You idiots buzzed WHAT in NYC?

Oh, and I’d like to add http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/g/generalized_anxiety_disorder/stats-country.htm to the mix too

Oh how I wish you lived up to your screen name.

2002

2003

You have an interesting definition of “recent”.

You understand why this is retarded, right? Ultimately we have to take some things on faith, whether that be mathematical or philosophical we still need axioms or ground rules…

One of those should be that I am acting in good faith. Because I am. Although I am extremely angry at the moment with this shit.

Look, anyone have LexisNexis here? That’s the obvious place to look I think.

I have something called ‘factivia’ at work on one of my systems for my job, but I don[t think it does much better than google news.

I still stand by it being ridiculous expecting me to back this stuff up.

Do you even bother to read these pages you’re citing?

US anxiety: 4,318,461 out of 293,655,405 = 1.47%
UK anxiety: 886,333 out of 60,270,708 = 1.47%

Factual claims that are as obvious as you suggest should be easy to cite. If not as obvious (as evidenced by your 20 minutes of research that yielded results from 6 years ago), then be prepared to put up or shut up.

We have no reason whatsoever to believe that you are acting in good faith and take such a claim from you at face value.

Sorry you’re angry. No one’s forcing you to participate in this discussion (or the subsequent hijack you’ve tried to start); feel free to piss off at any time.

When you make a factual claim that is then disputed, the onus is on you to show your work. It doesn’t fly in the real world to say “well, it’s true because I say so, and that’s that” and it doesn’t work here. If you don’t like it, then that sucks for you. There are plenty of other places on the interwebs that don’t have such a high regard for truth and accuracy.

Yep … because based on a cursory examination, not one of the things you’ve linked to says what you think it does.

I agree completely, because you suck so badly at it.

Even if there is evidence that Americans are more paranoid and skittish, as a whole, than any other nation… that’s the sort of thing you complain about when airlines make you take off your socks or throw out your bottled water, not when people get temporarily frightened by random planes flying low over the site of terrorist attacks.

You’re right. I just want to know who exactly was being referred to by the phrase “the lower end of the bell curve.” What segment of society is that supposed to mean? Because, as I said before, in context, it is the same segment of society that is supposedly irrationally worried about a terrorist attack, and so freaked out about the airplanes. And, according to elucidator anyway, it is also a segment of society which is heavily armed.

All A’s are B’s, all B’s are C’s. Remember that logic question from, what, fourth grade? See what I’m getting at?

If the segment of society at the “lower end of the bell curve” is the same segment of society that “is heavily armed,” (as it is according to elucidator) and if it’s the segment of society that is “at the lower end of the bell curve” which is freaked out about the airplanes in New York, then it stands to reason that the segment of society in New York that is freaked out by the airplanes and irrationally worried about terrorism is: criminals, police, and Plaxico Burress.

That doesn’t make sense.

So I ask:

  1. Who does “the lower end of the bell curve” refer to?

  2. Why is this group “heavily armed?”

Welcome to the internet.

Ah, sorry.

To be entirely honest I asked someone in Japan to get the cites for me as I was busy. Having looked at it that page is just an extrapolation from US rates.

Nevertheless there are nowhere near 1/10th of that number of folks in the UK with such problems, so in an odd way it still supports my point.

What? What are you even talking about now?

You’re saying that the 886,333 number is incorrect, since in actuality nowhere near 1/10th of that number of the UK population has such a problem? ie: You’re suggesting that a more accurate number is less than 88,633?

You’re disputing your own cite?

A good point there, thanks

While I still think this was a complete overreaction, I can see why it was taken more seriously than most nonsense alerts now you spell it out like that.

Yes. My cite was no cite at all. I just copied and pasted it from someone I had asked to help me out, who to be fair I mostly hired for her body and penchant for short skirts. Having looked at it myself it’s just an extrapolation of the US rate to every country, which is obviously of no use to anyone for any kind of evidentiary purpose.

I’d like to apologise unreservedly for that, for what it’s worth.

Apology accepted. Can we get back to insulting the idiots who approved this flyover?

And can’t we all focus a bit more on the fact that this is the most hilarious news story of the year so far? Cock-ups on this scale don’t come along very often, we should cherish them.

No time to respond to anything, but thanks for the critical reading – you were exactly correct.

Well, hello, Aldebaran!