Statistics crack me up... During the Ghana/Italy world cup game today, after Italy scored the first goal, they talked about how they've previously lost games where they were the first goal scorer. They also said that "only 14% of teams that score the first goal go on to lose, so it just shows you how important getting that first goal really is." The commentator was all into this critical stat.

But they made it sound like getting the first goal was more like a random choice, like flipping a coin to choose sides, and whoever got it had a big advantage. But what I think is more likely is that there is a strong correlation between "getting the first goal" and "the team with the better players".

There was a recently a Slashdot article written about how a random phone poll was conducted, and those polled were not that concerned about the recent reports that phone companies had turned over all their call records to the NSA. Someone made a very insightful comment that there is probably a correlation between [people who don't care much about their privacy] and [people who respond to telephone polls]. To put it another way, people who DO care about privacy probably don't participate in telephone polls. To put it even ANOTHER way, 100% of the people polled said that they participate in telelphone polls. Get the idea?

Diana was really the person who opened my eyes to not just reading statistics, but really understanding and questioning the entire issue. Statistics can seem really cut and dry, but often deserve a closer look.

In other news, the progressive-thinkers in Oklahoma have passed a low to make "inappropriate" video games akin to pornography, with regard to displaying and sales to minors. Inappropriate games are ones that "feature glamorized or gratuitous violence" (uh, that's like, half the games right there), and "trivializes the serious nature of realistic violence" (oops, there goes Counterstrike, or any FPS that allows you to reload your game when you die), and "uses brutal weapons designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage" (I guess Doom's chainsaw wasn't a big hit), "or depicts lead characters who resort to violence freely" (So, World of Warcraft will apparently have to include some sort of diplomatic, non-combat solutions to solving quests and getting rewards). Awesome.

I'm certainly not saying that all games are appropriate for all ages. But I AM saying that we already have a non-governmental group, the ESRB, who issues ratings for games, just like the MPAA does for movies. I don't want to get all Big Brother here, but do we really want the government to start rating our movies for us? What about TV shows? Books? News broadcasts?

Luckily, I believe I read that the case isn't over, and since games may or may not be protected by the First Amendment, then states don't have the right to override that. So, we'll see what happens.

Sorry. I guess I had that all bottled up and needed to get it out.