I know I’m probably going overboard with my Malcolm Gladwell reading suggestions, but I really enjoyed his take on an aspect of the Duke Lacrosse “scandal” that I hadn’t really considered. It would be nice if any news outlet actually delved into these interesting details, but it really is too much to ask, apparently.

Anyway, Gladwell cites studies that show how challenging the use of eyewitness testimony can be. Surprisingly, eyewitness testimony becomes less reliable when it crosses racial lines:

But the Duke case is an example of another, even more problematic aspect of eyewitness identifications, and that is that we aren’t particular good at making them across races. There is a huge amount of psychological research in their area, pioneered by Roy Malpass at the University of Texas at El Paso. A few years ago, John Brigham and Christian Meissner did a big meta-analysis of all of the cross-racial identification studies and concluded that given the task of picking someone out of a lineup, the average person is something like 1.4 times more likely to correctly identify an own-race face than a different-race face, and 1.6 times more likely to incorrectly identify a different race face. These are not trivial error rates. Clearly we need to treat cross-racial identifications with a special level of caution.

Read the rest. And while you’re there, read his insightful post on Barry Bonds, and how statistical analysis alone can help us figure out who’s cheating in the future.

Nice job by Michael Horne at MilwaukeeWorld of picking up the police report on the recent traffic stop of State Senator Tim Carpenter:

They had observed the vehicle driving on the shoulder for half mile or so andthought it struck the median wall. I observed the vehicle SE CTH F LL. The driver of the vehicle leaned to the right and totally disappear from sight on two occasions. During these times he deviated and came near to striking vehicles around him. The callers were trying to box him in, but he got around them. I activated lts and siren. Vehicle stopped RS at Golf Rd. WI DL going to Chicago for art exhibit that closes at 5 and needed his I-Pass and was looking for it and his cell fell and he had to look for that and there were other items on the passenger side he was trying to organize.

“He was doing everything but driving the car.”

Now we know why Democrats oppose having to show your driver’s license to vote. By the end of the year, none of them will have one.

I might support the TPA if they can amend it to ban anyone else from sending me the “Woman Drivers” e-mail with the picture of the car with the gas nozzle sticking out of the side. Enough already, we get it.