1984
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The Feds are not your friends
Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Jennifer Percy describes Fear of the Federal Government in the Ranchlands of Oregon. Try though she might, her east coast acculturation won’t let her quite get into the heads of the folks in towns where she spent her childhood. They visited Yellowstone Nation Park and saw, they said, Read more
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Private Charity? No way!
Michael Tanner, writing for National Review online, attempts to answer the question “Why Is There So Much Government Hostility to Private Charity?” The answer is simple, once you understand this guy’s fundamental message Read more
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Bad Choice, Pop
Spurs coach Greg Popovich continues to lecture us about President Trump’s shortcomings. Nice try, Pop, but you’re getting tuned out with all the other pro sports and Hollywood folks who’ve squandered what little moral authority they ever had. Victor Davis Hanson recent wrote Pollsters, pundits, and the media have vastly underestimated how many in America Read more
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ICAN gets Nobel Peace Prize. BFD.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, another international gang of virtue signallers, has just received the Nobel Peace Prize. So far, they have motivated fewer than 50 pipsqueak countries to sign a UN treaty banning nuclear weapons (122 have “adopted” it, but signing off? Don’t hold your breath) . BUT, they do have Yoko Read more
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Stanford Invents AI Gaydar, Flubs Write-Up
Yilun Wang and Michal Kosinsksi, researchers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, have developed a neural-net classifier that purportedly detects sexual orientation (in caucasians). The authors report an avalanche of experimental results, and claim the classifier can “correctly distinguish between gay and straight men 81% of the time, and 74% for women.” OK, that’s the Read more
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Time for some Doubleplus Ungood Badthink
The Brat Pack of science fiction has concocted a cynical ploy to disturb the genre’s Purity of Essence; they’re giving away e-books. I wasn’t too sure about this until I read John Scalzi’s pithy recommendation. “This is bullshit” exactly sums up my opinion of his latest strawman social-justice snoozer Locked In. So he’s become my Read more
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Some Hard Stats about University Teaching
Thinking about becoming a university professor? Read Kevin Birmingham’s “The Great Shame of Our Profession” before making definite plans. A 2014 congressional report suggests that 89 percent of adjuncts work at more than one institution; 13 percent work at four or more. The need for several appointments becomes obvious when we realize how little any Read more
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Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated
The ability of statistics to accurately represent the world is declining. In its wake, a new age of big data controlled by private companies is taking over – and putting democracy in peril. begins William Davies tale of woe in the Guardian. Unfortunately, he confuses credible statistics with modern state-istics*; and seems impervious to the Read more
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I guess it depends on who’s asking…
If I asked this question of any of my students, I’d be tagged as a stone-cold racist. But the US Census Bureau is going to ask each an every one of us. Tip from newgeography, where they have the full skinny. Read more
The Random Texan 