Monthly Archives: February 2009

Surprise! Lancet Study Researcher Won’t Cooperate with Investigation

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It’s almost as if he lied and is trying to cover it up:

An academic whose estimates of civilian deaths during the Iraq war sparked controversy has been criticised for not fully co-operating with an inquiry.

Gilbert Burnham said in the Lancet medical journal in 2006 that 650,000 civilians had died since 2003 – a figure far higher than other estimates.

A polling association in the US said Dr Burnham had refused to supply “basic facts” for its inquiry into his work.

It did not comment on the accuracy of his conclusion.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)began investigating Dr Burnham’s work in March 2008 after a complaint by one of its members.

His research was based on a survey of Iraqi households and concluded that by July 2006 about 655,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the US-led invasion.

The Iraqi government does not keep precise records of civilians killed and neither do US forces, but in 2006 the Iraqi health ministry estimated that between 100,000 to 150,000 civilians had died.

The AAPOR’s executive council said in a statement carried by the Associated Press news agency: “When asked to provide several basic facts about this research, Burnham refused.”

It said it wanted to know the wording of questions asked and instructions and explanations given to respondents.

“Dr Burnham provided only partial information and explicitly refused to provide complete information about the basic elements of his research,” said Mary Losch, chair of the association’s standards committee.

She added that Dr Burnham’s refusal to co-operate “violates the fundamental standards of science, seriously undermines open public debate on critical issues and undermines the credibility of all survey and public opinion research.“

Indeed.

The Decline of Western Civilization: Basic Math Fail

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Thanks teachers’ unions! Here’s the end result of decades of soul-crippling feel-goodery masquerading as education illustrated in a phone call to a Verizon customer service line where the reps can’t understand the difference between .002 and 2/10, nor how those two numbers would be different if calculating dollars or cents. Via Failblog:

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h/t Moonbattery

Canadian Woman Held Against her Will in Saudi Arabia Due to her Status as the Property of her Husband

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It is considered bigoted to point out that Islam is in desperate need of a reformation and considered even more bigoted to point to the treatment of women in the richest (and most modern) of Muslim countries as evidence. People seem to think that Muslim women simply want to be treated like cattle and since it doesn’t effect them at all White Feminists are glad to turn a blind eye to their suffering. But what about the suffering of one of their own?

From The Vancouver Sun:

MONTREAL — A high-level representative of the federal government has met with Nathalie Morin, a 24-year-old Quebec woman who claims she is being held against her will in Saudi Arabia.

Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, met with Morin and her Saudi husband, Abdallah Ramthi Al-Bishi, in Saudi Arabia on Dec. 22 to mediate in the couple’s dispute, a Foreign Affairs spokesperson told Canwest News Service last night.

He could not say what the next step might be. Ottawa has said in the past that Canadians in Saudi Arabia are subject to its laws. Morin met Al-Bishi in Montreal when she was 17 and when he was a Concordia University student.

The couple has three children, including one born in Canada.

Morin’s mother has said her daughter is unable to leave because, under Saudi law, she is his property because she is the mother of his children.

So far the silence of feminists is deafening. Dhimmi Watch via R.O.P.

Shocka! Thousands of MySpace Sex Offenders Migrate to Facebook After Crackdown

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It’s almost as if perverts frequent social networking sites because they know it’s the best place to find unsupervised children. From TechCrunch:

MySpace is in the spotlight today because it revealed that 90,000 registered sex offenders have been kicked off its site in the past two years. But where did all of those sex offenders go? Some evidence suggests that a portion of them are now on Facebook.

John Cardillo is a former New York City police officer and the CEO of Sentinel, a security technology firm based in Miami which helps MySpace, Bebo, MyYearbook, WePlay, and other social networks identify sex offenders. He goes so far as to call Facebook a “safe haven” for sex offenders. Needless to say, Facebook is not a client, and MySpace is his biggest one. But he shared some data with me that is hard to overlook.

Sentinel’s technology is the foundation for Sentinel SAFE, the software MySpace uses to identify sex offenders on its site. Sentinel SAFE is a database of more than 700,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., complete with names, photos, dates of birth, email and IM addresses (when available), and more than a hundred other data points. Cardillo took the 90,000 sex offenders who were removed from MySpace and started looking for them on Facebook.

What do you think the number was? If you’re guessing almost nine thousand already then you win a prize, although I assume it is much much more. TechCrunch was able to positively verify about four thousand, and they have statements from Facebook so the entire article is worth your time.

Social networks are always going to attract perverts, the key is to get parents to understand that these social sites are not really appropriate for children to be on, unless you want them hooking up with a 50-year-old who will get them high then have sex with them. Because that’s what the adults use them for, so what do you think your kids are doing on them?

RFID Was a Really Bad Idea

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And this video proves it. Via Engadget which explains it this way:

Think of it this way: Chris Paget just did you a service by hacking your passport and stealing your identity. Using a $250 Motorola RFID reader and antenna connected to his laptop, Chris recently drove around San Francisco reading RFID tags from passports, driver licenses, and other identity documents. In just 20 minutes, he found and cloned the passports of two very unaware US citizens.

In other words all that high tech plastic in your pocket is an open door for thieves to walk in and make off with your identity and credit card information. Enjoy:

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