Easing your guilt doesn't always make you feel better

On Monday of this week I got gas at the Speedway on New Circle on the north side of town, near where my office used to be before we moved this spring, and I had a guy come up to me and give me a similar story to one someone had given me near there a few years ago -- the key element being that he started a job at the car wash tomorrow and just needed a little money ($7 in this case).

The first time I had heard the story was when Jennifer and I were leaving the City Buffet two or three years ago (about one or two miles from this Speedway). The guy came up to the car as we were pulling out, and told me this very solid story that sounded atypical and believable. I didn't give him money (I just never do), but felt bad because I thought he might actually be on the up-and-up. I clearly remember the part about starting at the car wash tomorrow, because there is a car wash in the direction he motioned during the story. 

I don't know if it was the same guy or they're just sharing story ideas -- at any rate, it made me glad I hadn't given money before. But it doesn't really make me feel any better overall.

There's a lesson here

HP's decision to ax its tablet and subsequent fire sale caused lots of pontificating among the techie crowd, including the assertion that the fire sale would further strengthen Apple's iPad. 

But this is exactly what I was thinking the lesson from this should be:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/238562/touchpads_lesson_tablets_cost_too_much.html

I've had a similar thought; I'm not an Apple guy, but I must admit that if I'm going to pay $300-plus for a tablet, I'm just going to go ahead and buy an iPad. Heck, the same might be said about Macs; there's no doubting their quality, and if it were based on that alone (it's not), then I'd recommend them for any computer purchase. However, quality PCs can be bought for one-fourth the price of a comparable Mac. 

The tablet makers haven't figured out that the same logic might apply to their products.

93 percent of statistics...

From a "friend's" Facebook page:

“25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it’s crazy. However, four out of five US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who’s crazy?” – Andrew Ford


OK, I get it. So 80 percent of the murders in the U.S. are in the half of the states with the most stringent gun laws. Proves that lax carry laws deter murder, doesn't it? (It sure worked in the Old West!)

Oh, but wait. What is the population rank of the 25 states with these lax gun laws? I'm betting you'd see a lot of Montanas and Wyomings in that list, with a Texas mixed in.

Want to convince me of something? Riddle me this: what is the per capita murder rate in those 25 states with more stringent laws compared to those without?

Ah, leave it to a liberal to get all scientific and ask for some commie number like "per capita"....

Update: According to my best estimates and based off what I can ascertain from Wikipedia (Open carry in the United States), the combined population of the 26 states with "open carry" laws (per my understanding of it, as these laws are not all the same) makes up 37.9 percent of the population (Texas isn't actually among them; Pennsylvania, at No. 6, is the largest population). So if that murder number is correct, then 62.1 percent of the country accounts for 80 percent of the murders.

Oh, but wait....! According to FBI statistics, those murder statistics might be off just a smidge...or a lot. See, when I added together the total murders from the FBI statistics for those 26 states (37.9 percent of the population, remember), I got 5,450 murders, out of of a total of 13,646. That's 39.9 percent of the murders in 37.9 percent of the population. That's just a little off from the "4 out of 5" number cited, making me think, oh, maybe it was pulled out of this guy's arse.

Now, this was some quick spreadsheet work on my part, so I wouldn't go before Congress to testify with it....but I bet people have testified based on less evidence than I put together in 10 minutes of research.

Oh, and the FBI statistics had the murders broken down by weapon used -- I won't throw out any random statistics here, but I bet you might find a correlation between states with lax gun laws and high rates of murder by gun. The million-dollar question there would be: if they didn't have easy access to guns, would those murder totals be lower? I'm 93 percent sure they would be.