- Kos, Ensign raises just under $33K in Q309, “Let's put this another way: in Q309, the amount of cash John Ensign added to his campaign kitty was less than one-third the amount of hush money his parents gave to the family of his mistress.”
- SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling (and some other stuff)?, “Diagnosis, in brief: (1) they write about stuff they clearly don't understand (2) they pick a catchy reverse-common-wisdom nugget as a headliner without the having the slightest interest in whether it is true or not (mind you, plenty of more respectable folk do the same) (3) they pick an expert to talk to, but since they don't have a clue about the subject they don't know how to pick a good expert, or even understand what the expert says (4) there is a grain of sense in there, but so badly wrapped in trash it is nearly unfindable.”
- Commentator reacting to plans to make a “conservative” version of the New Testament, “In this new version of the bible, Jesus asks the lepers what health care plan they’re on before he cures them.”
- The Yes Men
Update: And how did I miss this?
Geeze, you’re not still stuck on that “we’re all gonna die from Global warming” kick are you? I’m surprised that anybody smart enough to pass law school could possibly still believe that Gore’s minions have any idea what they are talking about after the hockey stick graph was debunked (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf), NASA admitted it’s temperature data is flawed, putting 1934 back on top, and various folks have been surveying the official government weather stations and discovering that huge numbers are set up in the middle of asphalt, next to air conditioner exhausts, etc. (see http://wattsupwiththat.com/test/ for some fun examples)
I mean really, can anyone really STILL believe the man who cried wolf? Even if he’s ultimately correct, he’s got very little backing him up any more, as the data turns into a house of cards all around him.
And be VERY skeptical any time you see something is proven, based on a “computer model.” Contrary to popular opinion, all complex computer models are really just human decisions running at high speed. The computer is making the same decision YOU would make, but much faster. So if the programmer thinks that factors X and Y must mean Z is true – then that becomes true in the model. Programs are not all objective math – even mathmatically intensive ones, unless all they are doing is solving a math problem. Models are math + assumptions, and untrue assumptions get treated as true within the code. That’s all the program can do, it CANNOT evaluate the truth of untrue assumptions. That’s why GOOD programmers ALWAYS test models by feeding them impossible data: it reveals unwanted trends and flaws in the program assumptions. That’s what killed the hockey stick graph, and why weather models are always a giant gray area. (i.e. the various hurricane path models that I’m sure you are familiar with in S. FL).
So if anyone tells you that something must be true because a computer model says it is, you know they have never written a computer model, or seen the code, or have any idea whatsoever how a computer program works.