Just one question though. Have you made writing this blog as your profession or do you do this in your spare time?

Just curious..

The main point still holds that when someone reports that over 50% of America is “pro-life” it makes it sound as if the majority of Americans want abortion to be illegal, but that isn’t clearly the case because we don’t know exactly what that 53% of middle-ground people think. From a majority-opinion point of view, you can’t make a policy decision from the 51% pro-life statistic because “pro-life” doesn’t correlate with a specific opinion on the legality of abortion.

Of course, I think those with strong opinions on either side would agree that this law should not rest on majority opinion alone. There are strong ethical or moral feelings that guide people’s opinions on abortion (traditionally pro-life because fetuses are fully human from the moment of conception and should be protected by law and me because fetuses aren’t people, women (and men) should have reproductive rights, and it helps control the population). It will be interesting to see how the legal battle continues to develop.

Given those shifts, I’d say it’s a fair assessment to conclude that more people are “pro-life” than “pro-choice”. At least the stats back up that statement.

Now what is causing that shift is a good question to think about. I like the root of your thinking. Maybe those labels don’t quite mean what they used to. I hate being called “pro-life” but I fit the bill. Maybe it’s a “liberal” president that say he’s morally against it but not legally (to interpret and paraphrase).

For so long I’ve been wondering how HP could get away with such “beefy” systems for so cheap. Why the processor and RAM numbers could be so comparable to the MacBook Pros I love and yet be “so much cheaper”. This gives a bit of a hint into it.

Also, HP marketing is all about aesthetics too. Look at their products, Ridgeway’s new HP is a wanna-be MacBook Pro…

Oh well, I guess I‘ll just sit and watch it until it loads.

I mean, it’s not like you’d be playing some sort of cruel April Fool’s joke on us by sending us to links that loop back and forth to each other ad infinitum, right?

Yes, we tend to interpret things within the context of our beliefs and yes, we do tend to seek out people and works that support our existing beliefs, but that’s the point of using tested, reproducible evidence – a belief or a bias doesn’t stand too well in the face of contrary evidence. Sure, evidence can be misinterpreted or misused, but that’s why collaboration with multiple sources is important.

Pharyngula is how I became aware of the story, but I went to an actual news source for details. I chose the other articles for readability and relevance, but they aren’t where I first heard about these concepts.

Pattern Perception:
-Definition
-Wikipedia
-What Is Apophenia?
-Illusory Pattern Perception

Probability and Coincidence:
-Why Coincidences Happen
-Wikipedia
-Why Our Brains Do Not Intuitively Grasp Probabilities

Confirmation Bias:
-Explaination
-A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises
-Wikipedia
-What Is Confirmation Bias?
-Teaching About C.B.

Skeptics Dictionary and About.com on Agnosticism/Atheism, along with Pharyngula. Might you also be “twisting and reinterpreting evidence in order to confirm the beliefs that you already hold?” I’d go further to say we don’t only twist and interpret we CHOOSE what we read to support our beliefs.

Some of us mask it was statistics and science. Some of us don’t.

I believe we agree on this point my friend: I think it’s a horrible tragedy that a plane crashed and people died; yet equally if not more tragic, some person found that an opportunity to push an agenda and attempt to scare people into agreement.