therandomtexan
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Everybody can do something better than you can
Rachel DiCarlo Currie explains Why We Need a Revival of Humility. Here’s the money quote Shortly before leaving the Senate, Kyl spoke to Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard and described a childhood trip to his local county fair in Iowa. Upon arriving at the fair, Kyl said, his father made sure that he saw Read more
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I Call Bullshit!
I want this course in the catalog at my university. Way better than “critical thinking” or “research methods.” Tip from Open Culture. Read more
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Revealed, a True Romantic for the New Century
This man said this: “I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.” If that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is. Update: Shane Bouvet is an under-employed FedEx courier and Trump campaigner who scored a ticket to the inauguration, but had to scrounge Read more
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Got Cognitive Bias?
Buster Benson realized he had information overload trying to remember 175 variations of cognitive bias, so he got organized. John Manoogian III would rather look at a graphic than a list, so he drew one. Check it out. Tip from Gary Jones, whose oddball collection of posts often bears re-reading. Read more
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When Bayesian Statistics Broke into History
Wonderful article here about the Mosteller and Wallace analysis of the twelve Federalist Papers, the ones of disputed authorship–was it Madison or Hamilton who wrote them? With a nice, easy-to-understand explanation of the Bayesian methodology they used. Tip from Real Clear Life. Read more
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Nacho Cheese Soup
So the Mrs and I were sitting in a cafe at the Denver Airport a couple of weeks ago, snacking on a big plate of nachos, and I got this goofy idea. The nachos are tastiest down at the bottom, when the chips start getting soggy, and there’s a lot of melted cheese left on Read more
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Hipsterism, explained
Lesbian, or just hipster? Hard to tell these days. I would need a heart of stone not to laugh (starting with the title, no less!). Here’s my semi-obligatory lame joke: A hipster is the sort of car owner who, when told to “Go fast,” starves himself for the rest of the week. Tip from the Read more
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Christian Humor
Contrary to what the mainstream media and campus secularists might have you believe, thoughtful Christians have a well-developed sense of humor. Exhibit A: the Babylon Bee, which has a special place in its heart for Joel Osteen Exhibit B: the only Lutheran joke I know — A woman of fundamentalist persuasion was traveling, and visited Read more
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Maybe clothes DO make the man
Here’s a school program that’s so off-the wall it might actually make a difference: providing washing machines in public schools. It’s early days, with little data collected, but compared to Michelle O’s disastrous school lunch madness, it’s an intriguing experiment with potentially outsize benefits. Virginia Postrel might have some insight into ideas like this. Tip Read more
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An end run around an impossible integral
Ever-insightful polymath John Cook shows how to integrate the Gaussian PDF, in less time than it takes to make breakfast. The trick? Coordinate transformations and the Jacobian are your friends. A suitably-embellished version of Cook’s post will appear in my lecture notes in the Spring semester. Thanks, J.C. Read more
The Random Texan 