and the Pentagon claims that bone scans indicate he was 18 when arrested.
According to the article he’s a minor celebrity in Afghanistan, but he’ll have a hard time getting broad-based sympathy in the US. A recent Gallup Poll reported that 45% of Americans favor keeping Guantanamo open:
President Obama’s most loyal supporters — Democrats and liberals — do lean decisively toward closing the U.S. prison there. But Americans overall do not express such a clear preference, and in fact are more likely to prefer keeping the prison open.
Closing Gitmo would further alienate a broad segment of voters that Obama needs if he is to salvage his presidency. The groups that want to pressure the US to close it need to do a lot better than this obvious falsehood if they expect to change US public opinion and get President Obama to act.
Any statistics professor will tell you there’s no such thing as the “law of averages”, but as today’s Washington Times points out there is a “Flaw of Averages”, which is also the title of a new book by Sam L. Savage, a consulting professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University and a fellow of the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.
The problem with predictions based on averages? Risk and uncertainty aren’t factored into plans.
“In everyday life,” said Mr. Savage, “the flaw of averages ensures that plans based on average customer demand, average completion time, average interest rate and other uncertainties are below projection, behind schedule and beyond budget.”
When people use a single number, usually a historical average, to predict the future, they invite systematic errors and generate unintended consequences, mostly negative…
Probability, risk, and uncertainty can be difficult concepts for people to grasp. The best plans take a range of outcomes into account, with each assigned a probability of occurrence (of course as humans we tend to poor estimation of probabilities.) The process can start with the simple questions of (1) What are our assumptions and (2) What if we are wrong?
Keep all of this in mind the next time you’re tempted to predict the future based on a poll taken in the past
By claiming she can feel global warming when she flies, Debbie Stabenow, Democrat from Michigan, has stepped up to the plate to challenge Babs Boxer as one of the Senate’s dimmest bulbs. As Michelle Malkin points out, let’s see which SNL comedian will play Debbie Stabenow. Of course I am sure none of us will hold our breath waiting for the program to puncture one of the left’s sacred cows. Better odds waiting for them to create a skit with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin before a “Death Panel”.
Speaking of odds, here are the latest probability-laden statements on the current hurricane and tornado seasons. Dr William Gray has revised his 2009 hurricane forecast down to a below-average season, with only 85% of the activity of the long range seasonal average. Also, as NOAA’s US Severe Weather Blog points out in The “shape” of the 2009 tornado season, this year is shaping up to be about average in terms of tornado frequency.
So there you have it Debbie. Things are no worse than normal. We don’t expect you to be a weather or climate expert, but we do expect you’ll know when you’re making an idiot out of yourself.