There Are Lies and........

Every year since 1950 the number of children gunned down in America has doubled - a dramatic statistic to be sure. Almost every news story contains statistics. Reporters and journalists love them. They sound very factual. When describing social problems, the bigger the numbers, the more attention they get. One small difficulty here is that this particular statistic is wrong and obviously so if you’re comfortable with basic mathematical principles. Many of us aren’t. This example came from a graduate student’s PhD proposal in which he cited a widely publicized report created by a child advocacy group in 1995. In his book, Damned Lies and Statistics Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists, Joel Best describes this as the worst statistic ever. The obvious flaw here is that even if only one child was murdered with a gun in 1950 if that number doubled EVERY YEAR for 45 years by 1995 the number killed would exceed the total population of the country. The correct government statistic which was misinterpreted was that the number killed with guns (including accidents) doubled BETWEEN 1950 and 1995. In addition, most users of this statistic would probably not bother to put it in context - during the same time period the population also doubled. This doesn’t mean guns around children aren’t a problem. One killed is too many, but that concern shouldn’t be inflamed with bad statistics.

Damned Lies and Statistics is an attempt to help us understand how statistics are created, and to recognize the difference between good and bad statistics. It’s a very readable book about math., not a book of math. Author Best makes his goal clear at the outset. “The solution to the problem of bad statistics is not to ignore all statistics, or to assume that every number is false. Some statistics are bad, but others are pretty good, and we need statistics - good statistics - to talk sensibly about social problems. The solution then, is not to give up on statistics, but to become better judges of the numbers we encounter. We need to think critically about statistics ...” (pg 6).

Best, who is Professor and Chair of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware, doesn’t try to make us into mathematicians. He does explain the choices people make in creating social statistics and how that should shape our understanding of the numbers we encounter in the news and political debates. These choices relate to definitions (what is to be counted), methodology (how things are counted and by whom), and interpretation and generalization of the results. This illuminates many of the sources of bad statistics - guessing (especially guessing high if you’re trying to convince people that there is a problem), using overly broad or too narrow definitions (this inflates or deflates the size of the numbers), and inconsistencies in definitions or methodology used by different sources of information. For example, is a “gang related” crime the same thing in Detroit as in L.A. ? “One sign of good statistics,” says Best “is that we’re given more than a number; we’re told something about the definitions, measurement, and sampling behind the figure - about how the number emerged. When that information remains concealed, we have every reason to be skeptical.” (pg. 61) The difficulty is compounded in comparing statistics. Has the troop surge lead to a decrease in terrorist attacks in Iraq? Petraeus says “yes”, Move-On “no”and both have their numbers. “Comparison depends on comparability. Unless each number reflects the same definitions and the same methods of measurement - unless each number is an apple, and not something else - comparisons can be deceptive.” (pg 127) To be comparable these statistics should be based on the same definition of “terrorist attack”(is sectarian violence included or not) and cover the same time periods and geographic areas.

Another theme Best develops is the tendency of bad statistics to acquire a life of their own. Because they are more dramatic (whether deliberately made so or not) bad statistics tend to force out good statistics. Advocacy groups will defend their numbers and trash their critics’ numbers in turn. This often occurs without much real research or math on either side. Media can be just as bad, after all if it doesn’t fit in an eight second sound bite it doesn’t get much exposure and reporting what someone else says pays just as much as doing hours of research. Once in play a bad statistic undergoes what Best describes as “number laundering” the successive use by others until the original source is lost and widespread use adds to the number’s credibility and unquestioning acceptance.

“In our society,” Best states “statistics are a sort of fetish. We tend to regard statistics as though they are magical ... we treat them as powerful representations of the truth ... as facts that we discover, not as numbers we create.” (pg 160) Best argues that we need to avoid both naivete and cynicism and recognize that while statistics can be useful they are never perfect. In fact, the more we understand about the creation and limitations of statistics the more useful they can be. As consumers (willingly or otherwise) of statistical information we need to learn to ask thoughtful questions about numbers. Damned Lies and Statistics gives us a good place to start.

Damned Lies and Statistics by Joel Best is published by University of California Press, Berkeley, California (2001). Reviewed by Scot and Marianne Monaghan, owners of Barking Dog Books and Art, 310 Front Street, Marietta. This review first appeared in the Marietta Register on October 31, 2007.

Cult of the Amateur

Everyone’s a poet these days. Everyone’s also a journalist, editor, politician, mathematician, scientist, and sex therapist. That is what Andrew Keen laments in The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture. Keen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has written on technology for Forbes and others, examines how advances in programming and technology have changed the way users interact with websites and how these changes have had far-reaching effects on print media, television, radio, music, advertising, and politics. By allowing anyone to enter and edit content on the world wide web, Web 2.0 opened the door to such innovations as blogs, YouTube, MySpace, and Wikipedia. On these and thousands of similar sites, internet users are free to create their own content to post their opinions, and to edit content posted by others.

Keen spends the first chapters of the book decrying the lack of editorial review and the lack formal training possessed by would-be writers and advice-givers. He seems to believe that the process of putting a work in print indicates it has passed some test of “worthiness.” As booklovers, we’ve seen too much gradoo pass through our hands to believe that the publishing industry favors brilliance over making a buck. Just about every innovation which eased the ability of the great unwashed masses to communicate has met with the same scorn that Keen heaps on these “noble amateur” participants. “But,” he says, “the ideal of the noble amateur is no laughing matter. I believe it lies at the heart of Web 2.0's cultural revolution and threatens to turn our intellectual traditions and institutions upside down.” There is a strong temptation early in this book to regard it as just another rant about the way things used to be, but Keen presses on making some crucial points that everyone - whether a web user or not - should understand about how online communities have transformed today’s media environment.

Keen doesn’t use the word “cult” in his title without some justification. In a society which values self-esteem over accomplishment, many hold the deep-seated belief that all opinions are of equal worth. It’s “democratic.” Combined with the anonymity which is permitted, encouraged and staunchly defended on the Web, we have no basis for judging the value of much of what we read and see online. As Keen points out, Wikipedia is a type of online encyclopedia where anyone can add or change the definition of a word or concept. A 12 year- old and someone with a PhD. in ecology can both contribute to and edit an article about the science of greenhouse gases. There are no standard checks for accuracy or attempts to represent legitimately differing viewpoints fairly. Sites such as Wikipedia or the Drudge Report are proud of their amateur status raising it to a position of prominence. They treat all contributions to the “largest real estate of knowledge” as though they are of equal merit. Yet how many of us ask our dentist for financial advice or our banker to pull a tooth?




Some of the important ideas in Keen’s book are found in the chapter “Truth and Lies” in which he describes the impact amateur contributions make to sites which appear to be presenting unbiased news. Traditional standards of journalistic ethics and accountability which readers take for granted in print media do not apply to user-generated online content. Keen points out that “Without editors, fact-checkers, administrators, or regulators to monitor what is being posted, we have no one to vouch for the reliability or credibility of the content we read and see on sites like Xanga, Six Apart, Veoh, Yelp, Odeo, and countless others.” It’s not only what we read online that can be inaccurate. What we see in video clips on sites like YouTube isn’t necessarily true either. In a clip shown on the site in September 2006, a trusted German news station appeared to report that the Nazi party had done well in local elections. Many viewers were alarmed. The clip turned out to be a fraud having been produced by an extremist neo-Nazi group as propaganda.

In the real world, anti-defamation and libel laws protect people from attacks on their reputations, but these safeguards are difficult to enforce upon online participants in part because of the anonymity the web affords. Add to this mixture of truth and lies, the fact that advertisers and corporations are now entering the online arena to promote their products by posting reviews written by their staff or by creating websites which appear to be unconnected to the parent company. How can we tell that Suzie Q’s glowing praise for her new vacuum posted on an online shopping site was not posted by the vacuum’s manufacturer? We can’t. Andrew Keen’s book is a reminder that our implicit trust in the responsible use of new technologies is often misplaced. In the 1600s, Rene Descartes wrote: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” In the world of Web 2.0, doubt will be what sets apart those who use the web and those who are used by it.


The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture was written by Andrew Keen and published by Doubleday. The book was reviewed by Scot and Marianne Monaghan, owners of Barking Dog Books and Art at 310 Front Street, Marietta. This review first appeared in the Marietta Register on September 26, 2007.

Llama Mama

What are llamas doing in Marietta, Ohio?

They're the inspiration for Margot Justice's first book, Tails of Windswept Farm. Margot is a retired Registered Nurse who knew she had a children's book just waiting inside of her. When she and her husband purchased a farm in rural southeastern Ohio, Margot filled it with animals of all kinds starting with goats and moving on to the stringy alpacas she called "her flapper girls." The Farm has become home to Harley, Pearly, Guinny, and other furry and feathery creatures which provided the inspiration for this book of stories. The book is available at Barking Dog Books and Art.

Windswept Farm houses a Bed and Breakfast Retreat where guests can visit and learn about its many residents. Margot is delighted to do readings from her book for school groups and others. She can be reached by email at Windswept Farm

Deer Hunting with Jesus - Taking No Prisoners

Deer Hunting with Jesus, Dispatches from America’s Class War by Joe Bageant contains something for everyone to dislike. Bageant, formerly the editor of a military history journal, is described in the jacket notes as a “cult hero among gonzo-journalism junkies and progressives.” The book is often humorous, but humor with an edge - scathing social commentary sparing none.

Bageant is originally from Winchester, a Virginia town still poor and rural despite its proximity to Washington, D.C. He is the first in his family to have attained a higher education and broken with his family’s political and religious roots. This book is an attempt to understand what he sees as the paradox of hard-working, white voters in the American heartland who avidly embrace and support the very people and things which are destroying them. To Bageant, this means the conservative Republican leaders who consistently act against the interests of this heartland constituency, cheap imported goods and the big boxes peddling them, and religion that is anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-culture. Bageant is a proud, self-proclaimed redneck who has come to terms with his roots, but he makes it clear that the working class rednecks he knows and loves are ignorant and suspicious of anyone who isn’t.

According to Bageant, the neo-Conservative Republicans win in the heartland because their message always appears simple and plausible. Whatever the story, it is hammered home relentlessly. Repetition itself lends credibility and talk-radio is one of the most effective tools for this. The neo-Con message inevitably speaks to the unarticulated fears and deep-seated angst of its listeners. Liberal Democrats don’t come off any better. What they have not done says Bageant, is “tread the soil of the Goth - subject themselves to the unwashed working-class America, to that churchgoing, hunting and fishing, Bud Light-drinking, provincial America.” Since Liberals don’t understand, they can’t communicate or worse don’t really try viewing this audience as beneath them. The heartland votes Republican by default. This perception of elitism and snobbery makes the Liberal label the kiss of death in the heartland; and the neo-Cons know it, love it, and use it without mercy even when it’s not the whole truth.

Deer Hunting with Jesus is not only about politics, it is about the fragmentation of society. The book lays bare some uncomfortable truths that challenge our beliefs. One of these ideas is the notion that there exists in America today a class of economic serfs who live in what Bageant has called “the White Ghetto of the Working Poor.” In Winchester “as in many historic towns in eastern America, the ancient brick veneer hides much poverty.” For the working poor in these towns pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is just part of the American myth. How do they react? “Most native hometown kids are not concerned with upward mobility at all. They could give a rip about school, and they care less about what educated upscale people think of them. Working class passivity, antipathy to intellect, and belligerence toward the outside world start early.” The working poor are caught in a system that values them solely as cheap labor. Among those who want to keep them in that position are local businessmen intent on doing whatever it takes “to destroy land-use and zoning codes, bust unions, and generally keep wages low, rents high, and white trash, liberals, and ‘Afroids’ (as one local ... calls them) down.” Real education is the key to breaking this cycle of multi-generational serfdom, but there isn’t much political juice behind that idea anywhere these days.

Another challenge to our assumptions is realization that these people are the Working Poor. For them, work is an obsession and has been for generations. To the redneck, the worst thing you can be is lazy. Work is a source of great pride, and there is little time or opportunity for a life of intellect and culture. This bleak environment is hardly a breeding ground for critical thinking and open-mindedness. As a result, Bageant asserts, “the four cornerstones of the American political psyche are (1) emotion substituted for thought, (2) fear, (3) ignorance, and (4) propaganda.” This is why “millions are spent on sound bites and sloganeering” to create stories “that sound as if they might be true.” If the working poor have dreams and ambition it goes out the “same door that opportunity for a decent education never walks through.” During and after high school, getting a job is not a choice, it’s a matter of survival. Many enlist - another source of great pride. To say that they are being exploited in their low-paying back-breaking jobs sounds to them like an insult. To oppose a war in which their brothers and sisters are serving also sounds like an insult. More fundamentally, however Bageant says, the source of working class anger is “the daily insults they suffer from their employers, from their government, and from more educated fellow Americans ... who quietly disdain working folks.”

Among many other topics Bageant, whose preacher brother casts out demons, discusses religion and the fundamentalist Christian’s “magical thinking;” health care including the very profitable non-profit entities that build fitness spas while decreasing services to the indigent and uninsured; and the right to bear arms and private ownership of guns which he believes actually does reduce crime. The web of myths about the way things are for fewer and fewer of us thanks to globalization, privatization and the need to preserve a culture based on petroleum and television is what Bageant calls the “American hologram.”

This book and its title are not a joke. Its author can easily be labeled a godless, left-wing, manure-stirrer. Assigning labels and dismissing the author and his work is an easy way of avoiding ideas that challenge our assumptions and beliefs. Like curmudgeons everywhere, Bageant would have us wake up and think.

Deer Hunting with Jesus was published by Crown and is available for $25.00. The book was reviewed by Scot and Marianne Monaghan, owners of Barking Dog Books and Art. This review originally appeared in the Marietta Register on August 15, 2007.

Join Us for A Columbus Bookstore Adventure

Calling all Bookhounds!

Join the O'Neill Senior Center and Barking Dog Books and Art for a full day of fun exploring three of Columbus's coolest independent bookstores on Thursday, October 25. Our trip includes a fabulous lunch and a visit to the James Thurber Museum. We leave Marietta at 8 a.m. and return at approximately 6 p.m. Cost is $45 per person. Reservations are required and should be made through the O'Neill Center at 373-3914. The trip is open to all adults.

What is Bookstore Tourism and why is it important? Bookstore tourism was the brainchild of Larry Portzline and started as a grassroots effort to promote independent bookstores which have struggled to compete with the mega-retailers. To learn more about Bookstore Tourism visit The National Council on Bookstore Tourism.

Eating In Ignorance

Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is not for those with faint hearts or weak stomachs. This book is for anyone wishing to understand the niche humans occupy in the food chain; how we choose what to eat, and how our choices affect our bodies, our environment, and our politics. The book is not a manifesto on the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle nor is it a paean to organic foods. Pollan’s aim is more personal: “To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction.”

Because we are a nation of immigrants, our food culture has been in constant flux throughout our history. It didn’t take much persuading for America to become a nation enamored of food fads and diet crazes. Our government established a food pyramid telling us what and how much we should eat; but despite this knowledge, we remain a nation of unhealthy, fat people consumed by the pursuit of eating healthy. A nation with a more stable culture of food would not, Pollan states “be apt to confuse protein bars and food supplements with meals or breakfast cereals with medicines. It probably would not eat a fifth of its meals in cars or feed fully a third of its children at a fast-food outlet every day.” We’re obviously missing something when it comes to understanding food.

Trying to be informed food shoppers has taught us to examine labels for transfats and high sodium content and to buy organic produce and free-range chickens. But what do we really know about our food? Is what we think we know about how food is grown, how it makes its way to our tables, and how it nourishes our bodies an accurate picture of today’s industrial farm and its products?

To help understand the nature of our food, Pollan takes us on a journey that starts with corn and ends with what he calls “The Perfect Meal.” Corn is a natural starting place since its impact on our nation’s grocery shelves is almost without equal. The number of processed foods which contain some form of corn is overwhelming. Of the forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. The development of processed foods was driven by the availability of cheap corn not by demand. Consumers weren’t clamoring for synthetic cheese foods and imaginatively shaped breakfast cereals. As corn became cheaper, the food processing industry came up with clever ways of putting it to work. Read almost any food label and you’ll find at least one of the following substances derived from corn: modified and unmodified starches, citric and lactic acid, glucose, fructose, and maltodextrin, ethanol, sorbitol, mannitol, xanthan gum, corn oil. Complicating food allows a processor to increase the amount consumers have to pay without increasing the amount paid to farmers. As food scientists break new ground in the ability to reduce whole foods like corn into workable parts which can be reassembled into foods containing fake fat, fake starch, and fake sugars, our diets move farther away from real foods produced by farmers with real detriment to our health.

The impact of corn extends to meat as well. Cattle are, by nature, ruminants - they have stomachs to eat grass and process it efficiently. After World War II, USDA policies responded to supplies of cheap corn by encouraging its use in animal feed. Corn-fed, well-marbled meat is what Americans savor, but it is more unhealthy containing more fat and fewer Omega-3 fatty acids than meat from grass-fed cattle. It takes much longer to fatten a cow on grass, but only about 150 days in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation where cows stand on manure three-feet thick and are fed a corn-based diet with antibiotics and other medicines added to avoid the diseases resulting from crowded feeding conditions and weakened digestive systems that corn-based feed produces in cattle. Most of the antibiotics produced in America end up in animal feed.

Is organic better? It all depends. Despite idyllic scenes found on packaging, most organic produce is grown on large farms which resemble their industrial counterparts in many ways. In 1997, bowing to the demands of the growing organic agribusiness, the USDA established a series of regulations governing the organic food industry which permit the use of additives and synthetics. Standards for organic meat and dairy state that cows and chickens must have access to pasture or outdoors. For free-range chickens that requirement is met by two doors in the crowded coop which are only open after the chicks are five weeks old. “Since the birds are slaughtered at seven weeks, free-range turns out to be not so much a lifestyle for these chickens as a two-week vacation option.”

Food produced on small, biodiverse, local farms using organic methods may be our best alternative for several reasons. Current research shows definite health benefits from eating foods raised in environmentally sustainable surroundings. Plants that are not fed a diet of synthetic fertilizers produce more vitamins and antioxidant polyphenols. Organic growing reduces the amount of pesticides and fertilizers added to the environment and its trickle down effect on our bodies.

Cheap goods have hidden costs, and Michael Pollan’s book asks us to consider whether we pay too dear a price for our nightly dinner. When we plant thousands of acres in a monoculture such as corn, we lose biodiversity. When we import fresh asparagus from Chile all year, we forget the implications of increased oil consumption to transport it. If we feel we have little control in an increasingly global economy, we need to realize that what we choose to put on our tables for dinner can become a powerful choice.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, was published by The Penguin Press. This review originally appeared in The Marietta Register on July 25, 2007.

Local Author and Historian: Henry Robert Burke

To say that Henry Burke is a history buff would be an understatement. Mr. Burke lives and breathes local history devoting countless hours to unearthing the little-known stories about the Underground Railroad in Ohio and into researching his family roots. Mr. Burke grew up in Marietta hearing stories about his ancestors, many of whom were among the slaves emancipated by Robert Carter III, in 1791 ( a good book about Carter’s life is The First Emancipator by Andrew Levy.)

Henry maintains his own website here in addition to writing a series of articles about the Underground Railroad for the Marietta Register. The website provides a wealth of information and links about slavery in the southeastern Ohio area.

To bring the stories alive about the Underground Railroad in Washington County, Ohio, Henry has produced a PowerPoint Presentation available on CD which is geared to children and teachers in Grades 4 through 12. Filled with pictures and text showing important sites in the struggle for freedom, the CD helps teachers explain the concept of legal slavery that once existed in the United States and how slaves traveled along the Underground Railroad in their search for freedom. The CD is available through Barking Dog Books and Art for $29.95 plus shipping.

Henry’s latest project has been the Lett Settlement Family Reunion about an area near The Wilds in Ohio which was once home to many of Ohio’s early African-American pioneers. This year a special marker will be erected commemorating the contributions of these early settlers. Visit the official site for all the details:
Lett Settlement Reunion.