Ranting to /dev/null

Should have thought of that one

Duh. Yet another reason statistics are deceptive. Slate has a piece about comparing casualty rates in Iraq and Vietnam. Frankly, I'm not convinced this is a useful exercise, and I don't recommend the piece either way.

But I do want to something mentioned almost as an aside. Murder rates have been falling in major American urban areas for a while now. This does not necessarily mean that there is more violent crime, only that fewer people are being killed. Why? Because if someone gets shot and survives - a situation which is made dramatically more likely by adequate medical care - then murder has not occurred, by definition. So measuring murder rates by simply counting the number of bodies isn't an entirely fair way of doing things, because today if you aren't killed outright, the odds of your surviving are a lot higher than they were a dozen or more years ago.

I've been finding more and more things like his recently. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.