‘Robust’ analysis isn’t what it is cracked up to be: Top 10 ways to save science from its statistical self

THE FRACKERS ARE SAVING CIVILIZATION. THE PEOPLE JOINING THEM ARE PATRIOTS. NY Farmers Look to Circumvent Fracking Ban.

But the science is settled:   A ‘mini ice age’ is coming, and could bring freezing temperatures by 2030.

THE UNABOMBER’S CHILDREN: “My favourite Deep Green Resistance member is the woman who wants a return to conditions during ‘the first four million years’ of human existence, when everybody “participated,’” Tim Blair writes. She’s wearing adult braces, which weren’t exactly a common feature of the pre-civilisation era.”

“The extreme green movement is nudging ever closer to a form of fascism,” Blair adds. “There is not much difference between words once deployed in the service of preserving a master race and words now deployed in the service of preserving a master planet”

Not exactly occurring unexpectedly.

38 WAYS COLLEGE STUDENTS ENJOY ‘LEFT-WING PRIVILEGE’ ON CAMPUS: In Time magazine of all places; here’s a quick sample:

1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my political persuasion most of the time.

2. I can spend my entire college career taking only classes with professors who think exactly as I do.

3. I can take classes and earn degrees in departments that are designed to line up exactly with my worldview.

4. I can be sure that an overwhelming majority of the material I am assigned to read for class will confirm what I already believe.

5. My professors will assume that I already think just like them, and use examples and anecdotes that testify to our philosophical uniformity.

Read the whole thing. As David Horowitz once said, “you can’t get a good education if you’re only hearing one side of the story.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: D.I.Y. Education Before YouTube.

For the striving youths of 19th-century America, learning was often a self-driven, year-round process. Devouring books by candlelight and debating issues by bonfire, the young men and women of the so-called “go-ahead generation” worked to educate themselves into a better life.

Is this old-fashioned culture of self-improvement making a comeback? The mainstream school system — with its barrage of tests, Common Core and “excellent sheep” — encourages learning as a passive, standardized process. But here and there, with the help of YouTube and thousands of podcasts, a growing group of students and adults are beginning to supplement their education.

School isn’t going away. But more and more people are realizing what their 19th-century predecessors knew: that the best learning is often self-taught.

Back then, it was a matter of necessity. There were plenty of schoolhouses in 19th-century America, but few young people could attend them regularly. They had to work. Most pieced together a semester of classes here, three months there.

In 1870, students averaged under 80 days in school each year. Even though America had incredibly high literacy rates, and admirable schools for those with free time, most young Americans supplemented formal schooling with their own makeshift curriculums.

“Even though?” Maybe that’s backwards.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE EDITION: 22-year-old college student blows her $90,000 college fund and blames her parents: “Maybe they should have taught me to budget or something.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Red States Outperform Blue In Managing Taxpayer Money.

But don't worry - the Feds are fine: GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: Report: One-third of vets waiting medical care already dead.

and finally this: The 2020 census is going to be a mess.

There’s something scary in Census Director John Thompson trying to secretly find someone to run the $13 billion 2020 decennial census — by using his personal e-mail because he wanted to hide the process.

There is something even more frightening in the blatant politics that were going on behind the scenes.

Sunlight, please. We need some disinfecting.

from the B30's concourse in DFW.

“Deniers” in their midst – All is not well in Nobel Prize Land

“JOBS, JUSTICE, CLIMATE” PROTESTERS ADMIT TO OWNING CARS, FLYING — WHILE UNION-RENTED SCHOOL BUSES IDLE NEARBY, in new video by Ezra Levant:

As usual, none of the protesters I spoke to could clearly articulate why they were there or what they believed in, after they ran out of their rehearsed talking points.

When asked simple questions, they got flustered and even hostile.

I was shoved a bit, and even got called “the devil” by an atheist!

Wait, you mean the fella to which Saul Alinsky dedicated Rules For Radicals?

LOOOONG tech read but worth it: Nassim Taleb Strikes Again

Directors Who Dominate: Fred Zinnemann

my order's a little different but the top five match

Part 1:

COMMUNISTS DON’T LIKE HIM? NY TIMES GIVES RUBIO CANDIDACY MORE HELP: “By publishing a piece that focused on the reactions to Rubio’s candidacy in Cuba from the communist government’s functionaries or ordinary people whose only knowledge of the senator is from Castro regime propaganda, the Times has once again given him an unwitting boost.”

Related:

Communist dictatorship hates US Presidential candidate. NY Times thinks this makes him look bad pic.twitter.com/Dud0l9lppc

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) July 5, 2015

Part 2

Meanwhile on Twitter:

weird how all the people who hate israel are most excited about this deal that supposedly helps protect israel.

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) July 14, 2015

ANDREW MORRISS LOOKS AT TAXATION through the lens of James Scott’s excellent Seeing Like A State.

Scott offers four big ideas that shape his analytical framework. First, he argues that a fundamental need of a state is to make its population “legible.” In essence, a legible population is one in which the relevant characteristics for state purposes are defined and known. Second, he contends that by doing so, the state changes the nature of the activities the population carries on, the culture, and the society as a whole. In other words, you get more of what you measure. Third, he attributes social engineering projects in part to what he terms “high modernist ideology,” in which scientific and technical models are uncritically applied to societies, encouraging government actors to believe they can significantly change societies through administrative fiat. Fourth, when this ideology is married to a state with significant coercive power and civil society lacks the capacity to resist, the state does considerable harm by forcing an agenda on society without considering all the costs. Let’s consider each.

To the ruling class, the “considerable harm” is offset by even-more-considerable opportunities for graft.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Obama Administration Refuses To Follow Law Banning Government Contracts To Companies Who Engaged In Tax Inversions. And notice how quick President Goldman Sachs is to protect the fatcats’ interests when it matters.

: New Docs Reveal DOJ, IRS, and FBI Colluding to Prosecute Obama Opponents.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Wisconsin’s Friend at the IRS: Emails Show a Common Cause in Restricting Political Speech:

MIDNIGHT RAIDS, SECRET SUBPOENAS: IRS’ LOIS LERNER CLOSE FRIENDS WITH LEADER WHO TARGETED SCOTT WALKER.

ANDREW MORRISS LOOKS AT TAXATION through the lens of James Scott’s excellent Seeing Like A State.

Scott offers four big ideas that shape his analytical framework. First, he argues that a fundamental need of a state is to make its population “legible.” In essence, a legible population is one in which the relevant characteristics for state purposes are defined and known. Second, he contends that by doing so, the state changes the nature of the activities the population carries on, the culture, and the society as a whole. In other words, you get more of what you measure. Third, he attributes social engineering projects in part to what he terms “high modernist ideology,” in which scientific and technical models are uncritically applied to societies, encouraging government actors to believe they can significantly change societies through administrative fiat. Fourth, when this ideology is married to a state with significant coercive power and civil society lacks the capacity to resist, the state does considerable harm by forcing an agenda on society without considering all the costs. Let’s consider each.

To the ruling class, the “considerable harm” is offset by even-more-considerable opportunities for graft.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Obama Administration Refuses To Follow Law Banning Government Contracts To Companies Who Engaged In Tax Inversions. And notice how quick President Goldman Sachs is to protect the fatcats’ interests when it matters.

: New Docs Reveal DOJ, IRS, and FBI Colluding to Prosecute Obama Opponents.

Maybe if Bernie says it people will finally listen

PARTY OF SCIENCE: Bernie Sanders Once Blamed Cervical Cancer on a Lack of Orgasms.

On Facebook, Stefan Sharkansky snarks: “He and Todd Akin should go up against each other in a gynecology quiz match.”

from Rick Wilson at the Federalist, who among other things correctly notes that “The Media Loves Acela Republicans Until It Hates Them:”

Acela Republicans are creatures of the media, from beginning to end. Acela Republicans are always the smartest, tallest, most articulate, most handsome fellows in the room. Just ask the people at The New York Times or MSNBC or The Washington Post, who have adopted them like exotic pets. “Oh, look,” they coo, “This one doesn’t bite or have any of those ugly, primitive conservative policies. We shall feed it, caress it and keep it for our own.”

“SOCIAL JUSTICE” CULTURE: THE ACTUAL STALINIST VERSION: “It’s all here,” Cathy Young writes:

It’s all here: the casual, innocuous remark interpreted as offensive; the demand for confession and repentance; the notion that maintaining one’s innocence or trying to minimize the “offense” compounds guilt; the escalating, absurdly ballooning accusations in which everything the accused says or does is taken as further proof of guilt; the pressure on members of the community to join the mob to demonstrate their own allegiance to the One True Ideology; the lack of human sympathy elevated to a virtue; the notion that proper “humanism” is not manifested in compassion but in “relentless war on all manifestations of hostile ideas.”

UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: CNN’s Chris Cuomo: Sanctuary Cities Are A ‘Misnomer:’