Twisted Clichés and Misunderstanding

In the story ─ I didn't write ─

there's a clearing ─ a campfire ─

occupying the cardinals ─ four figures sit ─

Beauty at the North ─ Age at the South ─

Reason at the East ─ and here my analogy breaks ─

for love and every emotion ─ is born in reason ─

seemingly obtuse ─ seemingly irrational ─

ultimately utilitarian ─ perfectly practical ─

in scientific jargon ─ I've captured my moral ─

punctuated equilibrium ─ wave–particle duality ─

nothing mystical ─ no pretense to high artistry ─

HFCS

I've been 'researching' High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) for the past week─ intending to write a blog─ inspired and compelled by information of a dubious feel, propagating through my facebook network.

Honestly, I've felt like I've been banging my head against the wall. Secondary sources along with the echoed, distorted and deliberately twisted opinions & "common" wisdoms abound, freely available on the net. Primary sources, as in the original, peer-reviewed, research articles are not (typically) freely available.

I am fortunate enough to live in a town with a university: I am undecided how I should make use of this resource, for the purpose of a blog. The beauty and power of digital media comes from the novel ability to hyperlink, thereby elevating essays from mere rhetorical theses to a supported syntheses. The inability to link from a blog back to a source, puts a burden of faith on the reader: particularly if the reader lacks access to the source material.

Numbers

I haven't delved deeply into the study of statistics, but I know enough and I feel like I know more than most people.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

That quote is the best place to start. A statistics reduce the world to a relational-quantitative perspective. If I tell you that I have 3 apples, I'm reporting a statistic. If I tell you that I have 1% of the apples from my neighbor's tree, I've reported another statistic and providing you with the information needed to infer that that the yield of my neighbor's tree was 300 apples. If I tell you, 1% of the apples from my neighbor's tree were reported stolen, you might be tempted to guess that I stole them; the numbers match up, 3 were stolen and I have 3 in my possession. That is a coincidence, yielding circumstantial evidence.