Orlando
lborkowski | June 13, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
German Lopez at Vox: Obama is right. Inaction in the face of mass shootings is also a political act.
Helen Branswell at STAT: The world is alarmed by the Zika outbreak. No one is paying to deal with it.
Norm Ornstein in The Atlantic: How to Fix a Broken Mental Health System
Anne Therialut at The Establishment: Men See Themselves in Brock Turner - That's Why They Don't Condemn Him (and also follow the link to the full victim statement)
Jon Hamilton at NPR: How A Team Of Elite Doctors Changed The Military's Stance On Brain Trauma
grrlscientist | February 26, 2010tags: Tilikum, Tillikum, Tilly, Orcinus orca, Killer Whale, SeaWorld, Sea World, Orlando, Florida, whales, animals, news, behavior, streaming video
Are orcas too brainy for captive life? Should they all live only in "the wild"? This video is only the beginning of the debate .. what do you think?
grrlscientist | February 25, 2010tags: Tilikum, Tillikum, Tilly, Orcinus orca, Killer Whale, SeaWorld, Sea World, Orlando, Florida, whales, animals, news, behavior, streaming video
The latest word is that Tilikum will not be euthanized in retaliation for being associated with his third human death. Of course, if the SeaWorld officials did decide to euthanize him, this raises several problems, not the least of which are the publicity and the mechanics of carrying out this animal's demise.
This realist (me) has decided that SeaWorld avoided the "euthanization problem" in the case of Tilikum due to two reasons, and two…
terrasig | May 15, 2009Well, it's mid-May at 36° North, the honeysuckles are blooming, my allergies are miserable, the air is damp, and that can only mean one thing: the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting is nearly upon us.
Held this year beginning on 29 May, the annual ASCO meeting coincides with all sorts of announcements of miracle cancer drugs and the sound of cash changing hands. Although being held in Orlando, Florida, this is far from a Mickey Mouse operation; in fact, the buzz of bullion here rivals that of the Walt Disney empire. With the abstracts released last night at 6 pm EDT,…
tlambert | October 1, 1996Sam A. Kersh writes:
No, it up to you to show that an 88% reduction in rapes, 35%
reduction in commercial robbery and an 84% reduction in
residential burglaries is insignificant. Proof, not an inane
assertion by Lambert as a citation.
Sam, you seem to lack the most basic understanding of the way
statistics is done. Changes are not assumed to be statistically
significant until proved otherwise. The burden of proof is on you:
present a statistical test for significance. I've asked you for this
several times now. You keep trying to avoid the issue. (Hint for
Sam: posting extracts from…
tlambert | August 13, 1995In article fkk@leland.stanford.edu writes:
In a recent post Pim cites Tim Lambert as support for his position on the
Florida data. I'm sorry but Lambert's analysis is flawed at its core.
No it isn't. It appears that you don't understand what statistical
hypothesis testing is, or what it means.
Let's see what he says:
First of all Rick is stating that
it is supportable only in the 'right' time span. Yet he fails
to provide proof for such remarks. The time span is the same
data as used by Kleck. It is Kleck however who is
misleading the facts by carefully selecting his data. Yet
even this is…
tlambert | August 10, 1995In article none+1 stratos@crl.com Janine K. Johnson wrote:
Recently, several postings discussed the Orlando Florida phenomena of 1966/67,
in which a drop in the rape rate was noted after a much publicized program co
sponsored by the local police and the Orlando Sentinel, in which 6,000 women
were trained in the use of firearms.
Knox, and other experts who have analyzed the Orlando phenomenon, contend
that the rape rate decreased because of the media publicity, and because
women were armed and trained. (Paxton Quigley, Armed and Female, St.
Martins Press.):
Mr. van Meurs rebutted this…
tlambert | February 6, 1994Nate Lund said:
Point Blank, by Gary Kleck, page 134:
"From October 1966 to March 1967, the Orlando Police Department trained
more that 2500 women to use guns. Organized in response to demands from
citizens worried about a sharp increase in rape, this was an unusually
large and highly publicized program.
"An interrupted time series analysis of Orlando crime trends showed
The reference cited by Kleck does not contain an interrupted time
series analysis. McDowall et al (Criminology 29:4 p541-559) did an
interrupted time series analysis. They did find a reduction by 11
rapes in 67, but this…
tlambert | March 12, 1993Bill Gray said:
[talking about Orlando gun training]
Anyway, during the period after the training when the rapes dropped so
dramatically, none of the women ever fired their weapons. Moreover, none
of them shot a husband or boyfriend, nor were any children harmed with
these firearms.
I personally called the Orlando PD to confirm as much of this as I could,
and it checks out with their records department. There was an increase
in homicide the same year, but the base numbers were so low that even one
or two additional would come out to the 22%--in short, it wasn't like
they dropped 122…
tlambert | September 23, 1992Crime rates go up and crime rates go down. Before seizing on some
possibly coincidental factor such as gun training or gun control as
the cause of the change, we need to establish if the change was
unusual, i.e. statistically significant. The only attempt I have
seen to establish this is in Kleck and Bordua's paper which claims
that the change was significant since it exceeded two standard
deviations. This is wrong. A rate two standard deviations from the
mean would be significant, but changes exceeding two standard
deviations occur 15% of the time for normal variates, nowhere near
the 5%…
tlambert | April 13, 1992Which does not explain why there was no change in the suburbs, where
there was just as much publicity.
Frank Crary said:
Presumably, the publicity was about women in Orlando carrying guns, not
women in the suburbs of Orlando carrying them.
It seems likely that a significant number of women from the suburbs
took the gun training program. I don't see why the publicity would
not have mentioned this. Furthermore, the publicity is supposed to
have worked by reminding criminals of their chances of getting shot.
Should we assume that a rapist will not be able to make the connection
that if he…
tlambert | April 6, 1992Kevin Langston said:
It really doesn't matter whether 0.2% or 20% of the women in a given area
carry a .38 caliber protector. What matters is that 50% of the potential
rapists/muggers/etc believe that a significant number of their potential
victims can immediately fend off their attack, thus forcing them to
consider the potential cost of said crime. This is how deterrents work.
Notice how this can explain why the Orlando program had a sudden, local
effect,
The effect is consistent with the extreme variation in the rate before
the gun-training program --- i.e. the effect was not…
tlambert | March 27, 1992So why credit the reduction in rape and burglary to the program? Oh I
see, you would claim this as an indirect effect, where rapists and
burglars gave up because they were worried about armed victims. Well,
what if some criminals instead armed themselves to help deal with this
threat. With-gun robberies are three times as likely as with-knife
robberies to be fatal to the victim[1], and it seems plausible that
this lethality extends to other crimes. Hence, the program could cause
more armed criminals and more homicides.
Geoff Miller said:
I had thought that Tim was restricting his argument…
tlambert | March 23, 1992Kleck also states that the percentage decrease was larger than in any
other US city with a population of over 100,000. Kleck neglects to
tell us what the population of Orlando was, but by looking at the
granularity of the data you can deduce that the population of Orlando
was less than 100,000 for the whole period 1958-1972. Comparing
apples with oranges. Cute, real cute. Orlando itself experienced a
larger percentage decrease in 1963.
Greg Booth said:
I don't have an almanac handy, but Orlando is a huge city, and has been
for quite some time. Look up the info before you knock down
straw…
tlambert | March 19, 1992Greg Booth said:
A previous poster claims guns are not affective in stopping rapes.
The evidence suggests otherwise.
[There was a gun training course for Orlando women in 1966]
The results?
In 1966 there were 36 rapes per 100,000 people in
Orlando, triple the 1965 rate. In 1967, there were 4.
Before the training, rape rates had been increasing in
Orlando as nationwide. 5 years after the training, rape
was still below pre-training levels in Orlando, but up
308% in the surrounding areas, 96% for Florida overall,
and 64% nationally.
Cute. The rates for the period 1958-1972 can be found in…