I suspect that I am a plant

Every week I read something about how the chemicals in my brain decide my behaviour. I want hard to be a free will person, but I'm faced with evidence of the opposite. Today, from the New York Times (Flame First, Think Later):

"Neurological patients with a damaged orbitofrontal cortex lose the ability to modulate the amygdala, a source of unruly impulses; like small children, they commit mortifying social gaffes like kissing a complete stranger, blithely unaware that they are doing anything untoward."

For some time, I've thought of making this a recurring theme on this blog, so as to accumulate the evidence in one place and, who knows, maybe find someone who concurs.

97% of statistics are made up

I'm a big fan of the Harper's Index - statistics like pictures: worth a thousand words.

My favourite recent statistics is "Percentage of Americans who cannot say in which year the September 11 attacks occurred: 30" (November 2006)

Without any context, these statistics are not much more than brain teasers. You can't draw policy and barely use them in an argument. But they're fun. Here's my take.

Life expectancy
US: 77.2 years
Canada: 79.7 years

Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2003)
US: 15%
Canada: 9.9%

Source: OECD.