My new novel. It starts with the award-winning, BBC broadcast prologue, "The Orphan and the Mob", and continues with Jude's quest for True Love in Tipperary, Galway, the Aran Islands, and Dublin... Love, death, arson, philosophy, and sex. Starring Jude, an orphan who looks the spit of Leonardo DiCaprio. Except for having two penises. Which makes True Love... complicated.
My first novel, of which I am very fond. The adventures of teenage twin sisters Juno & Juliet, in their first year away from home. Life, love and literature, in Galway and Tipperary.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 12:59AM 
I am a great fan of the meaningless statistic. The New York Times seem to be a great fan of them, too. It certainly prints a lot of them.
The truly great meaningless statistic gives you the very precise, scientific-sounding parts of a real statistic, but the journalist leaves out one vital parameter, so that what's left has no meaning at all.
Here is a gem, from today's New York Times:
"The Center for Urban Forest Research estimates that each tree removes 1.5 pounds of pollutants from the air."
Wow! One point five pounds! They didn't even round it up, or down, to the nearest pound! That is so precise! Er, one point five pounds of pollutants every second? Every day? Every year? Over the course of the tree's life? Which might be what, two hundred years? Five hundred years?
And while we're at it, how big is this urban tree, the one that removes one point five pounds of pollutants from the air every second? Or every five hundred years... Is it a six-inch high bonsai tree in a pot on a window sill? Is it a six- foot sapling on a new housing estate? Is it a hundred foot high oak, in the centre of Central Park?
And what pollutants is this mighty oak, or pot plant, removing with such astonishing speed, or sloth? A pollutant is just a chemical you don't approve of, in a place you don't want it. (Water in your glass is fine. Water in your petrol tank is a pollutant.) Carbon dioxide, for example, is now considered by many to be a greenhouse gas that will destroy the world. So are they counting carbon dioxide as a pollutant? Because trees do little else but remove carbon dioxide from the air. A lettuce could remove one point five pounds of CO2 from the air without even trying very hard. So a hundred foot tree that took five hundred years to do so would be pretty unimpressive. Or do they mean pollutants like lead? A bonsai tree that removed a pound and a half of lead from the air every second would be pretty damn impressive. I'd pay to watch that.
"The Center for Urban Forest Research estimates that each tree removes 1.5 pounds of pollutants from the air."
Jesus Christ.
Reader Comments (4)
Pure what, I have always wondered. Soap is soap. What can be "pure" about it?
By the way, is that a tea cozy on your bonsai?
No, it's a little knitted jacket... I think the original image was used in an ad for Fujitsu air conditioning units. It seemed obliquely right for this post, so I borrowed it from http://www.oneinchpunch.net/ , who borrowed it from who knows where. It was a print ad, so maybe they scanned it. I couldn't find a photographer's credit. (If anyone knows, I'll add it.)
http://www.oneinchpunch.net/2007/09/27/picture-moment-bonsai-sweater/
Yeah, "pure". What an abused word."Natural" is another classic. What isn't natural? And why is natural considered good? "All natural ingredients". Natural like dogshit? Horse flies? Poison mushrooms? Asbestos fibres? Prostate cancer? I mean, narrow it down...
One-quarter what? Cleansing cream comprises 1/4 of the bar? The bar contains 1/4 of an ounce of cleansing cream? 1/4 of a pound? Maybe this is more a case of improper grammar than meaningless statistic; why don't they say "Dove IS one-quarter cleansing cream" if they mean that's what it is? My theory is that the Dove Company does NOT mean that 1/4 of its ingredients are cleansing cream, and so they can't actually say that and instead use some vague term that they hope people are afraid to admit they don't understand.
I have some natural nightshade in my garden, by the way. That must mean it's good to eat. YUM!