How’d you sneak that in so fast, DoF?  Also true enough, leider Gottes.

Politics is answers to a lobbyists questions.

There has been research as to the percentage of prison population that is atheist.

According to the US Federal Bureau of Prisons, in 1997 only 0.21% of the prison population was atheist.  And I believe that this info was gathered from prisoners entering prison, therefore it isn’t tainted by prisoners “finding god” as a means to get past the parole board.

Here are the numbers:

http://holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm

Of course, also keep in mind that responses of “unknown” or no answer at all were simply excluded from the calculation of percentages, so interpret that as you will.

Oh, and how about “Politics is answers overridden by image.”

There seem to be several different sets of numbers floating around the ‘net concerning the percentage of atheists in prison.  The odious Vox Day quoted some figures over at Scott Adams’ blog that purported to show that atheists are overrepresented in prison, to the tune of almost three to one.

I personally suspect (just wild speculation here, take this cum grano salis) that
1) the percentage of “atheists” any poll produces is highly dependent on the precise wording of the questions, and
2) since atheists are, on the average, better educated than believers, and better educated people are underrepresented in prison, it would come as no surprise if we found fewer atheists in prison than believers.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that atheism predisposes to less criminal behavior than theism.  It just means that, if you’re better educated, you’re more likely to be atheistic and more likely to be not in prison.

I have given up reading stats on the Internet that don’t report: a)pop and sample size b)mean, median, mode c)have a referenced citation of who actually conducted the study d)and of course the alpha.  Without these items stats don’t mean shit.

As for believers to nonbelievers in prison.  I would suspect some people who claim to be a certain religion in prison also converted in hopes that God will make their time easier, or for whatever other reason.  I would imagine that both sides are over reported.

I would suspect some people who claim to be a certain religion in prison also converted in hopes that God will make their time easier, or for whatever other reason.

Since I’m incarcerated on Earth for life, I tried that already, but it didn’t work.  She just keeps poking me with her Horn.

“Politics is answers that lobbyists pay for.”
(Elwed, I typed this one before I realized there was a page 2 and saw your “Politics is answers to a lobbyists questions.” Weird, huh?)

“Politics is questions asked by the minority.”

Brock, hats off. Mind if I tack “Politics is answers that lobbyists pay for.” on to my signature?

Brock, weirdness is a many-spendored thing.  Speaking of weirdness- I might as well mention this here, since your signature is from Lincoln.  How many of you knew that two of the most important people of the nineteenth century were born on February 12, 1809?  That’s right- Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin share their birthday.  Needless to mention, the 200th anniversary, on 12.2.2009, will be a gala event, if Christ doesn’t show beforehand.  There’s already a silly wikiquarrel about the seemliness of mentioning the coincidence at all in Darwin’s Wiki entry.  Lord, what fools these mortals be…

Not at all, Elwed.

Interesting, Zilch. I wonder if any losers were born on that day.

You gotta respect Lincoln; if for no other reason than that he legitimized ugly.

Thriceberg: Pardon me, I am off to practice seppuku.

Dude - don’t be so hard on yourself.  You can probably do it with no practice at all. 

Brock: You gotta respect Lincoln; if for no other reason than that he legitimized ugly.

No doubt.  I’ve been meaning to say something about that sig - now that’s funny.

Brock: Interesting, Zilch. I wonder if any losers were born on that day.

Hmm ... being pre-web losers, would anyone have chronicled them?  I suppose not, and I find it sad that so much loser history might be forever lost.  Things are better now, as the wikiquarrel Zilch provided illustrates.  Ah, Vincent, your name shall live on in the annals of loserdom.

Thrice, I deleted your double comment and your apology. No biggie. It happens to us all from time to time.

TAFKA Buzz, it was The Dilbert Principle which I only know because it was the one book by Scott Adams outside of Dilbert collections I’ve read and that part of the book convinced me I didn’t need to read the others.

Elwed. Mind if I tack “Politics is answers that lobbyists pay for.” on to my signature?

Ditto with the hats off, Brock. You nailed it. 

If anyone’s still following the sorry spectacle of PZ Myers and Scott Adams ranting at one another, here’s the latest installment: Adams addresses the issue at his blog with the rhetorical question “Am I Serious?.  The salient point: he doesn’t answer his own question, but merely gleefully lists the answers his readers have speculated.  This corroborates what I (and many others at both Pharyngula and The Dilbert Blog) have been saying:  Adams’ muddled and befuddled musings run the gamut from obvious satire to straightforward speculation about the nature of the universe, all mixed together, so there’s no knowing what he really believes.  And Adams is not telling, so he is a rather unrewarding target for reasoned argument.

Often times (don’t ask me how often - I’m making it up as I go) when there’s serious mixed up with perceived satire the author will have intended serious but is damned glad others have interpreted the possibility of well-hidden satire so he can say it was satire all along if he gets into too big of a black hole with his serious.
It made sense to me. 
i.e. It started off as dead serious.
Others couldn’t believe he was so stupid and interpreted satire.
After trying to slap life into his seriously dead fish he’ll eventually ‘admit’ it was satire all the time.
But I am blaming the big bang for this comment. 

Often times I have a hard time distinguishing the real world we live in, from satire.

This comment is a little late but I just sort of tripped over this site while looking for criticisms of Adams. The thing about this guy is that his political views are generally indefensible so the only thing he can do is play the “ I am a universal cynic” as if that really said anything. IF your cynicism is universal then obviously this attitude should apply to the “cynic” themselves. It’s like the argument used to justify the existence of government by saying that “people are evil and need to be controlled” or whatever. If people are bad then the people at the top are even worse. I agree with some of your commentators that Dilbert is kind of overrated. I liked it at first but the ideas never really get anywhere. It’s all kind of “ I’m above it all so screw all of you “. But if you “don’t care”,etc.,etc., then why bother in the first place?

But if you “don’t care”,etc.,etc., then why bother in the first place?

If this is meant to apply to Scott Adams, I would say that he makes lots of money on Dilbert, and gets his ego (and maybe other things) stroked by myriads of sycophantic fans who show up at his blog.  He may have other reasons as well, but his impenetrable snarkiness makes it impossible to find out.

But don’t listen to me- I’m just a cynic too.

Scott Adams is just a pointy-haired cartoonist.

He has become part of our culture, though.  You can call someone a “pointy-haired” anything and they’ll know what you mean.

The problem with Adams, is the same problem the Freakonomics authors have. They are very intelligent and accurate in their field. Once outside this field, the accuracy and legitimacy declines since people tend to be experts in only one area of interest. But the problem is these people use their sway from the one area to make a point in another area and think they know what they are talking about since they are an expert in that other area. But it turns out they are only an expert in that one area, and should treat information given out in other areas of interest as opinion and not fact.

If what I said made no sense or if the topic seems interesting check out this book…

DOF, you can call someone an “enemy combatant” and they’ll know what you mean. That doesn’t mean that I have to hold the architects of this concept in high regard.

I think “pointy-haired X” is a much more agreed-upon and useful cultural shorthand than “enemy combatant”.  The latter means “terrorist caught by brave troops” to some and “hapless victim of national paranoia gone awry” to others.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear in my last sentence. My use of the word “you” was elliptical .. well sort of. I was referring to Adams there.