new post coming soon

Yes, I am back. I will still be doing music reviews. However, I will also be adding in results from trend research that I am doing now as a graduate student (data mining, Internet research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, prediction of trends.)

The first up will be a couple of graphs from some recent research on this question:

Is America becoming a Torture Culture?

Frankly, I was hoping the answer was "no", but I'm sorry to say that I was apparently wrong.

I have done commentary before regarding American's love of violence. I have made the parallel with the Roman Empire.

But I honestly thought Americans would be against torture.
Most of them still are, but a series of polls (and a slew of very impressive researchers looking at those scientific polls -- these polls were the scientific ones, not the stupid, media or political ones) has shown that a mean of approximately 40% SUPPORT TORTURE!

This is scary. The researchers work also ranked U.S.A. as 9th of 31 countries that were studied/polled for citizen support for torture. As in 9th highest for citizens' support of torture!

The research that I personally and recently did, looked at the use of the word "torture" in blogs and searches. It also looked at the use of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, both sites of American torture and alleged murder of detainees.

Anyway, it was disturbing. It was especially so for me since I was very naive about this, and I also like to stay neutral. But this one is something I have to speak out against.

Anyway, once I figure out how to publish Excell graphs, I will add the graphs that show the trends and give more information about the research.

Internet Research is tricky, so this may not be absolute fact, and of course, even if it is, people can always change. So remember, with any research that looks at opinion, culture or the Internet, take it with a grain of salt. Science needs reproducibility, and a lot of people finding the same results over time and finding those same results through multiple methods. Scientists aren't being wimps when they won't say a definite yes or no --- they are being good, sensible, responsible scientists. So this isn't the last word.

But it is a cautionary one!

Best,
CG