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Ok, so Log Base 2 has been in hibernation lately. So what has reactivated this blog? Anti-viral tissues, that's what! At the drugstore today, I saw a box of Kleenex Anti-Viral tissues . Yikes, I thought: Kleenex impregnated with Tamiflu ! Well, to be honest I can't tell for sure ... Here's how the manufacturers of Kleenex describe their product: "Only KLEENEX® Anti-Viral* Tissue has a moisture-activated middle layer that is scientifically proven to kill cold and flu viruses.* When moisture from a runny nose, cough or sneeze comes in contact with KLEENEX® Anti-Viral* Tissue's special middle layer, cold and flu viruses are trapped and killed." Their footnote clarifies: "* In the tissue within 15 minutes. Virucidal against: Rhinoviruses Type 1A and 2 (rhinoviruses are the leading cause of the common cold); Influenza A and Influenza B (causes of the flu); Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV, the leading cause of lower respiratory infection in children)." In...

Greetings from St. John's, Newfoundland, where I've been on holiday for the last week. (In case you're wondering, the photo on the left is from Beirut, yesterday. Be patient: I'll draw the connection in a moment.) The other day, I visited the Newfoundland and Labrador Museum, now housed at The Rooms . One of the exhibits related to the battle of Beaumont-Hamel , which took place on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme . In less than a half an hour, 733 of 801 men in the 1st Newfoundland Regiment were killed. Describing the event, the Divisional Commander wrote: "It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valour, and its assault failed of success because dead men can advance no further." Translation: eight-hundred men charged straight into the line of machine gun fire and were almost instantly cut down. The folly of war is so sad. Fast-forward 90 years, and where are we? Israel is busy pounding the hell out of Lebanon, killing hun...

"About 400 armed people cordoned the village.... At least 82 people were killed during the first attack. Some were shot and others, such as children and the elderly, were burnt alive in their houses." — Darfur villager in a Chadian refugee camp Amnesty International is appealing for support to protect human rights in Sudan. They have lots of information and ways you can help on their website.

I'm a creature of habit. Each morning, upon arriving at the hospital where I work, I stop at the café. I always get the same size and type of coffee, and I know the price in advance. Surprisingly enough, today my coffee was 2 cents cheaper. Why? Well, the Conservative government has just lowered the goods and services tax (GST) by 1%. Of course the price difference on a cup of coffee is utterly trivial. (How long before we save everyone a lot of trouble and get rid of the penny altogether?) If I'd been buying a new car I might have saved a few hundred dollars. The Conservatives believe that this will stimulate the economy, and that may well be true, although I imagine that might take a little while. But in any case, that's an economic prediction, not a certainty. Economies don't always behave the way economic models suggest they will. (I'm being charitable.) Ultimately, it remains to be seen what will actually happen. If the economy does improve, the Conservatives w...

Andrew Gelman commented yesterday on a recent CBS News Poll which asked the following question: "Should U.S. troops stay in Iraq as long as it takes to make sure Iraq has a stable democracy, even if it takes a long time, or leave as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable?" Gelman points out that it's a "double-barrelled" question with "... the assumption that U.S. troops will 'make sure Iraq has a stable democracy,' along with the question of how long the troops should stay". He also notes that the New York Times piece on the poll included "a yucky graph (as Tufte would put it, 'chartjunk')", which I have shown here. It really doesn't get much better than this: an exceedingly slanted question and an exceedingly silly graph! If I may, I'd like to name it the bow tie graph ... but is that taken? On this, I defer to Kaiser over at Junk Charts . Dressing up simple percentages with multicoloured variable...

Missing values are the bane of the applied statistician. They haunt our data sets, invisible specters lurking malevolently. The missing value is like the evil twin of zero. The introduction of a symbol representing "nothing" was a revolutionary development in mathematics. The arithmetic properties of zero are straightforward and universally understood (except perhaps when it comes to division by zero, a rather upsetting idea). In comparison, the missing value has no membership in the club of numbers, and its properties are shrouded in mystery. The missing value was a pariah until statisticians reluctantly took it in— someone had to. And it's an ill-behaved tenant, popping in and out unexpectedly, sometimes masquerading as zero, sometimes carrying important messages—always a source of mischief. ... symbolizing nothing A variety of different symbols are used to represent missing values. The statistical software packages SAS and SPSS, for example, use a dot. The fact that i...

Tonight is the New York City premiere of a documentary film called American Zeitgeist . The film's subtitle is "Crisis and conscience in an age of terror", and it looks fascinating. Following the screening—in fact as I write this—a debate is taking place between Eric Margolis and Christopher Hitchens . My friend Ray pointed this out, in passing, on his blog earlier this week , and I took the opportunity to comment on Christopher Hitchens. Here is an edited version of my comments: ———————— Part of me thinks that the best response to Christopher Hitchens is simply to ignore him. How anybody can consider him to be anything but a complete buffoon is beyond me. I think it's interesting to compare Christopher Hitchens and Ann Coulter. On the face of it, they're very different. Coulter is indisputably a joke (albeit a very nasty one), with no pretense of seriousness or intellect. Hitchens, on the other hand, has the sheen of intellec...