He cites the small fraction of male homicide victims that are killed by their spouses, compared to female homicide victims, completely ignoring the fact that the number of male homicide victims killed by non-spouses is an astronomically high number. This is a point often made here, when discussion leads in that direction.  However, with no information on the context in which Glassner made his point, it's impossible to tell whether he was guilty of statistical sleight-of-hand or not. For some reason, I'm left a little dissatisfied by your review: interesting choice, however. Baba Yaga

For some reason, I'm left a little dissatisfied by your review: Trolls don't make reviews. They copy-paste. DLK http://www.mybluenotes.tk [...]

The most maddening for me was Glassner's tendencies to microscopically expose the statistical slights-of-hand by those who trumpet ills that he considers to be hysterical while a few chapters later, using the exact same techniques to buttress his liberal orthodoxy. For example, he carefully points out that certain categories of increases in crime by children , which he thinks overblown, are presented in terms of % increases rather than absolute numbers (which are small), yet later he uses the exact same strategy to try to prove that few men are killed or injured by their spouses, compared to the other way around. He cites the small fraction of male homicide victims that are killed by their spouses, compared to female homicide victims, completely ignoring the fact that the number of male homicide victims killed by non-spouses is an astronomically high number. Pardon me if I don't get it.  If one is comparing the number of spousal murders, for whatever reason, the number of non-spousal murders would hardly seem relevant. Do you really believe that? Let us suppose, for the sake of discussion, that in a country at war in one year 1 million men and 20 women are killed in war, and in the same year 2000 women and 20,000 men are killed by spouses. Who has the bigger issue with spousal murder, men or women? Who has the lowest *fraction* of deaths caused by spouses? I beg your pardon.  I thought you were referring to the horizontal ratios, rather than the vertical ratios (or vice versa, depending upon how you tabulate the data).  This is an obvious fallacy.  (Please tell me he didn't compare diagonal ratios!). What I meant was that if there was a *legitimate* reason for comparing the 2000 women with the 20,000 men, then the 20 women to 1M men ratio wouldn't be relevant.

On 16 Nov 2003 14:00:52 -0800 in talk.rape Ellen Mercer < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it wrote in message < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [...] The most maddening for me was Glassner's tendencies to microscopically expose the statistical slights-of-hand by those who trumpet ills that he considers to be hysterical while a few chapters later, using the exact same techniques to buttress his liberal orthodoxy. For example, he carefully points out that certain categories of increases in crime by children , which he thinks overblown, are presented in terms of % increases rather than absolute numbers (which are small), yet later he uses the exact same strategy to try to prove that few men are killed or injured by their spouses, compared to the other way around. He cites the small fraction of male homicide victims that are killed by their spouses, compared to female homicide victims, completely ignoring the fact that the number of male homicide victims killed by non-spouses is an astronomically high number. Pardon me if I don't get it.  If one is comparing the number of spousal murders, for whatever reason, the number of non-spousal murders would hardly seem relevant. I think (although I'm not sure) she's saying that while fewer men may be killed by their spouses, significant numbers of men are killed by female intimate partners who are not married to them. Wow, that's quite off from what I was trying to say. Let's take it from the start. Glassner notes that the fear of child criminals is overblown- and I agree. He points out that (I'm going to make up some numbers here, I left the book at work, but the point remains true) there might be (say) 25,000 gun murders in (say) 1997, with (say) 15 of those due to perps under 15 years old. Three years later, there are a sudden surge in childhood murderers and now there are 30 murders due to kids under 15. Again there are 25,000 murders considering all ages of perps. In other words, even with the increase from 15 to 30 child-perp murders, we still have only 30 out 25,000 of all murders caused by kids. Meaning that kids are in fact much less likely to shoot you than is everyone else considered collectively. Glassner correctly points out how the media hystrionics given those kinds of data headlined that there was a 100% increase in murders by kids. There would be massive handwringing, and people would look over their shoulders every time kids are around, fearing that they were going to be the next victims of the epidemic of child murderers. All of that, Glassner appropriately notes, wildly misplaced and inappropriate. But back to the spousal homicide issue. We know that in the rougher neighborhoods in our big cities there are many homicides involving men killing men. Sometimes these murders are related to gang warfare, sometimes they're _link_ed to drug deals, some occur in prisons, etc. This can be a very large number, 10k per year perhaps, at least in the US. These random or gang-related murders rarely tend to involve women, at least compared to the number involving male victims. Just the facts, no interpretation. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that in the year 2000, there were 20,000 guys killed in street violence and 200 guys killed by their spouses. Let's say that at the same time, there were 200 women killed by non-spouses, and also 200 women killed by spouses. (Please don't get hung up on the numbers, I'm making a statistical argument and not using real figures. We could say men and women are equally likely to be killed by spouses . I actually don't know the true ratio, which should have appeared, after all, in Glassner's book given that he directly addressed this topic. Instead, Glassner presented it thusly: only 1% of men were killed by their spouses (200/20,000+200) in my make-believe example), but compare that to *50%* !! of all murdered women (200/200+200) . That is *exactly* what Glassner did. When it suited him to do so, after telling us how crucial it is to use actual numbers to put crime stats in perspective, he used the exact same kind of deceit to keep us from being able to make the relevant comparison. And yes, I believe that he did so deliberately- it is hard to argue that he could have done this by accident. Does this clarify what I'm saying? Hope so. ________________________________ President Bush made a comment a week ago, and he said  'bring it on.' Well, they brought it on, and now my nephew is dead.  

For some reason, I'm left a little dissatisfied by your review: interesting choice, however. You get what you pay for, Baba. I'm proud to have done as well in ~10 minutes and without having spent any time at all in editing. No, it is far from perfect and I especially regret using the liberal shorthand, which was immediately misintrepreted. My bad. ________________________________ A lot of right wing-nuts believe Rush Limburger is a 'political analyst', when in reality he's nothing more than Jerry Springer in a fat suit. -Graham Payne, 8/03

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:26:14 -0800 in talk.rape Mr. X < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it wrote in message <PRStb.3393$ This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it The book sounds like a pathetic rip-off of Michael Moore's book. I'm not sure which of Moore's books you're refering to, but Moore cites Glassner as one of his sources. Yesterday I went to one of the big chain bookstores to pick up a few new ones- and saw, to my surprise, that The Culture of Fear was prominently displayed face forward. One big difference with the copy I had stood out right away: right at the top, Michael Moore's references to Glassner's book in Bowling for Columbine was prominently displayed. So I think we've established who came first. ______________________________   The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.