Category: General

“Dubious” science?

I wonder if this “study” was funded by the taxi industry:

How clean is your Uber or Lyft? Study finds ride-shares full of germs

A quote from the article:

For the study, NetQuote — an insurance provider — took swabs of multiple surfaces in nine different vehicles to compare the number of germs in ride-sharing vehicles, rental vehicles and taxis.

Nine whole vehicles? Wow – that should be enough to characterize the millions of vehicles in the United States, don’t you think? As a scientist, I am skeptical…

I wonder what kind of results they would have obtained if they included a few minivans owned by families with school-age children?

What’s the difference?

An NPR article attempts to claim that:

“Never before has the federal government used the census to directly ask for the citizenship status of every person living in every household in the United States.”

This is in contrast with the administration’s assertion that the question was last asked during the 1950 census. However, a closer examination of NPR’s claim (in their own article, no less) seems to make very little distinction between the 1950 census question(s) and that proposed by the administration.

NPR’s argument is that in 1950 the census asked where someone was born, which automatically inferred citizenship if they were born in the United States. Then, if the party had answered that they were born somewhere other than in the U.S., they were immediately asked if they were naturalized – again, inferring citizenship. These two questions accomplish the same task as the administration’s proposed multiple-choice question for the 2020 census – it determines whether or not the subject being interviewed is a citizen or foreign national. The results are no different than that obtained from the administration’s proposed multiple-choice census question.

I am concerned that this NPR article may be attempting to sway the public against the citizenship question by using the misleading representation that the proposed question is somehow different than the question(s) previously asked. It makes me wonder about the partiality of NPR’s reporting.

Stupid news of the week

From a Fox Business news article on a billionaire’s support for homeless research in San Francisco:

“Some San Francisco residents are frustrated with technology companies like Salesforce, a cloud-based software business, saying they contribute to inequality with high-paying jobs that drive up housing prices.”

Let me see if I understand: San Francisco residents are upset over high paying jobs? So they think that the alternative – low paying jobs – would be better?

Let’s inconvenience gun owners …

… with ineffective laws and bureaucratic nonsense.

Democrats don’t want to prevent criminals from obtaining firearms; they just want to punish law-abiding citizens and gun owners with onerous legal requirements. How do I know? Because the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee just sent H.R. 8, known as “The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019,” to the house floor for a vote (The bill passed the committee on a party-line vote, so “bipartisan”? Maybe not…). However, in the process they rejected a Republican amendment proposed by Florida Rep. Greg Steube that would have required failed background checks – for instance, where a convicted felon, illegal alien or other prohibited person had attempted to purchase a firearm – be reported to the appropriate authorities (local police, FBI, ICE, etc.). If you want to prevent crime, and criminals are attempting to purchase firearms, wouldn’t you want the police to know and take action? Common sense; yes?

The result is a bill that inconveniences law abiding citizens while doing little to crack down on criminal attempts to possess firearms. Great job, people.