About Me

Where's my home? No idea but this world feels like a cool place to call home.
Unfocused postings on whatever catches my attention, makes me think or demands that I point and shoot.

My Other Sites
TwitterFacebookLinkedInFlickr
Tags
Archive
2011 (55)
2010 (481)
2009 (87)
Filed under

drugs

See all posts on posterous with this tag ยป
 

Crack Kills Innocents

Large_cracksun

The drug problem in Mexico is now main news and the death toll is beyond belief.

Since Mexico's new President came in to power three years ago, there have been over 18,000 deaths.

The US has placed Mexico in the same bracket as Pakistan as countries most at risk of becoming "failed states". Yet the funds going to Mexico to help support the fight against drug crime is a pittance.

This article in the British Times by Michael Reid of the Economist, is a good primer http://bit.ly/bicLv7

Filed under  //  current affairs   drugs   mexico  
Posted
 

Shocking Statistics

Untitled

Richard McCabe - Publicis Singapore - reminded me of the story about the traces of cocaine found in British pound notes (99.9% of notes were found to have traces of cocaine according to researchers).

I remembered a similar study done in the States, where the trace level was at 90%.

This is shocking, or is it?

After doing some searching, I found this great article in the New Scientist that makes me more shocked by the study than the results http://bit.ly/7ErkKX.

In this article they state that the first round of testing was done with a total of 30 notes and then the latest round was done with just 234 bank notes.

I'm no statistician but that sounds like a really low number to substantiate such a bold claim.

My father once recommended a great book to me on statistics - I remember the first line in the book to this day "There are three types of lie - lies, damn lies and statistics."

How true...

Filed under  //  drugs   statistics  
Posted