Assorted news and links
The Prime Minister made much the same false statement to parliament on 24 Nov, 5 Jan, 12 Jan and 2 Feb. @FullFact have repeatedly requested a correction and the Office for Statistics Regulation have written to his office to ask him to stop.
The claim is important in its own right (it’s that there hundreds of thousands more people in employment now than before the pandemic; in fact there are hundreds of thousands less) but the principle is important too. You can be thrown out of the House of Commons for accusing someone of lying – but not, it seems, for repeatedly making untrue statements?
(More on this story in this week’s @BBCMoreorLess featuring @PuzzlesTheWill.)
More cheerful news is that I have discovered a legendary Washington Post typo. Instead of reporting that President Woodrow Wilson was seen “entertaining” his fiance Edith Galt, the paper wrote that the President was seen “entering” Miss Galt. Oops.
Interesting-looking books are arriving on my pile.
John List @Econ_4_Everyone offers “The Voltage Effect” – about the importance and difficulty of scaling ideas. Slightly unfocused introduction (List is too keen to offer personal anecdotes) but I’m expecting the meat in the intellectual sandwich to be good.
Dan Pink @DanielPink is back with “The Power of Regret“; self-recommending, I look forward to reading it. I doubt Pink has ever written a dull book.
I recently revisited @BioengineerGM Guru Madhavan’s delightful “Think Like an Engineer“, and @DEHEEdgerton’s superb “the Shock of the Old“. Great books.
Norman Rockwell explains the secretive of being creative when you’re feeling blocked, using the “lamppost trick“.
Know that I, too, am proficient in Microsoft Word.
The paperback of The Data Detective was published on 1 February in the US and Canada. Title elsewhere: How To Make The World Add Up.
I’ve set up a storefront on Bookshop in the United States and the United Kingdom. Links to Bookshop and Amazon may generate referral fees.
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Originally posted on: https://timharford.com/2022/02/assorted-news-and-links/