To ascribe the same level of brand awareness and value to a multimeter as a car is disingenuous. As any behavioral economist will tell you, they're not even in the same ballpark.
Did you seriously just compare buying a car with buying a tool? There's a order of magnitude difference. Even so, yes, they can. If there's a feature that's considered essential to the brand and is trademarked, they would too.
And you know what? Apple can sue other companies for making products that look like theirs. And they have.
That's a silly argument. A knockoff is still a knockoff -- while some people may not accidentally buy it, they are certainly using the reputation of an established brand (Fluke).
While I may not personally accidentally buy it, there are many who would. When I was in college, you'd refer to popular gizmos by their name and description -- you went to the store and looked for the "yellow" multimeter. Well, if you were lucky enough to remember the name, you'd buy the right thing. Otherwise, you'd buy the cheap thing.
Fluke makes damn good products. Making something cheaper that looks like it could be damaging to their brand.
You are nuts if you think the American education system is a factory model. Go to Asia -- you'll realize exactly what "factory styled" education is.
No matter what your interest, you are asked to do hours upon hours of advanced math and science. At every stage, students are culled if they don't get above a threshold set for those subjects these cultures deem valuable (e.g. math).
You wake up early in the morning for tutoring classes *before* your school, and go to tutoring classes *after* school. And oh, you have oodles and oodles of homework (imagine 600 differential equations problems due over the weekend). And the teachers (or the parents) do not hesitate to call you an idiot if you do poorly.
Sure, it sounds great -- but it also has its flaws. People who want to study arts or the humanities are made to feel like idiots, and have to fight the system. You are constantly made to feel that you are less than adequate -- the opposite of what's happening in the US, where everyone is made to feel great. You become very narrow in your skills and worldview, and lack a holistic outlook. You have a lot of academic knowledge, but very little real world knowledge.
No, the US is quite far cry from a factory styled education.
Why they're worthless now: everyone has them, and they're easy or at least predictable enough that they have little predictive value.
Nope. There is an assumption in your statement -- that all college degrees are created equal.
There is a reason certain schools and certain programs are given preferential treatment. You see, in statistics, there are two types of errors -- Type I and Type II.
Imagine a candidate applies to a top school -- pretty much all highly ranked schools and programs would err on the side of Type II. That is, they would rather reject a good candidate than admit a potentially bad candidate. That is not to say it does not happen, just that that is what they try to do.
The reason MIT or Harvard are prestigious is because of this. As an employer, you can use these schools as a filter. It is not that you learn something extraordinary at MIT's engineering department that you wouldn't at, say, Rutgers. But the point is, MIT has a high enough standard for both admission and graduation that you know someone who graduated from MIT is a rock star. The same goes for business schools, law schools, medical schools and so on.
The only exceptions are doctoral programs -- why? Because PhDs have other factors at play, including your area of research and your thesis advisor.
If a department is not serving its stated function, and cannot propose a rational plan for doing so, then it should be eliminated because it's a waste of our money, and therefore our time and effort.
Huh? What does this even mean? You sound as if you are regurgitating the small government propaganda without any sound argument.
The stated function is funding research, and that's getting done. The rational plan is funding scientists who are the most eligible to win the research grants. What is so hard about that?
The problem is the expectation of something "fruitful" to come out of research. As any half-decent scientist will tell you, a lot of good science comes from learning from our failures, and examining questions that may seem pointless today.
NSF grants have funded several amazing scientists and their research -- how do you even *begin* to "measure" the purpose of scientific research? The whole idea behind scientific research is asking questions that may seem trivial or even meaningless. The only viable measure is publications, and even that is meaningless -- would you rather have one outstanding paper every decade or a bunch of pointless papers to check a box?
The myopic outlook that decries large government also decries spending on science and research, never mind the fact that open science is what helps civilization as a whole. Closed research funded by the beck and call of corporations defeats the scientific process -- science is about openness, understanding, and investigating hard questions that may not have tangible benefits for the next few hundred years or more.
And sometimes, that means our time and effort are spent doing absolutely silly things that may have impacts that we do not yet understand. If pursuit of knowledge for its own sake isn't a good enough reason, then I weep for the future of this country.
The premise of privatization (and arguing over the size of government) is taking power away from the government -- whether or not that power rests with private enterprise, you are discarding elements of the government (in this particular instance, science and research away from the government and into the hands of private enterprise).
You remove enough teeth from the government, it becomes powerless. And services necessary for the people fall under the purview of the private enterprise.
I fundamentally disagree with that outcome and feel that private enterprises need more regulation and that the government is still way too beholden to private enterprises.
Cutting the size just because is not a good enough rationale.
I'm agnostic when it comes to the size of the government but given our current crappy patent system, it is downright silly to think short term greed won't override long term progress for the species.
There's no "profit" in investing in pure math or landing a probe on Pluto or conserving a dying species of insect. Scientific curiosity is seldom profitable in the short run.
That is because -- get this -- computer science is not about coding.
It's about math and engineering. Any coding is incidental at best and it's not their job to teach you "programming".
Judging programs on their employability is myopic. If you are smart and logical, then picking up a programming language is trivial.
Most top schools have little to no programming education -- you learn discrete math, graph theory, complexity theory, algorithms, data structures, graphics (which is physics and math), AI (lots of stats and probability), linguistics (if you do NLP) etc.
Even when you learn Operating Systems or Compiler Design, you're learning them from a design point of view. The details of implementation are something you pick up on your own.
You want to teach skills that are transferable and will survive the next programming language or platform fad. Any good CS program teaches that. Learning to code in Java or *nix sysadmin skills are things you should pick up on your own.
You are ascribing power to governments, rather than the people -- therein lies your fallacy.
The idea is that *people* are more powerful and altruistic than individuals or institutions. A government is nothing more than an instrument -- an institution that supposedly represents the people.
If a government is contrary to its people's values, then they should fix the government, not discard it altogether in favor of private enterprise.
You're an idiot. There was a recent article on how Columbia fired two of its eminent public intellectuals. Why? For not bringing in enough grant money. Not because they didn't publish, or not because they weren't any good. No, because they weren't politically savvy enough to bring in grant money.
Both Vance and Hopper had 30 and 26 years at Columbia respectively, and highly respected in their fields. They were let go because the expectation was that they bring in ~80% of their income from outside grants. Not doing research, not publishing, but bringing in *money*. No wonder people like Grigori Perelman hate the current academia.
You aren't doing science then, you are rewarding those that can *market* their subjects well.
But in reality, this should be welcomed.
Really? If you'd read the piece, you will notice that subjects with seemingly little application are the ones that get little to not attention. Because they are neither utilitarian nor do they make them feel good.
Take the Fourier transform for instance -- once upon a time, it would have been considered pure math, but today, DSP wouldn't exist without it. To focus only on those that *we* think are utilitarian can be extremely myopic, not to mention downright arrogant.
This is how science got funded during its first centuries as a discipline when many of the giants of science did their work.
That is downright silly. Just because something was done a certain way is not an argument for not using a better way. Using patrons has always been problematic, because patrons always favored things that they liked, with a vested interest.
If we still did things the way they were done, democracy wouldn't exist. As a concept, it is downright radical and new - giving power to the people?! Imagine that!
Similarly, the idea that people would fund science for the common good is just as radical, and going back to having patrons is pushing us back to the dark ages. We should be moving forward, not backward.
Re:I cant buy Pi day greeting cards.....
on
Happy Pi Day
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· Score: 1
To be honest, my biggest Amazon Prime purchases are around the holidays or events like birthdays/weddings/baby showers etc. It is so much easier to just order something and have it shipped -- the sheer convenience of it all makes it worthwhile.
While I may order a 3-4 orders a month for most of the year, I end up ordering at least three times that during the holidays.
I try and make sure that my local bookstore gets my business -- but sometimes, I just don't have the time or the energy to look for a book, only to find that they don't have it yet. Especially when they're written by authors who aren't particularly mainstream. So, I can pre-order some of these books by my favorite authors, which is a huge perk.
There's also something to be said about impulsive shopping -- for instance, I just saw a book that looked quite interesting, and it was under $10. Normally, shipping would have been expensive relative to the cost of book, but given that I have Prime, I just ordered the book. A few weeks ago, it was a sandwich maker.
Prime Membership also provides you with "subscribe and save" offerings that I take advantage of (whey protein for my workouts, diapers etc).
So, yeah. Personally, I think that even at $99, it is definitely worth the money.
I have always wondered why puzzles were never included in any educational system. Logical puzzles, spatial manipulation, patterns, and lateral thinking challenges go a long way towards improving general intelligence and learning abilities. Much more so than, say, memorizing multiplication tables. It also helps them with those complex ideas that you spoke of.
Instead, kids are taught to hate math and hate puzzles, and standardized tests are a joke.
My grandfather was a mathematician and he taught me that geometry and algebra were essentially the same when I was about 7. So, as I grew up, I could "visualize" every equation and that improved my problem solving ability. I cannot help but feel that teaching multiple complex ideas earlier will help children's creativity as they learn to combine them (i.e. spatially visualize a problem to look for patterns and use that to solve it as an algebraic equation).
I thought that of all the candidates, Romney was the most moderate of them all. If anything, had he stuck to his guns, rather than try and appease the Tea Party extremists, he had a pretty good chance of winning. Post the GOP nomination, Romney should have gone back to taking a moderate stance, which would have helped him immensely with some of the moderate voters. Instead, he tried appeasing the far right, at which point he pretty much lost any chance of a victory.
Personally, I felt that between Obama and Romney, this country could not lose. While they weren't ideal, they were both pretty competent, well-educated, and sharp, with a proven track record. I'm not sure any of the other GOP contenders even stood a chance (Rick Santorum? Newt Gingrich? Rick Perry? Herman Cain? Heck, Ron Paul?).
I thought Microsoft was trying to re-brand itself as a devices and services player. So, what does it mean when they bring on board a technical, enterprise guy as the CEO?
To me, it would seem that they're ignoring everything Apple has taught the industry -- usability, good design, and marketing.
Instead, they'll become the next IBM and be a large behemoth who just does enterprise tech "stuff".
Quite sad. And I'm pretty sure eventually they'll eventually spin off their Xbox division.
White Americans organized systems to keep black people from achieving the same success available to other ethnic minorities.
Yeah, but they did it to other white Americans too. White sharecroppers were subjected to much the same treatment as blacks were -- if not by law, socioeconomically, they were nevertheless slaves. Hell, the game is rigged against most Asians and whites today thanks to affirmative action -- an ethnic "minority" with a lower score has it easier than an Asian or a white with a much higher score.
If you want to fix it, fix it socioeconomically across the board. You cannot decry racism on one hand and apply the same select hypocrisy to other groups.
The maturity of the article, combined with the vulgar name calling and his own admission that he did not read the book, makes me question anything he has to say. A quick search shows his penchant for beating people up and getting himself incarcerated, none of which particularly helps his case.
In contrast, Amy and Jed are both Yale professors, and if nothing else, their hypotheses are backed up by some semblance of data.
He also employs sheer hyperbole in interpreting the piece:
Yesâ"the Nigerians. According to Chua and Rubenfeld, Nigerians are one of Americaâ(TM)s Eight Master Races. The bookâ(TM)s promotional material states that âoeNigerians earn doctorates at stunningly high rates.â Doctorates in whatâ"childhood witchcraft? Baby farming? Penis panics? How to murder someone via telephone? How to transform yourself into a goat? They are highly accomplished in the art of Internet scamming, Iâ(TM)ll give them that. But I suspect that Nigerians may be mere tokens on this list, tossed in at the end to avoid overt accusations of racism.
If he had read the piece, he'd have read the following:
Immigrants from many West Indian and African countries, such as Jamaica, Ghana, and Haiti, are climbing Americaâ(TM)s higher education ladder, but perhaps the most prominent are Nigerians. Nigerians make up less than 1 percent of the black population in the United States, yet in 2013 nearly one-quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were of Nigerian ancestry; over a fourth of Nigerian-Americans have a graduate or professional degree, as compared with only about 11 percent of whites.
So yeah, I don't think the word "salient" really applies here. He's nothing more than a dimwit troll, and his language, demeanor, and reading skills only highlight that.
The Obama administration doesn't compromise. They give ultimatums, and when they don't pass he circumvents the law by using executive orders.
How much Fox News do you watch a day? I just really like to gather data on that fact when I see such a polarized person.
The OP stated an opinion, one that's not entirely untrue, as I showed you in my later comments.
You assumed the following, based on his comment:
1. That he was polarized because he disagreed with Obama's policies 2. And disagreeing with Obama's policies would imply he had a propensity to watch Fox News
If you still insist that you're impartial, I'd like to point out that you have not asked that question to any of the other posters who have *supported* Obama. Impartiality might be more believable if your Fox News questions weren't directed at those who disagreed with Obama.
So, either you're lying about being impartial or you're assuming that there's a relation between the two. It can't be both. Gathering data requires a control group and an unbiased sample, and your method indicates neither.
The worst travesty to date is the Supreme Court decision in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project. It was brought to court by the Obama administration and argued by Elena Kagan says that even talking to terrorist groups for "strategies of nonviolence" can be considered advice, which should be considered material support. And they won. So, if you tried to talk a terrorist out of their terrorist acts and move to a path of peace, you would be providing material support. Heck, if you proselytized to a terrorist, you'd be treated the same way. These are executive decisions -- without review, without recourse, which is what makes them worse.
With draconian laws like this, all you need to do is have a chat on the dietary benefits of celery with a suspected terrorist and you could get be held without charge on the grounds of "national security".
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm, how about American trademark law?
To ascribe the same level of brand awareness and value to a multimeter as a car is disingenuous. As any behavioral economist will tell you, they're not even in the same ballpark.
Did you seriously just compare buying a car with buying a tool? There's a order of magnitude difference. Even so, yes, they can. If there's a feature that's considered essential to the brand and is trademarked, they would too.
And you know what? Apple can sue other companies for making products that look like theirs. And they have.
That's a silly argument. A knockoff is still a knockoff -- while some people may not accidentally buy it, they are certainly using the reputation of an established brand (Fluke).
While I may not personally accidentally buy it, there are many who would. When I was in college, you'd refer to popular gizmos by their name and description -- you went to the store and looked for the "yellow" multimeter. Well, if you were lucky enough to remember the name, you'd buy the right thing. Otherwise, you'd buy the cheap thing.
Fluke makes damn good products. Making something cheaper that looks like it could be damaging to their brand.
Really? We had no idea, given all the vitriol you were spewing.
You are nuts if you think the American education system is a factory model. Go to Asia -- you'll realize exactly what "factory styled" education is.
No matter what your interest, you are asked to do hours upon hours of advanced math and science. At every stage, students are culled if they don't get above a threshold set for those subjects these cultures deem valuable (e.g. math).
You wake up early in the morning for tutoring classes *before* your school, and go to tutoring classes *after* school. And oh, you have oodles and oodles of homework (imagine 600 differential equations problems due over the weekend). And the teachers (or the parents) do not hesitate to call you an idiot if you do poorly.
Sure, it sounds great -- but it also has its flaws. People who want to study arts or the humanities are made to feel like idiots, and have to fight the system. You are constantly made to feel that you are less than adequate -- the opposite of what's happening in the US, where everyone is made to feel great. You become very narrow in your skills and worldview, and lack a holistic outlook. You have a lot of academic knowledge, but very little real world knowledge.
No, the US is quite far cry from a factory styled education.
Are you serious? Is it that hard to use a search engine?
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries...
Nope. There is an assumption in your statement -- that all college degrees are created equal.
There is a reason certain schools and certain programs are given preferential treatment. You see, in statistics, there are two types of errors -- Type I and Type II.
Imagine a candidate applies to a top school -- pretty much all highly ranked schools and programs would err on the side of Type II. That is, they would rather reject a good candidate than admit a potentially bad candidate. That is not to say it does not happen, just that that is what they try to do.
The reason MIT or Harvard are prestigious is because of this. As an employer, you can use these schools as a filter. It is not that you learn something extraordinary at MIT's engineering department that you wouldn't at, say, Rutgers. But the point is, MIT has a high enough standard for both admission and graduation that you know someone who graduated from MIT is a rock star. The same goes for business schools, law schools, medical schools and so on.
The only exceptions are doctoral programs -- why? Because PhDs have other factors at play, including your area of research and your thesis advisor.
Huh? What does this even mean? You sound as if you are regurgitating the small government propaganda without any sound argument.
The stated function is funding research, and that's getting done. The rational plan is funding scientists who are the most eligible to win the research grants. What is so hard about that?
The problem is the expectation of something "fruitful" to come out of research. As any half-decent scientist will tell you, a lot of good science comes from learning from our failures, and examining questions that may seem pointless today.
NSF grants have funded several amazing scientists and their research -- how do you even *begin* to "measure" the purpose of scientific research? The whole idea behind scientific research is asking questions that may seem trivial or even meaningless. The only viable measure is publications, and even that is meaningless -- would you rather have one outstanding paper every decade or a bunch of pointless papers to check a box?
The myopic outlook that decries large government also decries spending on science and research, never mind the fact that open science is what helps civilization as a whole. Closed research funded by the beck and call of corporations defeats the scientific process -- science is about openness, understanding, and investigating hard questions that may not have tangible benefits for the next few hundred years or more.
And sometimes, that means our time and effort are spent doing absolutely silly things that may have impacts that we do not yet understand. If pursuit of knowledge for its own sake isn't a good enough reason, then I weep for the future of this country.
The premise of privatization (and arguing over the size of government) is taking power away from the government -- whether or not that power rests with private enterprise, you are discarding elements of the government (in this particular instance, science and research away from the government and into the hands of private enterprise).
You remove enough teeth from the government, it becomes powerless. And services necessary for the people fall under the purview of the private enterprise.
I fundamentally disagree with that outcome and feel that private enterprises need more regulation and that the government is still way too beholden to private enterprises.
On what basis?
Cutting the size just because is not a good enough rationale.
I'm agnostic when it comes to the size of the government but given our current crappy patent system, it is downright silly to think short term greed won't override long term progress for the species.
There's no "profit" in investing in pure math or landing a probe on Pluto or conserving a dying species of insect. Scientific curiosity is seldom profitable in the short run.
That is because -- get this -- computer science is not about coding.
It's about math and engineering. Any coding is incidental at best and it's not their job to teach you "programming".
Judging programs on their employability is myopic. If you are smart and logical, then picking up a programming language is trivial.
Most top schools have little to no programming education -- you learn discrete math, graph theory, complexity theory, algorithms, data structures, graphics (which is physics and math), AI (lots of stats and probability), linguistics (if you do NLP) etc.
Even when you learn Operating Systems or Compiler Design, you're learning them from a design point of view. The details of implementation are something you pick up on your own.
You want to teach skills that are transferable and will survive the next programming language or platform fad. Any good CS program teaches that. Learning to code in Java or *nix sysadmin skills are things you should pick up on your own.
You are ascribing power to governments, rather than the people -- therein lies your fallacy.
The idea is that *people* are more powerful and altruistic than individuals or institutions. A government is nothing more than an instrument -- an institution that supposedly represents the people.
If a government is contrary to its people's values, then they should fix the government, not discard it altogether in favor of private enterprise.
You're an idiot. There was a recent article on how Columbia fired two of its eminent public intellectuals. Why? For not bringing in enough grant money. Not because they didn't publish, or not because they weren't any good. No, because they weren't politically savvy enough to bring in grant money.
Both Vance and Hopper had 30 and 26 years at Columbia respectively, and highly respected in their fields. They were let go because the expectation was that they bring in ~80% of their income from outside grants. Not doing research, not publishing, but bringing in *money*. No wonder people like Grigori Perelman hate the current academia.
You aren't doing science then, you are rewarding those that can *market* their subjects well.
Really? If you'd read the piece, you will notice that subjects with seemingly little application are the ones that get little to not attention. Because they are neither utilitarian nor do they make them feel good.
Take the Fourier transform for instance -- once upon a time, it would have been considered pure math, but today, DSP wouldn't exist without it. To focus only on those that *we* think are utilitarian can be extremely myopic, not to mention downright arrogant.
That is downright silly. Just because something was done a certain way is not an argument for not using a better way. Using patrons has always been problematic, because patrons always favored things that they liked, with a vested interest.
If we still did things the way they were done, democracy wouldn't exist. As a concept, it is downright radical and new - giving power to the people?! Imagine that!
Similarly, the idea that people would fund science for the common good is just as radical, and going back to having patrons is pushing us back to the dark ages. We should be moving forward, not backward.
And the area of a unit circle is pi, not tau.
To be honest, my biggest Amazon Prime purchases are around the holidays or events like birthdays/weddings/baby showers etc. It is so much easier to just order something and have it shipped -- the sheer convenience of it all makes it worthwhile.
While I may order a 3-4 orders a month for most of the year, I end up ordering at least three times that during the holidays.
I try and make sure that my local bookstore gets my business -- but sometimes, I just don't have the time or the energy to look for a book, only to find that they don't have it yet. Especially when they're written by authors who aren't particularly mainstream. So, I can pre-order some of these books by my favorite authors, which is a huge perk.
There's also something to be said about impulsive shopping -- for instance, I just saw a book that looked quite interesting, and it was under $10. Normally, shipping would have been expensive relative to the cost of book, but given that I have Prime, I just ordered the book. A few weeks ago, it was a sandwich maker.
Prime Membership also provides you with "subscribe and save" offerings that I take advantage of (whey protein for my workouts, diapers etc).
So, yeah. Personally, I think that even at $99, it is definitely worth the money.
Mistakes in math and language or mathematical and lingual mistakes. ;-)
I have always wondered why puzzles were never included in any educational system. Logical puzzles, spatial manipulation, patterns, and lateral thinking challenges go a long way towards improving general intelligence and learning abilities. Much more so than, say, memorizing multiplication tables. It also helps them with those complex ideas that you spoke of.
Instead, kids are taught to hate math and hate puzzles, and standardized tests are a joke.
My grandfather was a mathematician and he taught me that geometry and algebra were essentially the same when I was about 7. So, as I grew up, I could "visualize" every equation and that improved my problem solving ability. I cannot help but feel that teaching multiple complex ideas earlier will help children's creativity as they learn to combine them (i.e. spatially visualize a problem to look for patterns and use that to solve it as an algebraic equation).
I thought that of all the candidates, Romney was the most moderate of them all. If anything, had he stuck to his guns, rather than try and appease the Tea Party extremists, he had a pretty good chance of winning. Post the GOP nomination, Romney should have gone back to taking a moderate stance, which would have helped him immensely with some of the moderate voters. Instead, he tried appeasing the far right, at which point he pretty much lost any chance of a victory.
Personally, I felt that between Obama and Romney, this country could not lose. While they weren't ideal, they were both pretty competent, well-educated, and sharp, with a proven track record. I'm not sure any of the other GOP contenders even stood a chance (Rick Santorum? Newt Gingrich? Rick Perry? Herman Cain? Heck, Ron Paul?).
I thought Microsoft was trying to re-brand itself as a devices and services player. So, what does it mean when they bring on board a technical, enterprise guy as the CEO?
To me, it would seem that they're ignoring everything Apple has taught the industry -- usability, good design, and marketing.
Instead, they'll become the next IBM and be a large behemoth who just does enterprise tech "stuff".
Quite sad. And I'm pretty sure eventually they'll eventually spin off their Xbox division.
Gandhi did not receive a Nobel.
Yeah, but they did it to other white Americans too. White sharecroppers were subjected to much the same treatment as blacks were -- if not by law, socioeconomically, they were nevertheless slaves. Hell, the game is rigged against most Asians and whites today thanks to affirmative action -- an ethnic "minority" with a lower score has it easier than an Asian or a white with a much higher score.
If you want to fix it, fix it socioeconomically across the board. You cannot decry racism on one hand and apply the same select hypocrisy to other groups.
The maturity of the article, combined with the vulgar name calling and his own admission that he did not read the book, makes me question anything he has to say. A quick search shows his penchant for beating people up and getting himself incarcerated, none of which particularly helps his case.
In contrast, Amy and Jed are both Yale professors, and if nothing else, their hypotheses are backed up by some semblance of data.
He also employs sheer hyperbole in interpreting the piece:
If he had read the piece, he'd have read the following:
So yeah, I don't think the word "salient" really applies here. He's nothing more than a dimwit troll, and his language, demeanor, and reading skills only highlight that.
The OP stated an opinion, one that's not entirely untrue, as I showed you in my later comments.
You assumed the following, based on his comment:
1. That he was polarized because he disagreed with Obama's policies
2. And disagreeing with Obama's policies would imply he had a propensity to watch Fox News
If you still insist that you're impartial, I'd like to point out that you have not asked that question to any of the other posters who have *supported* Obama. Impartiality might be more believable if your Fox News questions weren't directed at those who disagreed with Obama.
So, either you're lying about being impartial or you're assuming that there's a relation between the two. It can't be both. Gathering data requires a control group and an unbiased sample, and your method indicates neither.
But go ahead, keep trolling.
It's even worse than you know.
I posted this on another thread, but I quote below:
With draconian laws like this, all you need to do is have a chat on the dietary benefits of celery with a suspected terrorist and you could get be held without charge on the grounds of "national security".