Journalism and Science - Peanutbutter and Chocolate fare much better...

The good professors at Language Log offer us another disgusted criticism of science reporting - this time the headlines pretty much promised us that Twitter would make us evil.

Yes, one more time a minor effect detected in a study is reinterpreted to yield headlines such as Facebook hurting moral values, says study and Facebook and Twitter 'make us bad people'. Not that the study actually involved Facebook or Twitter, read the article for a full description.

Professor Liberman offers credit where credit is due:

Kudos to Ben Goldacre, whose BS detector went off on cue, and who managed to get an early copy of the paper by some back-channel route ("Experts say new scientific evidence helpfully justifies massive pre-existing moral prejudice", Bad Science, 4/18/2009), and to Chris Matyszczyk at CNET, who was suitably skeptical on the basis of common sense ("Oh, so now Twitter is making us immoral", 4/15/2009). Chris also wins Best Line: "Your brain might, at this point, be scanning the thought that if all the subjects of this research were from Los Angeles, it might be surprising that the scientists found any moral compass at all."

And props to the 74% of respondents in that internet survey who weren't persuaded by this fake-scientific morality play.

Absolute zero might actually NOT be as cold as it can get....

At least that is my impression after reading this section of the tax topics.

Overcoming....

.... adversity is always inspirational. Sometimes it can be funny as well as inspirational, like when somebody has a successful life after being a boy named Sue or a girl named Marijuana Pepsi Jackson.

HT Freakonomics

(Shaw) Quote of the day

You have been badly brought up, little darling. Would any lady or gentleman walk unannounced into a room without first looking through the keyhole?
(Potemkin in "Great Catherine")

Smart Slime Molds

Interesting experiment described HERE. (HT MR)

Accentchuate the positive...

As much fun as it is to bash Strunk&White, it leaves people who really want a guideline to good writing stranded. This post spackles that gap.

For my single friends, or those with VERY tolerant spouses...

Will somebody please try this pick-up strategy and report back how it worked?

Judge not lest ye be judged?

I'm generally not a big fan of vindictiveness...the entertainment value of stringing the rascals up on lampposts after you've thrown them out is probably outweighed by the additional evasions and maneuvers that sort of policy induces. But the case of Judge Bybee (HT Uncommon Priors) finds me just a little bit bloodthirsty.

It's not easy going out into the world as a German. Even if you were born well past all the atrocities, and even your parents were merely children at the time, you are still faced with the prototype of the sadistic villain being the sadistic German. This makes it especially painful when your new adopted country stakes out the position that (non-consensual - I have no beef with the consensual kind) torture is really OK when it seems necessary or useful.

I don't know if the man is merely a well-meaning fool, but when Ackerman writes

Under the Constitution, impeachment requires a finding of "high crimes and misdemeanors." This is a high standard. Although Bybee's opinion fails minimum tests of legal competence, he may have acted in good faith. This should protect him from conviction. But his legal distortions might also be evidence of the abdication of his fundamental legal responsibilities. Instead of engaging in a good-faith interpretation of the War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions, he may have merely been responding to political pressures from the White House to liberate the CIA and the military from the rule of law.

Bybee should, of course, be given a full opportunity to clarify this matter at the impeachment proceedings. But at present, his only public explanation is his extravagant appeal to executive privilege. This cannot suffice. He should be required to take personal responsibility for his actions and explain why they don't make him into a systematic enabler of the war crimes that have disgraced America.

he has a point. I'd like to see the matter at least considered.

Commenters...

Not actually getting any, I don't really have to distinguish between the types on my own...but this bestiary could be used like your North American Field Guide to the species.

When I comment myself, I usually TRY to be:

The Droll - The mainstay of all fun sites, this poster regularly tosses out clever comments, plays of words, one-liners, amusing pictures. There’s a lot of these characters on places like Fark.com

but I fear that others would tend to classify me as:

The Lecturer - This is the buzzkill pedant who feels the need, even in a casual, light comments section to post a 1,000 word exegesis on what everyone should be talking about. Hey, thanks pal!

Hey, diddle-dee, a pirate's life for me....NOT

The site you reach by clicking the image below puts the whole pirate-killing thing in historical perspective.

Quote of the day - a Shaw quote

Haven't been doing these much...but yesterday's play inspired me.

You don't know what it is to be alone with a woman who has little beauty and less conversation. What is a man to do? she cant talk interestingly; and if he talks that way himself she doesnt understand him. He cant look at her: if he does, he only finds out that she isnt beautiful. Before the end of five minutes they are both hideously bored. Theres only one thing that can save the situation; and thats what you call being horrid. With a beautiful, witty, kind woman, theres no time for such follies. It's so delightful to look at her, to listen to her voice, to hear all she has to say, that nothing else happens. That is why the woman who is supposed to have a thousand lovers seldom has one; whilst the stupid,graceless animals of women have dozens.

(Overruled)

Actually, the conversation is quite necessary...even beauty will only get you to the end of TEN minutes!

Good times with the merry monarch....

Last night we went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada to see one of the less well-known Shaw plays, "In Good King Charles's Golden Days". To my knowledge there has never been a bad production at Niagara-on-the-Lake's Shaw Festival, and this one didn't change things....although it is the earliest in the season we have ever gone, and there were a few rough spots (several stumbles in the overall elegantly delivered lines, plus a prop falling distractingly at the edge of the stage - the first time I've ever even noticed a flaw).

I had to explain a few things to my wife, as this play in particular is deeply steeped in history - it was meant to be quite obvious that "Rowley" was King Charles II incognito (to the extent that George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), actually addressed him as "Charles Stuart" once), but Jocelyn did not pick up on that at first - even though the first act ended in an angry wrestling match between Isaac Newton and prince James (later to briefly be James II before being replaced, as Charles II had warned him in the play if he insisted on his Catholicism, by the Protestant William and Mary).

Before the play we had dinner at the pleasant (but pricy) Shaw Cafe - can't beat the convenience of eating right across the street, and food and wine were good. Just before the play we went to a wine ship and shared a flight ($10 canadian) of icewine...Jocelyn particularly liked the Cabernet Franc (a red).

Speaking of royalty, but not of stalking them, this little item here deals with the latter part, or the people who do it (HT MR).

Interestingly, one of the first cases of what we now call erotomania or de Clérambault's syndrome, the delusional belief that another person - usually of higher status - is in love with you, featured the British Royal Family.

de Clérambault described the case of a 53 year old French woman who believed King George V was in love with her and would interpret twitches in the curtains of Buckingham Palace as secret love signals from the monarch.

Party time?

(Click on image to get to source of similar goodies)

Bashing Strunk&White

What better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their pernicious little volume than to give it the smackdown it deserves?

As the co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language summarizes,

So I won't be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.

Discount prices

HT for this battle of the champions goes to MR.

Hume versus Brooks

Yes, it is an uneven contest, brought to you by the good professors of Language Log. This is a refutation of Brooks' piece, The End of Philosophy, taking a handicap of over 200 years.

Still....if philosophers had just written in a more readable style, would we still have to be rehashing their ignored ideas today?

For people who like everything about porn ... except the sex.....

...they now have PG Porn right here.

Warning....it's funny, and there is no nudity, but the language is definitely NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

"It's all for your protection..."

Heard this on WBER, liked it so much I tracked down the lyrics, found (with the youtube video) HERE.

Lyric excerpt:

I do not have the things I want but I can’t find,
Just show me something real and make it.
Everywhere begins to be the same,
Other words we use that might contain,
An ounce of truth for every treason.
Where was it you said you had to go?
Life is just a game of ‘who you know’
The ones we love and mostly cherish.

I happen to love the stuff!

Click through image to get to the source of these lovely graphs (now at a new address)

Bob (TM) wins this one hands down....

This must rank on the top ten list of obscure top ten lists: the ten worst Microsoft product names. It says something about the sheer awfulness of Microsoft naming that this was doable, though.

Interestingly, some of the worst names are associated with the words products (such as the inanely named "Bob"). Probably the biggest slap in the face, of course, was "PlaysForSure" - which, as the article points out

they didn't play at all on the world's most popular MP3 player, Apple Inc.'s iPod. For Pete's sake, they didn't even play on Microsoft's own music player when it appeared.