Tuesday, October 2. 2007
All explained by Noel Sheppard at Newbusters. It's the Dem Attack and Smear Machine of hollow organizations, paid for by Soros. I think it's meant to be the Dem answer to the Repub attack machine during the Clinton administration, but the Soros folks don't seem to give a damn about the truth. Slash and burn while the candidate looks relatively uninvolved. It's getting rough out there.
Back in the days when I was involved with some research, I saw some iffy work done. The pressure to come up with some result was powerful, and people kinda sorta convinced themselves that it meant something. Here's how it worked: You spent six or twelve months accumulating data to test an hypothesis. You ran some basic statistical tests on the data, and it turned out that there was no statistical correlation to support your hypothesis. (Negative results are wrongly and rarely published.) THEN, so as not to waste your pile of data and all of the time spent (and with computers this is easy to do), you would ask the computer to find some pattern in your pile of data. Often it would find one - and that would be your published paper. Data-mining. You just re-write your hypothesis after the fact, and nobody ever knows. It's a form of lying, really. That ain't science - that's the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. Attack Machine has a nice example: Sagittarians are 38% more likely to break a leg than people of other star signs.
You can read his entertaining piece on the subject at What's Good for you Is Now Bad. In fact, clustering does occur on a random basis, to confound scientifically- and statistically-illiterate reporters and readers. Not to mention juries. Dr. Ioannidis of Tufts Medical School says in the WSJ: There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true." The hotter the field of research the more likely its published findings should be viewed skeptically, he determined.
That whole article is here. A great example of a compelling linear relationship below, from Conspiracy proving, beyond doubt, that the gradual loss of pirates is the cause of globalistical warmening. 
We did ideal shotguns first today (for grouse and woodcock, I like my old 20 ga. s/s Abercrombie and Fitch Rizzini boxlock choked cylinder and modified) - and now ideal portfolios. The well-endowed American universities are becoming little more than investment funds with high educational overhead. Portfolio construction is not exactly rocket science, but Yale's David Swenson seems to be doing a better job of it than I am. Plus the guy is grossly underpaid in relation to the value he adds. (h/t, Mankiw)
Kim du Toit. His ideal is a 16 ga., with details pretty much close to what I prefer, but I'd have a problem with his choices of choke.
The VA State Climatologist, at Reference Frame
The Burmese need guns. Samizdata. Which leads me to another thought: If the Left wants people disarmed, why do they always admire armed rebels and "insurgents"? UK plans to cut Royal Navy in half. I guess they figure their Uncle Sam wiill protect them. Russians depart from Iran's nuclear installations. A Debkafiles rumor. Interesting, if true. Ego tripping. Bloomberg in the UK. Vienna? An al Qaida bust in Vienna. Atlas What the sexperts don't understand about sex. Slate The NYT promises to keep a close watch on Freedom Watch. neoneo. You can bet they will, since they're working for the Dem campaign. Tom Friedman as an exemplar of the naivete of the Left. Flopping Why Fred Thompson will win. Am Thinker. Gee, is he still running? Rick Moran: The Repubs seem determined to alienate almost everybody.
Monday, October 1. 2007
Robison at American Thinker. It begins: There are signs that the global Islamic jihad movement is splitting apart, in what would be a tremendous achievement for American strategy. The center of the action is in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the very territory which is thought to harbor Usama, and from which Al Qaeda was able to launch 9/11. Capitalizing on existing splits, a trap was set and closed, and the benefits have only begun to be evident.
Read the whole thing.
Shrinkwrapped takes on the NYT Editorial The Socialists are Coming! He is a physician with a daughter in medical school. He discusses the politics and realities of government medical care from the physician's perspective in an essay Health Care Conundrums. Key quote: ...I agree with the formulation that health care can be: • Universal • Affordable • High Quality Pick 2 out of 3
This YouTube sometimes seems to get stuck. Just push the button forward through the stuck place. That is Marcia Ball with her New Orleans band and her hot boogie-woogie pianny. I heard her live 2 years ago. She is not a shrinking violet.
 iTNews claims Americans are giving up friends and sex for internet surfing.
I suspect that that is an exaggeration and that (except for p*rn junkies of whom there are millions) most regular internet users, such as the good sorts of folks who read Maggie's and the people we link to, have, over time, moved some of their TV, newspaper, and magazine time over to internet time. So I hardly consider reading, getting information in a way that the reader can control and chose - plus the wonder of links and comments - to be a bad thing. It sure beats the boob tube. In my experience, it's the internet writers and bloggers who need to watch their clocks, assuming they are not trying to make a living doing it. Writing and the gratification of instant publishing can eat up a lot of time that might be better spent weeding the garden, at the pub, watching Desperate Housewives - or nude surfing. Photo: Nude surfing in Australia.
Being conservative isn't cool in Hollywood, where cool, if mindless, fashion rules. If the GOP choses to become the Grumpy Old Party, it doesn't help. The GOP needs to be the party of cheerful, expansive, good-humored optimism. But back to Hollywood, a place I believe to be only one small cultural step ahead of Las Vegas and one small step behind Winnipeg. Breibart has a piece on Hollywood: Cons in the Closet. A quote: My father-in-law, Orson Bean, an author, comedian and actor, was once blacklisted as a Communist back in the '50s. Ed Sullivan called him to say he could no longer book him on the show. Fifty years later, and after a sharp ideological metamorphosis, Orson says it's harder now to be an open conservative on a Hollywood set than it was back then to be a Communist.
Oxford Medievalist has it exactly right, and George Soros is footing the bill. Michelle quotes Insty: Glenn Reynolds spells it out: “…the intent is to limit the ability of people like Limbaugh or O’Reilly to drive stories in the mainstream news as we get closer to the election. Expect more of this, with more targets.”
 Farming is improving in Greenland, for the time being, at least. Eskimos hardest hit.
Maybe they could get a job like everybody else, and try a nice side-order of potatoes along with their Polar Bear steaks, seal blubber, and Canadian Club. With a job, the Eskimos could afford some sun-block, too. I am old enough to remember sun-tanning lotion. It was kind of like grease, and similar to Polar Beat fat.
 Good point at Coyote, re socialized medicine:
...surely women's groups, who were at the forefront of fighting against government intrusion into our decisions about our bodies, is out there leading the fight against government health care. WRONG! Their privacy arguments stand out today as sham libertarian arguments that applied only narrowly to abortion. It's clear that as long as they can get full access to abortion, women's groups are A-OK with government intrusion into people's decisions about their bodies.
And re SCHIP, Fred Barnes explains why extending a poverty entitlement to the middle class is a bad idea. Weekly Standard. This used to be called "creeping socialism." At the least, it is an effort to transform a charity, stepwise, into a universal entitlement. Hollywood goes to war. Propa-tainment, by Jules at Pajamas Opie says Freedom Watch is the anti-MoveOn.org. Here's their NYT advt about Ahmadinejad. A very bad dude killed in Iraq Krugman: There was no middle class before FDR. Who is Joyce Hatto? She's a virtuoso pianist, but you might not have heard of her. Attack Machine has the tale. America's worst airlines. Gay Patriot. Speaking of air travel, the Carol Ann Gotbaum story. Who knows where that story goes, but it's a damn shame. Those airport guards are quick to use force on the obviously innocent, and everyone knows that.
 Daisys are the friendliest of garden flowers.
Our Montauk daisies (aka nipponicum) have come into bloom this week, which seems very late, but their blooms are welcome. They have woody stems, succulent leaves which bugs leave alone, and perfect flowers. I bought these at Home Depot on a whim, a few years ago. As a beachy plant, this type needs full sun, and seems to enjoy poor soil.
|
