Boneheaded Stupidity

Good news readers! I’ve gone mad! I don’t know what it was that tipped me over the edge but I’m now a signed up 27%er and I’ve decided to start applying my new grasp of the scientific method! After all, our scientific institutions are being destroyed by the leftist politicised science of global warming and the Lancet study, and that’s just not on. Luckily my cheerful attitude and can-do approach to statistics survived my trip to the dark side so I’ve been hard at work all morning applying the sort of tenacious scientific critique that my new status as a crazy person allows me to carry out with no qualifications whatever.

I started with the UK Census. I’ve always thought that there were maybe a few more, or possibly less, ethnic minorities in Camden than the census said, so I phoned them up and asked for the data. The woman on the end of the line pointed me toward their website and noted that there was quite a lot of county-level data there which might be helpful. I explained that no, I wanted the data, by which I meant the actual census forms. They won’t release the data! Really! I shouted that this was a fundamental building block of the scientific method, and that her sinister refusal to hand over the forms to any random person who asked was the equivalent of the Catholic Church burning Galileo[1]. While she was on the line, I asked for the last month’s death figures for Central London – after all, since she’s the central registering authority for births and deaths, she ought to have them at her fingertips as they must magically update every time a hospital morgue writes a certificate. I think she was in tears by the time she slammed the phone down, so Advantage: Blogosphere!

Next on to the Dow Jones Industrial Average people. Did you know that there are three entire missing days from their figures, which suspiciously enough[2] just “happen” to be September 12-15, 2001???????Q? I suppose we are meant to assume that this “missing cluster” was selected at RANDOM!!!!11! Some chance. Clearly the leftist MSMs of Dow Jones International censored these numbers, because they would have added so much to the variance of the DJIA that we could no longer be sure that it wasn’t 36,000! Perfidy! Wal-Mart are releasing their Q2 earnings numbers next week, or at least I should say “releasing” their “numbers”, because as I found out, when you go down to Bentonville demanding a look at the till rolls, you don’t even get let into the car park. Scientific method, my ASS!

Stay tuned for more science, readers, because until this case of Red Bull runs out, I am going to be a blogoscientific force of nature!

[1] Galileo was not actually burned, but I am now a right wing crazy person, so this kind of factul nitpicking no longer bothers me.

[2] The fonts are a lot more fun on this side of the political divide too.

Pejman Yousefzadeh isn’t taking the internet mockery of his anti-FDR agitation well.

Apparently–and this is the latest pronouncement from the Reality-Based Community–we are not supposed to study things that happened 74 years ago, or perhaps longer.

That seems like a reasonable way to characterize the point that one wouldn’t usually get worked up reading a squib entitled “70 years ago this week in monetary policy.” Anyhoo, [click to continue…]

So checking the post today I found a letter addressed to my son, inviting him to apply for a Citibank Platinum Select Mastercard. Up to 40,000 American Airlines airmiles included! I’ve had a chat with the little guy about it (I still call him the little guy — corny, I know, but other Dads will understand), and he won’t be signing up, partly because it’s a bad deal (18.24 percent variable rate, annual fee after the first year), but mostly because he is six and a half weeks old.

Why are people trying to convince me that Fred Thompson is sexy? A lock for the Republican nomination, OK–I feel that since all the other candidates have some truly fatal flaw, and since ol’Fred has been conveniently out of office during the late unpleasantness of the Bush II era he’ll get the nomination by default. I even think he could make a decent candidate in the general election, but sexy ladies man who’s going to Smoove B my vote by freaking me gently all election cycle long? I think not.

“Fred is a perfect example of chivalry. He’s the kind of man little girls dream about marrying, who opens doors for you, lights your cigarettes, helps you on with your coat, buys wonderful gifts. It’s every woman’s fantasy.” Thompson, who wooed Baroness Thatcher [?!–Belle] during a visit to London last week, is expected to announce officially next month that he is running for president. He is already challenging Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, for first place in polls of likely Republican voters.

Morgan remembers encouraging Thompson to run for president when they were together. “I think he has a great chance of capturing the women’s vote. He’s majestic. He’s a soft, safe place to be and that could be Fred’s ticket. Women love a soft place to lay and a strong pair of hands to hold us,” she said.

First of all, are women voters, taken as a whole, really so much like retarded kittens in our motivations? And secondly, doesn’t Fred Thompson pretty much look like a basset hound who’s just taken a really satisfying shit in your hall closet? Finally, even if we restrict our field of play to Republicans who have played prosecutors in the later seasons of Law and Order, I would much, much rather have sex with Angie Harmon, even though I’m not gay. Think about it. So, no sale. Via RedState

“Norman Podhoretz”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014829.php on the _National Review Cruise_, 2007.

“Aren’t you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?” Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. “No,” Podhoretz replies. “As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf war one, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran.” He says he is “heartbroken” by this “rise of defeatism on the right.” He adds, apropos of nothing, “There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we’re winning.” The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn’t he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley “a coward.” His wife nods and says, “Buckley’s an old man,” tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

“Ted Barlow”:https://crookedtimber.org/2003/11/12/todays-activities-on-the-national-review-cruise/ on the _National Review Cruise_, 2003.

4:00 (Lounge 3) Seminar: Dealing with Cognitive Dissonance: Economics

Lie down and relax, as the staff of the National Review explain, in soothing tones, how the massive growth in government spending, net loss of jobs, the steel tariff, and explosive deficit growth during the Bush presidency are all part of a clever, clever plan. So clever. (Featuring ambient mix by Mobius Dick- Glenn Reynolds samples the first Orb album in its entirety and then adds, “Indeed” in a dreamy voice. CDs available.) (Note: Dealing with Cognitive Dissonance: Iraq attracted more interest than anticipated. We will cover WMDs in a special session on Thursday)

Looks like the Thursday session ended up getting delayed again …

I’d started to write a short post responding to the first of Michael Gorman’s “essays”:http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/author/mgorman on the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ blog about the Eclipse of Reason in the Age of the Internet, but given up. However enjoyable the shoddiness of Gorman’s reasoning and grotesque luxuriance of his metaphors (the new digital barbarians are associated in succession with creationists, global warming deniers, Maoists, hive mind wannabes, dirty Haight-Ashbury hippies, and some sinister Borg-like collective), it was hard to get into it with a piece of which nearly a quarter was an extended rejoinder to our old friend, Some Dude in a Comments Section Somewhere. Thankfully, Scott has “taken up”:http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/06/20/mclemee the grim task of responding from his berth at _Inside Higher Ed_. This bit towards the end seems to sum it up nicely:

The tone of Gorman’s remedial lecture implies that educators now devote the better part of their day to teaching students to shove pencils up their nose while Googling for pornography. … But the idea that new forms of media require training in new kinds of literacy hardly counts as an evasion of the obligation to cultivate critical intelligence. Today the work of acquiring knowledge on a given subject often includes the burden of evaluating digital material…. let’s not pretend that such nostalgia is anything but escapism at best. What really bothers the neo-Luddite quasi-Mandarin is not the rise of digitality, as such. The problem actually comes from “the diminished sacredness of authority,” as Edward Shils once put it, “the reduction in the awe it evokes and in the charisma attributed to it.”

I can see why the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ has an urgent interest in pushing this line, but I don’t understand why the intellectual standards of argument among its appointed critics is so low (and they aren’t an aberration; I understand that they’ve made somewhat of an effort to publicize these pieces and get them talked about). There’s a quite reasonable and serious case to be made about the flaws of Web 2.0 type technologies (I tend meself to think that these flaws are greatly outweighed by the advantages, but I certainly recognize that they exist and can be quite important). However, I’m not aware of anyone, apart from the odd blogger in the odd blogpost who is making that case in a compelling and sophisticated way (I’d be grateful to be pointed towards any counterexamples by commenters).

!http://www.henryfarrell.net/lewankh.jpg!

I didn’t think they made them like this anymore. Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, tries to figure out how many denialist cliches can be squeezed into a “single 700 word op-ed”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html . The results aren’t edifying.

One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now. … Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film … The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly … global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities. … I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. …The environmentalists … do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. … Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years?

_Und so weiter_

Update – I somehow neglected to quote the best bit – Klaus’s exhortation to “resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority.”

Example: Scott Kaufman contributes, in civil fashion, to a thread at Jesus’ General – and as a result, he is defamed to his entire local academic community as a white supremacist! One of the General’s commenters – Ghost of Adolph Rupp, a.k.a. ‘John Casper’ – took it upon himself to email a bunch of people at UC Irvine (Scott’s department head, dean, various politicians across the whole state, I gather) as a generous public service.

Scott K. is innocent as charged. But that isn’t to say these allegations can’t be career-threatening, eh? (Stay classy, John Casper!)

You can read about the whole sordid saga at Scott’s blog – starting here. (A post explaining the fight that caused the fight that caused this problem.) The latest development, depressing but relatively inconsequential compared to the defamatory emails, is that Patriotboy (Jesus’ General) ain’t exactly coming up heaped in glory. Go read, if you care to. I guess the main post, reporting the first wave of emails accusing Scott of ‘refined white supremacy’, is here.

So Scott’s life is officially a mess. So if you are a friend, drop a comment, extend him your support and best wishes that an idiot hasn’t managed to wreck his career in vile and irresponsible fashion. I have the flu and am going straight to bed, probably will not be contributing to any discussion for the next 14 hours or so. So no fighting, if you please.

Megan McArdle’s dog, Finnegan, contracted an infection and had to be put to sleep. She posted about it. I thought: soon, some gobshite will show up in the comments, deriding the way she felt at four in the morning the night her dog died. And sure enough. Gotta love the intertubes.

Meanwhile, Jerry Falwell has died, too. In terms of net good brought into the world during their respective lives, Megan’s dog is probably ahead of Falwell. The conjunction of events reminded me of Oliver Goldsmith on morality, dogs and men.
[click to continue…]

Commenting on this Instapundit post: “I have no idea if it’s actually true, but sounds pretty plausible.” And that, my friends, is how the pros blog.

I tend to regard myself as Crooked Timber’s online myrmidon of a number of rather unpopular views; among other things, as regular readers will have seen, I believe that the incitement to religious hatred legislation was a good idea (perhaps badly executed), that John Searle has it more or less correct on the subject of artificial intelligence, that Jacques Derrida deserves his high reputation and that George Orwell was not even in the top three essayists of the twentieth century[1]. I’m a fan of Welsh nationalism. Oh yes, the Kosovo intervention was a crock too. At some subconscious level I am aware that my ideas about education are both idiotic and unspeakable. But I think that all of these causes are regarded as at least borderline sane by at least one fellow CT contributor. There is only one major issue on which I stand completely alone, reviled by all. And it’s this; Budweiser (by which I mean the real Budweiser, the beer which has been sold under that brand by Anheuser-Busch since 1876) is really quite a good beer. I have been threatening this post in comments for a while now, and here it is:
[click to continue…]

Via “Unfogged”:http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.html#006758, a “hall of fame note”:http://istherenosininit.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/most-outrageous-note-evar/ from a student:

Dear Prof. AWB,

I was in your British Literature class in the fall of 2006, and for that class, you gave me a grade of C. I need to have a better grade for this class. As far as I know, I got an 86 on the first paper, and I didn’t complete the second assignment. I don’t know what I got on the final essay or exam.

I would like for you to change my grade to at least a B. If this means I must complete the second assignment, I will attempt to set aside time to do so. Please address this matter immediately.

Thank you,

Bwahahaha! Actually, just this morning a colleague got an email from a student saying that he would “try to set aside time” to take the final (the time for which has been posted on the University’s website all year).

Over the years, my interest in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis has more than once led to a moment of conversational awkwardness, when it turned out that the other party had been quietly distracted by the effort to figure out what the anti-totalitarian left had to do with taking peyote.

With time I have learned to detect the signs of struggle early, and so make haste to point out that I don’t mean Carlos Castaneda, whose tales of cosmic shenanigans with Yaqui shaman Don Juan once played a big part in the counterculture.
[click to continue…]

Among the top-ranking videos at YouTube this morning, nearly half (nine out of twenty) consist of Cho Seung-Hui’s monologues as broadcast by NBC.

Good for Siva Vaidhyanathan for criticizing this decision at the MSNBC website. (See also his piece there on the “ill-conceived lessons” being drawn from the massacre.) [click to continue…]