The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Filthy lucre
: Listening to NPR’s report on the Supreme Court decision okaying use of drug-sniffing dogs even when you are not stopped on suspicion of having drugs, I heard this amazing stat: 80 percent of paper currency in the U.S. has traces of drugs. I’m surprised every dollar bill doesn’t curl at the ends.
I’ve heard that before. Makes me sick to think about what else is on that 5.
This is true for cocaine traces, but according to Snopes it has more to do with coke powder’s fineness and the use of counting machines than it does with a nation hoping to bring back Studio 54 one nostril at a time.
To quote Bart Simpson: “Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. fourteen percent of people know that.”
Now we have to add “Fourth Amendment Watch” to “First Amendment Watch.” What happened to “probable cause”? Next the court will start OKing the quartering of British troops in my residence…
I think Homer actually said that.
I also like this one: “Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!”
A character said this on an episode of CSI. I’m still not sure I believe it.
Orange County’s newspaper, The Register, did a study on this a number of years ago. They found that 100% of the 20 dollar bills that they studied had traces of drugs on them. Mostly coke and crystal meth; O.C. is the meth capital of the world.
Pianoman: That brings up an interesting question. Were the bills being studied a random sample of the general population, or just of the newsroom staff?
I’ve always wondered about this stat too. I’m sure it’s not true, or if it is, the reasons for it are generally innocuous and similar to any other exotic substance on currency. I recall seeing a news report where a scientist took money from the reporters wallet and analyzed it for cocaine. Five different bills, all five came back positive. This was supposed to show that cocaine is prevalent on money, but to me it indicated that perhaps the reporter had a drug problem.
Anyone who carries drugs while trying to board a plane is a fool.
You consent to a search in flying. You cannot tell anyone what not to find.
Truely illegal searches have been going on for a long time in other areas:
1] checking you for alcohol intoxication if you are sleeping in your car.
2] searching records beyond tax returns in child support cases via “requests for production”.
3] government concocted scams to bust innocent health care providers where there is no evidence anything was amiss to begin with.
I’m sure there are other examples.