Sunday, December 17, 2017

Romanticizing Hunter-Gatherers

Analyzed here.

Fake News from Coyne

Here.

The NYT calls BS, as Althouse notes.  Coyne didn't just pass on the fake WaPo report, but cited “readers” and riffed on this. This is a portrait of a man with an impaired confirmation bias sensor.  Coyne is I think an honest guy, but he just lets his biases rule him sometimes.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Wilfrid Laurier University says to shut up

I used to live quite near the campus, and my wife worked at WLU.
This is disgraceful.
Good for her, and her questioner should be fired.


My preferred pronouns are 'I', 'me', 'mine' (Think about it.)
UPADTE Dec 2. Retaliation

More Eisenga

Requiem '53, a memorial for victims of a flood in Holland in 1953.

Friday, November 17, 2017

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Oldie but goodie

Landsburg summarizes a remarkable and simple proof of Gödel’s Theorems. Here.

P.S. Scroll down to comment 12 too.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Monday, November 6, 2017

Caught lying about Trump- CNN, ABC, HuffPo, NBC, NYT, AP, CNBC, Guardian

First this, where Abe can be seen dumping the rest of his box first.

And then this, showing a compendium of the media lies about it.

Update: the estimable Glenn Greenwald documents four more media spread lies this week.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Coyne

On craziness
When two professional athletes need to argue about who’s been the most damaged by tattoos and dreadlocks, then you know something’s gone wrong with society.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Monday, October 9, 2017

Worth noting

*

Update: I posted that in the expectation it would be the stupidest thing I saw on the web today. Live and learn.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Leonardo Says

From Michael Nyman's opera Facing Goya.
I have probably posted this before but ...

BONUS Songs for Tony


Monday, October 2, 2017

Initial Reports

As of this moment I have read the following initial reports about the Las Vegas shooter, Paddock
  •         Long criminal record
  •        No criminal record
  •         Numerous posts on facebook
  •         No posts on facebook
I see people trusting initial reports all the time. In fact, when someone waited for more information, half the country went crazy condemning him.



Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Tribal witlessness

Everything is kneeling here. I believe Trump is a genius at distraction. The repeal of Obamacare just crashed and burned, and Trump’s endorsed candidate just lost a senate primary, but he has everyone talking about kneeling at NFL games. To his great benefit even aside from the distraction. This is a fight Trump cannot lose.  

What strikes me though is how blind the NFL was and is to what they done to themselves. A commenter name buwaya made an point I thought insightful. Sports fandom is based on a hallucination: the idea that your team are warriors for your tribe.

That might be true for high school football, but it’s not even remotely true for professional sports. That’s why the NFL’s mistake here is so big. Now people see their supposed tribal warriors being rude to them. People see disrespecting the flag as rude.

And worse than being rude to them, being rude about them.  Especially those to whom the main appeal of the NFL is rooting,  that tribal appeal I mentioned, the flag too is a tribal symbol that they value. Dissing it is dissing them. There's your tribal hero, attacking your tribe.  

So the NFL has punctured the illusion; hallucination is harder to maintain. This will be catastrophic for the NFL. One telling thing I have seen a lot of is people giving up fantasy football.  That should scare the NFL witless, but I think they already are witless. 

UPDATE: Ouch!

UPDATE Oct 19: Ouch!

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Charity

The NFL is a registered charity, and it claims tax exemptions available to charities. it doesn't look non-political to me.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Four Saints Again

I posted earlier about the new BMOP recording. It's currently on YouTube.

And it's spread DownUnder!

I have loved this for 40 years. I'm clearly a trendsetter!

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Clive Crook

Clive Crook has been consistently insightful. And on cue we get immediate vindication!

Theory 1

Theory 2

Friday, August 18, 2017

1812

Last year I watch re-enactors play out a skirmish from the War of 1812. So I have questions.

This was in Ohio. Should the British re-enactors have been pepper-sprayed?

And when they re-enacted a battle in Ontario, should the Americans have been punched?


Romney

Finally someone in politics showing some moral courage.

I think Trump's response has been distorted and feelings whipped up, and that there’s hysteria loose upon the land, but none of that lessens Trump's responsibility to deal with it as it is. He hasn't, yet. I don’t know if he can succeed. Trump as moral clarion? It’s not plausible.  But, "comes the moment comes the man."  Clinton stepped up after the Oklahoma bombing. Johnson, even worse than Trump really, stepped up after the assassination. Will Trump?

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

When Did Gladys Kravitz become the role model?


Here.

UPDATE:
Normally I find this guy over the top, and I guess this is over the top too, but  today it resonates
You simply cannot say, in polite society, “basic fairness requires us to avoid a rush to judgment and to give people the right to respond to accusations.” To do so gets you lumped in with the criminals. Like a friend of mine said, “the only acceptable reaction to an accusation is enthusiastic and unqualified acceptance.”

and
Contemporary political culture is an autoimmune disorder.
  

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

CNN's true colors

CNN is despicable.

CNN now says they kept his identity a secret for his safety. But they only know it because they hunted him down. There would be no issue of exposure had they not decided to find him out. Nice anonymity you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

More from Althouse.

UPDATE. CNN responds:  He was not underage!!
Fake news getting you down? Perhaps you want a retraction?

UPDATER: Here is a timeline with the CNN guy changing his story repeatedly in an attempt to obfuscate his threats.

UPDATERER: The gift that keeps on giving.

And giving. The fake news just keeps coming. and this really is fake news not just an error. Innocent errors would be random. The fake Lincoln quote too.  And the carefully edited handshake video in Poland, made to look like a snub of Trump, was reated by CNN reporters. Cilizza in particular.

RELATED. Not just CNN. Note the dates, long after the AP retraction, the NYT retraction, and the testimony of the DNI that the 17 number was bogus. It's not just an error. She is controverting Trump's assertion without bothering to check.



Friday, June 30, 2017