Monday, May 4, 2009

Bad Statistics

Last week, the Daily Show sent John Oliver to visit CERN, the big particle collider in Switzerland. There is some nice footage of the accelerator and its instruments.

Of course they had to interview one of the "We are going to be destroyed by black hole" whack jobs who claims there is a 50% chance it will create a black hole that destroys the Earth.

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By his logic, there is a 50% chance I will die from the swine flu...after all, I will either live or die. That's a 50% chance, right?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can almost know what you are talking about. I am reading Demons and Angels and that is all they talked about so far. I am waiting for the exciting part.

kkdither said...

Oh....whew... I thought you were talking about my statistics blog. I'm no mathematician. Good thing my pay is so low! Please don't check my figures... ;D

Beejay said...

there is better than a 50% chance I will bopp you, Hale! Much better.

AvengingAngel said...

KK, I'd love to check your figure anytime.......Stewart is an asshole. He recently called Harry Truman a war criminal for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.


Talk about Post Facto Ethics.

His reasoning is that Truman could have invited the Japanese to watch us bomb some unihabited island and demand their surrender, rather than bombing Hiroshima.


Why doesn't his argument hold water?....Anyone?....

The fact is that we did bomb Hiroshima and the crazy assed Japanese STILL didn't surrender. It ttok the bombing of Nagasaki to finally bring them into submission. By all accounts, the US would have incurred over 250,000 casulaties in a Japan invasion. Please, Mr. Stewart, sit down and shut the f up.

hale-bopp said...

Did you watch or just hear about the interview,AA? I watched. Stewart said drop one on an island and the second one could be for them. Very different than your portrayal of the interview. He did not advocate no nukes and an invasion of Japan.

Oh, and even though his remarks were mischaracterized by conservative bloggers, he offered an apology on his show that you might have missed.

Watch his coverage of Obama sometime...he does better criticism than I have heard from most other sources.

kkdither said...

Still giggling over this post. I happen to love watching Jon Stewart. I don't even care who dislikes him.... When you portray comedy news, you stick your neck out. I'm not always so sure even he believes some of the stuff he comes with. His slant is funny as hell sometimes, and other times he is right on target.