On Tuesday, the 94th southern white rhino was born at the San Diego Safari Park. Her name is Kianga and she is just too cute! Here are some quick facts about the southern white rhino: ● White rhinos are the largest of the five sub-species of rhino. ●●●●●●●●●●● Lab-mate David and I are currently in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at the Wildlife Society Conference. Today was day one of a 2-day Bayesian Inference workshop and the official start of the 4-day conference is Sunday! We are so excited to learn all about what's going on in the wildlife community as well as show them the research we have been working on. Both David and I will be presenting posters of our ongoing research on Monday. We've also already been having fun exploring the city. It's a nice change being somewhere cold!
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I apologize in advance; this post is a little morbid.
Vehicles cause nearly 1.3 million deaths each year but we still drive cars. That is an average of 3,287 deaths a day. I found a lot of numbers thrown around on the internet on various websites citing the CDC and the AAPCC for overdosing and poisoning by acetaminophen (that would be the Tylenol from the middle panel). It is the deadliest over-the-counter medication and hundreds of people misuse and die from acetaminophen annually and it’s still available on shelves everywhere. And, not to mention, if a gun were to have a manufacturing error like the car and medication in the first two panels, it would probably be recalled as well. DISCLAIMER: I am not against better gun regulation. In fact, I am for it. My issue with this political cartoon is not the message it is trying to get across, it is the way in which it is accomplishing it. It is the combination of the panels for which I have issue and for which, I believe, makes for a nonsensical agenda. ●●●●●● Update: Someone on Facebook made an interesting comment trying to stir the pot, “what is the intended use of a gun…?” I don’t know where the artist got the 32,000 deaths statistic so I don’t know if it includes both lawful and unlawful deaths, but whatever your personal definition of the intended use of a gun, the LEGAL use of a gun is NOT mass killings and murder. Either way, that argument was not the intended use of this post. The intended use of this post is to point out the misuse of statistics in making an argument. Yes, 'deaths caused by guns' is a big number and that number should be smaller but it shouldn’t be compared to the number of deaths in a Ford recall.
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