ADDED: This is probably the best of the articles on the subject, at BBC.com, even though it contains material that doesn't make any sense to me:
In a tongue-in-cheek article, Washington Post journalist Philip Bump did some calculations around Donald Jr's statement, using data showing that the annual chance that an American would be murdered by a foreign-born terrorist was 1 in 3,609,709.A Skittle is about the volume of a quarter teaspoon. There are 3,043,261,440 quarter teaspoons in 1.5 Olympic swimming pools. So Bump seems off by a factor of 10. But even that is assuming that the terrorists are already mixed into the general populace. In Donald J. Trump Jr.'s bowl of Skittles, the bowl represents a set of would-be immigrants, 3 of whom could be terrorists. Junior's point is you'd reject the whole bowl if you knew there were 3 poison Skittles in it, no matter how much you love Skittles.
Based on his sums, it would take about one and a half Olympic swimming pools of Skittles in order to find three killers.
If the 3 Skittles were already in the the swimming pool full of Skittles, would you reject the swimming pool? That's a nonsensical question — not because the proportion is different — but because the swimming pool represents everyone in America. You can't reject the entire populace. It might make some sense — though it's not what Junior is talking about — to say you'd refuse to eat any of the purple Skittles in the swimming pool if you knew the 3 poison Skittles were purple, but you wouldn't sort through the whole swimming pool to find the all the purple Skittles and remove them. You'd just limit your eating to the non-purple Skittles.
But the fact is, we're not doing anything toward the people already in the populace that corresponds to eating the Skittles. They are just here, getting along, living their lives, until they do something that warrants attention from the authorities.
Junior's analogy has to do with rejecting adding new people to the existing populace. His point of view is: What good or ill potential is there for those of us who are already here? He's saying: We're not letting new people in for their good, but for ours. And that fits generally with the Trump position: Getting the best deal for America. What's in it for us?
Understanding the bowl-of-Skittles metaphor in that light shows the trouble: We the Americans are the people and those on the outside are just objects — lightweight throwaways to consume or toss like a piece of candy. Even if you do support Trump's idea of excluding certain sets of people, you don't have to disrespect their humanity and that's what Skittles sounds like. I know there are many people-are-food metaphors that are nice...
... but the context here is not nice, and it would be better to exhibit simple humanity.
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108 comments:
Analogies are racist.
Putting aside the Travyon Martin connection (weak) and the scale problem, what is wrong with this analogy? We have no duty to accept any immigrants into this country. And I will remind everyone that the refugee crisis (millions!) was created by the failed policies of Obama and Clinton.
That is a good metaphor. The Pure Food and Drug Act as about mandated extreme vetting and a real boundary wall.
OK, now you've gone and triggered me. I carry a bag of skittles wherever I go, and I once opened a fresh bag and poured five skittles into my hand. All five were purple! The rest of the bag had the usual assortment of colors.
The odds of that happening, I think, are about 1/625 (there are five Skittles colors, and after you draw the first Skittle, you multiply by 5 each time). Maybe I'm wrong. This math assumes an infinite supply of Skittles in the sample, of course.
Anyway, life is not that much like a bag of Skittles. It's more like a buffet at a wedding reception. The sushi might kill you.
The media has decided, at this moment, that analogies are unacceptable for situations involving people.
"OK, now you've gone and triggered me. I carry a bag of skittles wherever I go, and I once opened a fresh bag and poured five skittles into my hand. All five were purple! The rest of the bag had the usual assortment of colors."
You wrote that before I put up the added section referring to purple skittles.
I used purple because in my Skittles-eating days, I rejected the purple ones. Couldn't reject them in the dark, however, and they were otherwise an excellent candy to eat at the movies.
You're so sweet, Ann, I could just eat you up.
Internet-feminists have been using the exact same analogy (except with M&Ms instead of Skittles) for years to describe men in general. (Most are fine; some are rapists.)
If you determined that the problems were only caused by purple skittles and purple skittles were 1% of the total skittles population, you would focus 99% of your attention on the 1% that cause problems and 1% of your attention on the 99% that doesn't cause problems.
Additionally, you might suggest to the majority of the 1% that are purple skittles who claim innocence that they might speak out consistently and loudly against the problem-causers in their midst. Also, you might suggest to this heretofore silent majority of the 1% that instead of sending all that money back to the purple skittle land of their ancestors that they might take 10% of it and pay for an advertising campaign to criticize the problem-causing purple skittles among them.
How many Skittles are Blacks being murdered by White police officers?
To get back to the warning that I received. You may take it with however many grains of salt that you wish. That the purple skittles that are circulating around us aren't too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. Of course it's your own trip. So be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, ok?"
Althouse has now applied more rigorous thought to Trump's skittles metaphor than the entire USA press. The studious obtuseness of the media elite is annoying. On the one hand employing calculus to determine the ratio of good to bad skittles in a hypothetical rant of dubious import, and on the other declaring Hillary to be a "fashion icon" for dressing like a color-blind Kim Jung Il.
The media have no shame and no morals.
I invoke the Tu Quoque Argument that Trump's kid isn't any more of an idiot than Clinton's.
We have no duty to accept any immigrants into this country.
C'mon Dave. Give me a break! The governor of Minnesota just lectured us on the fact that native born Minnesotans have no moral claim to the land over foreigners. Anyone from anywhere in the world has a right to immigrate here. That's what he said. That's what the DFL and DNC believe.
Now are you insinuating you're smarter than Dayton Hudson -- or whatever his name is?
Nice metaphor - until the bad guys get a hold of better weapons.
Like maybe a nuclear weapon or biological weapon.
Or an airplane.
I don't know about the appropriateness of the analogy, but I truly believe that purple Skittles are an abomination.
You don't deny their humanity. Let them make their own best deals while Americans make their own best deals. If there's an overlap where both sides come out ahead, then they come in.
If not, not. They go elsewhere.
It's not about humanity but voluntary trades in general. They happen when both sides come out ahead, not where one side comes out ahead.
Washington Post journalist Philip Bump did some calculations around Donald Jr's statement, using data showing that the annual chance that an American would be murdered by a foreign-born terrorist was 1 in 3,609,709.
Bump should write a series of articles, using the same analogy on other phenomena.
The next article in the series could be about the number of Skittles that represent the number of Blacks murdered by White police officers.
Does anyone think that The Washington Post would publish such an article?
I like that Donald Trump introduces his audiences to the parents of citizens who have been killed by illegal immigrants. The grief of such parents is ignored by The Washington Post -- in particular by its journalists such as Philip Bump.
It only took 9 people (Skittles) to take down the Twin Towers and hit the Pentagon. That's Don Jr's point.
Also...one major problem with the analogy is the individual nature of the decision to eat a handful of Skittles that may or may not be poisoned. The reality is that, to extend the analogy, the people (government or otherwise) who choose to allow potentially dangerous citizens in our country are effectively ramming the Skittles down our throats.
The Great Skedaddle is Obama's specialty.It also got started because a blue eyed Presbyterian leader convinced his countrymen to stand like a stone wall.
Only about 3,000 people were murdered on 9//11.
That's less than one on 100,000 people living in the USA.
He injected the factor of "annual" to make the odds seem way higher.
If we take the 911 death count alone, the odds of being killed by foreign born terrorist is one in 103,333 [approximate US population in 2001 of 310,000,000 divided by 3,000 deaths on 9/11/2001].
So typical liberal media is twisting facts to suit their narrative.
Hershey-ets didn't make it. Lazlo Toth sent a complain letter about a defective Hershey-et, calling it an M&M.
Reply
Dear Mr. Toth
We regret that one of our HERSHEY-ETS you recently received was imperfect. Mr. Mohler, our President, has asked me to reply.
Our products are processed and handled by the most mdern methods known to the industry. We subject them to both mechanical and visual inspections and take special precautions to assure that they leave our plants in perfect condition. In the case of the improperly molded HERSHEY-ET you received our efforts at perfection apparently failed.
We appreciate your bringing this matter to our attention, and I want you to know that our Quality Assurance Staff will intensify its efforts to maintain perfection in our products.
I am sending you some chocolate which we hope will serve to restore your faith in our products. If this chocolate is damaged in the mail, please inform us so we can try again.
Very truly yours,
I see he conveniently does not count the killing done by the children of people who came here as refugees.
That definitely is not the definitive version of My Boy Lollipop. On the other hand, it wasn't lip synced so Millie Small didn't betray the American public........I heard somewhere that the body count this year is sixty three dead Americans. I'm not sure of the total number of maimed or wounded. If this many Muslim immigrants had been killed or wounded by Trump supporters, I wonder if the WP analogy would hold up.
If you have a bowl of rabbit droppings, and you know three of them are poisoned, do you take a handful to eat?
No. You don't need rabbit droppings. You've got perfectly good raisenettes.
Can't this same logic and statistics be use for the chances of having your child accidentally killed by a drive by shooter? Those mothers who have experienced their child's head exploding all over their strollers should just shut up.
Only fools believe the world isn't a dangerous place even without importing it.
The Federal government continually proves it's incompetent in establishing and enforcing an immigration policy that protects and enhances our nation.
How many more of these people are living next to us who have travelled back and forth to the M.E. without raising the attention of ICE and JTTF? They do not know.
It's time for us to demand a government that derives its powers from the consent of the governed. That is no longer the case.
In a tongue-in-cheek article, Washington Post journalist Philip Bump did some calculations around Donald Jr's statement, using data showing that the annual chance that an American would be murdered by a foreign-born terrorist was 1 in 3,609,709."
In a tongue-in-cheek article Bump confessed to buying Lotto tickets even though the odds of winning are lower.
Is it true Skittles were invented by dentists?
Donald Trump Jr. implies that hundreds of the refugees that have been invited to settle in the United States — refugees who left their homes with their families to escape the threat of the Islamic State or the Syrian regime — are a deadly risk to Americans.
This is a lie. He implies no such thing. He implies, correctly, that some people who wish to do the US harm will try to pretend to be refugees.
There are 7 billion skittles in the world, they can't all come here.
Half the problem is he used the trigger word "Skittles"--he should have gone with just generic "jelly beans."
I wonder how many people pushing this concept oppose GMOs?
The President won't even tell us where or when these refugees are settled here.
How fucked up is that?
Or is it more fucked up that we just allow it to continue unabated? Not sure.
"My Boy Lollipop" was Rush Limbaugh's theme song for Barney Frank.
I follow Junior on twitter. He's a feisty, red meat-throwing, fun follow. I saw this tweet go by -- just the middle of the picture, which looked like some m&m tweet to me -- and didn't click through. Did he go too far? Probably.
But...Obama has just announced he's letting in 110,000 Syrian refugees regardless of the wishes of the American people, regardless of the popularity of the immigration issue in this election, and regardless of terror attacks. He's an elite who's decided he knows better. This is so frustrating that people are talking about taking up arms to fight back, as democracy is completely ignored. A tactless Skittles comment is what happens when reasoned discussion has been denied. And violence-porn pictures of children as the counter-argument just hardens my resolve.
@Lyssa is correct and said what I was going to. Back in the day, #yesallwomen was trending, and people tried to say "hey, #notallmen are sexists and rapists" and the internet feminists were NOT having it.
Thus the "if there was a bowl of m&m's and 7 of them were poisoned, would you expect me to just eat from the bowl"?
Here's the thing - every time you have Muslims committing terrorism, all the usual suspects rush in to point out that most Muslims aren't terrorists. It's just a few bad apples (or Skittles). Junior's point is that even a small percentage of bad actors can cause a lot of problems when you're bringing in millions. Not that diffucult to grasp.
It is MY (our)bowl of candy (or pool of skittles) and I (we) get to decide what kind of candy I (we) want to have in the bowl.
Not only poison candy do I wish to avoid that will kill me outright, I also prefer my bowl of candy to not be contaminated with diseases like TB or Leprosy that take years to kill.
Mr Bump can go get his own bowl of candy and keep his sticky fingers out of mine.
But it's really kinda like the old gangster in "Casino" said. Everybody had nothing but praise for the Teamsters guy but "Why take a chance"
And yes, the coordinated media freakout that erupts every time Trump or one his surrogates uses analogies, sarcasm or any other form of non-literal speaking is interesting. They seem deathly afraid of the power of figurative speech.
Forrest Bump's mama declared that life is like a box of chocolates. Sometimes you get coconut.
If you are a man and three women out of a hundred had a venereal disease would you still have sex?
I mean: still have sex with women?
Or would the 'Bad Skittles' make you gay?
Although gay men can have venereal diseases, too.
So maybe you're just screwed.
Either way.
I am The Replacement Laslo.
The reaction of the pro-Clinton media (but I repeat myself) to this statement, like their reaction to Tromp calling the New York bomb a "bomb", convinces me that the media know that Hillary! is in deep trouble -- worse than the publicly released polls show -- and are desperate to try to help her.
MN Gov. Mark Dayton's remarks remind me of an old Noel Coward song
"Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans"
I'm eating Lindt 90% cocoa chocolate right now.
Is it because of Twitter that the entire left wing has the ability to simultaneously become outraged as one over something completely innocuous? Like "binders full of women," which I still don't understand the problem with.
I don't understand why Skittles came to represent Trayvon Martin's innocence, either. What, is there some rule that says that you can break any law you want, assault anyone without repercussion as long as you have Skittles in your possession? Why does buying Skittles make you automatically a good guy? Makes no sense, but half the country takes it for granted somehow.
I can't believe we're talking about this. The Coastal Media Elite has lost their collective minds.
Skittle outrage.
We just had a guy plant four bombs in NY and NJ and another guy stab a bunch of people in Minn, but Skittles.
I like coconut.
"refugees who left their homes with their families to escape.. "
Which we have noticed that more than 70% of them are young, healthy males, not from Syria. UN even admitted as much.
Most are 'migrants', from N Africa and the greater middle east, shopping for the best welfare.
I can't believe we're talking about this. The Coastal Media Elite has lost their collective minds.
Somebody, I forget their name, observed recently that journalists these days are all dumb rich kids. If you're rich and your kid is smart, you send him to law school. If he is a bit of a dim bulb then off to J-school with him.
If you handed me a bag of Skittles and told me that there was a 1 in 3.6 million chance that at least one of the candies inside that bag was poisoned, I would hand that bag back.
That "1 in 3.6 million" meme must be cold comfort to the parent, friend, and surviving partners of the 49 people murdered by Omar Mateen in Orlando.
It's not a [class] diversity scheme. Principles (i.e. "content of character") matter.
It's a problem with the Pro-Choice (i.e. selective or opportunistic) quasi-religion. The class diversitists miss the individual, the baby, etc. for the "skin-color" constructed class.
We just had a guy plant four bombs in NY and NJ and another guy stab a bunch of people in Minn, but Skittles.
At this point I'm going to surprised if Trump doesn't win.
This is a meme election. Donald Jr was referencing a feminist meme from two years ago in which men who might be rapists were compared to poisoned M&Ms. Christina Sommers did a video about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvcAtNJTls
Reference at 0:30
"the annual chance that an American would be murdered by a foreign-born terrorist was 1 in 3,609,709."
What does this mean? Each American has a 1:3,609,709 chance of being murdered in a given year? If so, that is about 100 extra murders per year. My chances of being one of them is low, but still that is a lot of innocent Americans who have to die for the sake of refugees.
Does it mean that there is a 1:3,609,709 of any American dying in a given year? If so, I like those odds.
I think the key word here is "an" v. "any". It really changes the mathematical meaning.
Putting aside the Travyon Martin connection (weak) and the scale problem, what is wrong with this analogy? We have no duty to accept any immigrants into this country. And I will remind everyone that the refugee crisis (millions!) was created by the failed policies of Obama and Clinton.
These analogies never seem to slow down environmentalists, who demand strict laws governing parts per billion of a wide array of things.
Washington Post journalist Philip Bump did some calculations around Donald Jr's statement, using data showing that the annual chance that an American would be murdered by a foreign-born terrorist was 1 in 3,609,709.
Why do people trust the mathematical skills of journalist?
Are we going to talk about how ballsy it is for anyone from the Obama administration to fuss over someone crossing an imaginary line with regard to Syria.
First, the lefties always exclude 9/11 from their "terrorism is so rare" diatribes, instead using some sort of "average annual since 9/11" calc. So yeah, exclude the biggest attack - that's totally legit.
I didn't read Don Jr.'s original tweet, but I don't really care for the analogy anyway. The point is that we shouldn't be spending $65,000 or more to bring each refuge here, when the same $$ could house and care for a dozen refugees in Turkey or some other closer place. America does not WANT or NEED mass Muslim immigration. The ordinary people - you know, the voters - overwhelmingly reject the idea, and yet the politicians of both major parties just don't care. Americans are, in the main, a generous people and there's a lot we can do to help these folks that does not involve importing them and their problems.
Also, in light of the IG report showing that 800 or so people who should have been removed were instead naturalized, there's no reason for citizens to have any confidence in the government's ability to vet these people.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/19/more-than-800-immigrants-mistakenly-granted-citizenship.html
@dbp
Yeah, the argument seems to be that, "sure some people are going to die because we are admitting refugees, but the odds of it being you are really low, so don't worry about it. And vote Democrat."
Like I said, it will only be surprising if Trump didn't win. You know, Hispanics and Blacks don't want to get blown up or stabbed at random or shot down in a nightclub any more than white people.
As someone touched on above, Trump needs to redirect those having the vapors, that if it weren't for Bill preferring to be blown over doing anything about Bin Laden when given the chance, and Hillary f*ckng up the middle east for personal gain, we wouldn't be talking about Skittles.
As for the refugee crises, they are a coverup of consequences from premature withdrawal, progressive wars, social justice adventurism, anti-native policies, and mass abortion. Violent regime changes, reset the cold war, bringing reformed dictators (and American ambassadors) to justice through sodomy sessions and abortion only exacerbated their progress. Immigration policies (e.g. DREAM Act) without emigration reform condoned and enabled dysfunction and corruption in second and third-world nations. Also, abortion rites (e.g. one-child, selective-child) debases the value of human life in the privacy of abortion chambers, Planned Parenthood labs, and throughout the world.
The Skittle thing is dumb. Both the ad and the outrage/vapors about the ad.
Math is hard. 3,043,261,440 divided by 3,609,709 is 1,000. He's off by a factor of 1,000 Instead of a pool, it's a bath tub. Doing the yearly chances is also a statistical trick. You don't do odds of dying from cancer this year, you do odds of dying from cancer period. The real question should be what are the chances of your life being cut short. Assuming a average 40 year remaining life span, the formula is 1-(1-1/3,609,709)^40 (the chances of not being killed for 40 consecutive years subtracted from 100%) or about 1 in 90,243. If you add one maimed for each kill, the odds of not being affected by terrorism go to 1 in 45,121. If you increase the number of potential terrorists by only 20% it becomes 1 in 75,202. Both of those are starting to get to where we do recall on cars.
The question is why increase the odds?
Your lurking math major.
I can't help it. When I think of Skittles, I think of Marshawn Lynch.
Taste the rainbow.
SOPHISTRY: the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving. I am not sure why Ann expended the energy to read or post this. This is a classic of SOPHISTRY.
Someone run the number of Skittles that are raping Swedish and German women. Such an analogy over there would be a hate crime.
Question asked:
Why do people trust the mathematical skills of journalist?
And answered:
Math is hard. 3,043,261,440 divided by 3,609,709 is 1,000. He's off by a factor of 1,000 Instead of a pool, it's a bath tub.
Your chance of being harmed by a terrorist is certainly remote, but if you are harmed, then you should feel that more should have been done. Your chance of having a bad flu is extremely remote, but you still get a flu shot, same goes for polio and other diseases. The fact is that we are not obligated to accept Muslims into our society until they prove themselves to be worthy. So far, they have not.
If you can't make"people are food" analogies, what kind of "people are" analogies can you make?
All this jibber jabber about Skittles (where the only important question is did someone replace some of the Skittles with M&Ms, which is truly evil) skates over the only important question here--is there something we can do within reason that would reduce the chances of future terrorist attacks? Not just from people coming into the country, but homegrown terrorists--because the majority of recent attacks (not even counting mass shootings, which are even more frequent than "terror" attacks) have been done by people born here.
Still, there's potential for a terrorist from abroad to get in here to do their deeds, so what can we do in terms of vetting that we don't do already? What would work, specifically? Drop the argument about what's "offensive" for a minute--what actually works? I've heard we have to "vet" more--ok, what sort of vetting? Check with official records of origin country? Check with our own intelligence services? Check other references?
And what do we do about those already here? Or, what do we do that we're not doing already?
Those are the only questions we need to ask. Whether a solution is "offensive" matters less than whether it would work. Though when it's all said and done, no system is perfect, and in a free country of our size with as much modern know-how freely available, more attacks are investable no matter what we do.
Headline: "Son of Presidential Candidate X makes an analogy about illegal immigrants who commit terror in America. The analogy though is inapt! -- story at 11:00"
I give a resounding yawn.
Funny, but this same analogy was on facebook MONTHS ago using M & M's and said you have a handful of M & M's, and 10 are poison...would you still eat them?? I fear there is some plagiarism going on!! haha!!
Just finished reading a few of the comments to the article. If Trump wins Hillary's supporters will go insane. I really do think there will be rioting. Which will be reported as justified due to Trump's horrible racism. And suddenly there will be a homeless person problem again.
You can't use the skittle volume directly. If you assume the skittles are randomly packed, about 1/3 of the pool will be air. SO he is off by a factor of 15.
He is off not by a factor of 10 but 1,000. He gave an answer at 3 billion, which is 1,000 times more than 3 million.
Math is hard!
Old Man Rick: "...Your lurking math major." Nicely done.
The left rushes out to defend Muslims. Yet, the KKK has much the same beliefs as the Muslims with far less of the terrorism, so why do they not give equal treatment?
holdfast said...The ordinary people - you know, the voters - overwhelmingly reject the idea, and yet the politicians of both major parties just don't care. Americans are, in the main, a generous people and there's a lot we can do to help these folks that does not involve importing them and their problems.
The 'elites' don't care about Americans or these people and their problems. The whole point is that by changing the demographics, they can fundamentally change our republic. Where the power shifts from the people, to them, the Ruling Class. Thus the open borders to those born and bred that government is the source for everything third worlders, while signing them up for all sorts of welfare programs, to ensure their loyalty.
We're already at the tipping point. The majority of democrat voters view socialism as a positive. Bring in more democrat voters, voila!
OT, for sure, but is anyone else concerned about this?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/an-internet-giveaway-to-the-u-n-1472421165
Ron Winkleheimer said...
"Just finished reading a few of the comments to the article. If Trump wins Hillary's supporters will go insane. I really do think there will be rioting"
Simple answer, rubber bullets.
The left rushes out to defend Muslims. Yet, the KKK has much the same beliefs as the Muslims with far less of the terrorism, so why do they not give equal treatment?
And they were also Democrats.
Oh dear God, the willful literal-mindedness on display here from the skittles-critics. As if they'd have any problem with a skittle analogy if it were illustrating a policy of exclusion/proscription that they supported.
And willful obtuseness: ...those on the outside are just objects — lightweight throwaways to consume or toss like a piece of candy. *Bit* of a stretch here, no? Or are mentally-ill grievance-mongers taking up so much media space these days that they're infecting the non-batshit with their virulent mawkishness?
Paraphrasing something I read recently ...
Do you really want to find out how much merde can you put in milkshake?
I don't like the comparison to Skittles, but if it's being used, I wouldn't limit my concern to how many Skittles were going to kill other Skittles. I'd also want to know how many Skittles would be groping the other Skittles in the pool. But this is about eating the people Skittles? I'm definitely anti-cannibalism, so I don't think any of the people Skittles; criminal, poisonous, or otherwise; should be eaten. Even if they aren't people Skittles, I'm against eating candy out of a pool. That's a terrible way to serve it.
Don't eat the refugees. Even if they aren't poisonous, eating them shouldn't be under discussion. That's terrible.
When people are not communicating in good faith (which is always in politics), you can't use any analogy successfully. Saving grace: at least he went with skittles so no one could call him racist over the brown M&Ms
Andrew,
I am sure the rioting of 20 people can be handled.
Trump Jr, as his father, have a position that Americans should not be sacrificed, individuals should not be lost to [class] diversity (i.e. "skin color-based judgment), and that each "garden" (e.g. nation) should be tended (e.g. economic revitalization). They may even be concerned about alien people in alien lands and emigration reform.
compares refugees to delicious candy, not cockroaches or vermin; still gets slammed
The main problem with the Bump article is the limiting of the analysis to a given year. I could just as easily taken the last 16 years and got a more favorable analysis for junior, or a less favorable one taking, for example, 2009. In other words, I am unlikely to die in the coming year (probably less than 3%), and am about 99% sure to do so by 2066.
And, seriously, the BBC thing is hilarious. Guess they don't teach math to journalists.
Anyone remember the 1982 Tylenol poisonings? 7 people died in the Chicago area by taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. According to Wikipedia, there were 31,000,000 bottles of Tylenol on the shelves nationwide. The photo of the bottle containing the poisoned capsules shows it contained 50 capsules; nationwide a total of 1.5 billion capsules. A total of 8 bottles contained the poison.
Even though the poisoning was localized to Chicago, the poisonings were publicized across the country and people tossed Tylenol and stopped buying it.
Johnson & Johnson's response was not to say the chances of getting a poisoned pill was so low as not to necessitate any changes (7 pills out of 1.5 billion, or 8 bottles out of 31 million); rather they recalled all the Tylenol and changed their packaging (and the US government instituted anti-tampering laws).
J&J is lauded for their responsible reaction to this.
I think the response to this Tylenol incident is a analogy.
1 in 3.64 billion is the risk to an American of being killed by a refugee in a terror attack.
1 in 3.6 million is the (rounded for clarity) annual chance that an American would be murdered in a terrorist attack carried out by a foreign-born terrorist.
This isn't a math error on the part of "elite journalists," but a reading comprehension error on the part of a minority of their readers.
Refugees are a sub-set of the overall population of foreign-born terrorists, which are in turn a subset of the overall population of immigrants.
"Even if you do support Trump's idea of excluding certain sets of people, you don't have to disrespect their humanity and that's what Skittles sounds like."
"Disrespect their humanity?" Good lord, you can't be serious! Clearly, young Trump and his audience know that people are not Skittles, but by all means, Professor, let's join the fatuousness.
As for Bump's calculations, math aside, unless he can predict the future and fully understands the relationship between Islam and jihad, they are meaningless.
To expand Damikesc's earlier inquiry: Why would people trust a journalist's predictive skills or his knowledge of the subject matter?
It isn't the fear of being killed or injured in a terrorist attack that drives most of us toward extreme vetting practices and exclusionary immigration policies. It is the fear of seeing what is happening to Europe happen here.
A Skittle is about the volume of a quarter teaspoon. There are 3,043,261,440 quarter teaspoons in 1.5 Olympic swimming pools. So Bump seems off by a factor of 10. But even that is assuming that the terrorists are already mixed into the general populace.
The big numbers come from the fact that there are a lot of Americans. The point he's really making is that there are so many Americans, we shouldn't mind losing a few.
A very large part of the point, Ann, is that you are too fat and should be dieting and definitely don't need any more Skittles, poisoned or not.
It isn't the fear of being killed or injured in a terrorist attack that drives most of us toward extreme vetting practices and exclusionary immigration policies. It is the fear of seeing what is happening to Europe happen here.
Exactly.
And Skittles don't have a right to jump down your throat and get caught in your teeth. Delicious as they are.
Thank you, Ann, for actually engaging with Trump, Jr.'s point.
Most of the liberal response I've seen has been along the lines of, "How dare you compare suffering refugees to Skittles. You're robbing them of their personhood" or "their agency" or "you're dressing then in Skittleface" or something.
I used to be a #NeverTrump -- in fact, I probably disagree with Trump, Jr. on this point -- but that kind of argumentation is pushing me ever closer to the Trump lever.
"you're dressing then[m] in Skittleface"
Was that a genuine liberal response? I would not have credited them with that much humor.
I think it is simple. Same comparison. 20 Skittles in a bag, 3 have cyanide in them (remember tylenol). 20 people in a room waiting to get in US, 3 have bombs strapped to chest they will set them off. Eat a handful, the odds go up with every dip or walk in room with the people one thing though if you eat them, you die, If you walk in room, the bombs will kill more, including you. I threw the tylenol away. Hey did you see how Japan handles its refugees? Go look.
GO Brexit. Sovereignty with trade. Be proud and independent not embarrassed and dependent.
I think it is simple. Same comparison. 20 Skittles in a bag, 3 have cyanide in them (remember tylenol). 20 people in a room waiting to get in US, 3 have bombs strapped to chest they will set them off. Eat a handful, the odds go up with every dip or walk in room with the people one thing though if you eat them, you die, If you walk in room, the bombs will kill more, including you. I threw the tylenol away. Hey did you see how Japan handles its refugees? Go look.
GO Brexit. Sovereignty with trade. Be proud and independent not embarrassed and dependent.
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