Is it too much to ask?

The term "media bias" is familiar, used mostly by conservatives in reference to the tone and selection of stories that reflect progressive prejudices. To a certain extent, that is unavoidable. I don't expect the NYT to cover the same range of stories as the WSJ. The former will run 1,000 LGBTQ stories to every one in the latter, and the WSJ is going to skew far more towards business and economic reporting.

So far, so good.

But then there is the kind of bias that should flunk Journalism 101. Well, if I taught Journo 101, in any event. (So what follows is a pilot telling reporters how to do their jobs. When it's the other way around, the result is always rubbish. No reason to suspect any different when the shoe is other footed.)

By that, I mean always when doing straight reporting, and to a significant extent even in Op Ed pieces, the writer needs to include all the facts appropriate to the story's level of detail. A perfect example is the Michael Brown shooting in Fergusen. When referred to in the NYT, the late Mr. Brown is always referred to as an "unarmed teenager".

This is a perfect example of selecting from a set of facts at the same level as detail, so as to skew readers' conception of the situation. Omitted facts? Six foot five inches, 250 lbs, attacked the officer, tried to take the officers' weapon, battered a store clerk after shoplifting, shot charging the officer. Every time the NYT prefers one of those facts to the others, it is a violation of journalistic ethics. Or at least it should be, since persistently leaving out equally important facts is lying by omission.

Recently, the NYT ran Shooting in North Carolina Draws Comparisons to Trayvon Martin’s Death , which appeared in the US News section; that is, it is allegedly straight reporting, and not an Op Ed.

A man saying he was acting on behalf of a neighborhood watch program fatally shot a young, black man.

If that sounds to you like the 2012 case of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, which ignited a broad discussion on race relations in the United States, you wouldn’t be wrong. But this similar scenario played out in a case this week in Raleigh, N.C.

The reason that would sound to the rest of us like the that, is because the young black man was shot while attacking the white Hispanic [sic] man. Except not anything like that:

Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas, 20, was shot and killed just before 1 a.m. on Sunday, the police in Raleigh said. Chad Cameron Copley, 39, was charged with first-degree murder after the police said he fired a shotgun from inside his garage at Mr. Thomas, who was outside Mr. Copley’s home.

Where are the similar details about the Zimmerman/Martin case?

But wait, there's more. Chicago Has Its Deadliest Month in About Two Decades . The lead sentence:

In a city wrestling with a rise in gun violence …

Let's think about that for a second. Guns are violent? If so, then are they equally violent everywhere, or just especially in Chicago. This year, so far, is the deadliest in the last 20. Did guns suddenly get more violent?

Hey, wait a minute, if violent guns are the problem, then Chicagoans need to go elsewhere and buy non-violent guns. After all, those elsewheres are easily enough found, they aren't the places that murder 90 people a month.

Of course, the other way of looking at it, is the real story, the important story, really isn't gun violence, but rather conditions in black areas of Chicago that make them far more violent than almost anywhere else in the US. Of course, dealing with conditions is hard, and doesn't lend itself to promoting an agenda.

Today, on the NYT's front page is Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun

Completely absent from this story is any record of changes in sea levels, the rates of change, how long the change has been going on, or any other causes of sea level change.

After a few seconds poking around, I found the Tybee Island Sea Level Rise Plan .

The full tide gauge record at Fort Pulaski indicates that long-term
sea-level rise is largely responsible for the increased number of tidal flood events on US
Highway 80.
…
The island has already experienced approximately 10 inches of sea-level rise since
1935 …

A graphic on page 17 shows that sea level has indeed increased — by a foot in the last 100 years, with a linear trend.

Why aren't those details in the NYT story?

It may well be that the WSJ commits similar serial crimes against Journo 101, and that because of my prejudices, I'm blind to them. But, despite that, I somehow doubt it. Also, it seems to me that the NYT has gotten markedly worse in this regard over the last year or so.

Why is it asking too much for reporters to report?

Is This Right?

The following cute bit of humor is going about at the moment:



Hahahaha, as my daughters would text. Obviously, a really, really nerdy bit of humor, therefore right up my alley.

But here's the thing, I don't think the top one is fully correct.  For example, if I go to Wolfram Alpha and enter lim 1/(x-8) as x->8 it responds with "(two sided limit does not exist)" because you get infinity if you approach it from greater than 8 and decreasing and minus infinity if you approach it from less than 8 and increasing as shown in the following plot.

What do my nerdy readers think? Is it not quite right? Or is it okay? Is the default to always approach the limit from the positive side decreasing? Or from the side that gives you positive infinity? Or what?

Bollocks

While researching the previous post about the University of Chicago, I came across this testimony to the bankruptcy of the social sciences, from, of all places, the UoC: Behavioral economics helps boost fuel and carbon efficiency of airline captains

The large-scale study, which incorporated data from more than 40,000 unique flights, found significant savings in carbon emissions and monetary costs when airline captains were provided with tailored monthly information on fuel efficiency, along with targets and individualized feedback. The behavioral effects of such interventions are currently estimated as the most cost-effective way to prevent a metric ton of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

This is what the study (hidden behind a paywall) had to say for itself:

Understanding motivations in the workplace remains of utmost import as economies around the world rely on increases in labor productivity to foster sustainable economic growth. This study makes use of a unique opportunity to “look under the hood” of an organization that critically relies on worker effort and performance. By partnering with Virgin Atlantic Airways on a field experiment that includes over 40,000 unique flights covering an eight-month period, we explore how information and incentives affect captains’ performance. Making use of more than 110,000 captain-level observations, we find that our set of treatments—which include performance information, personal targets, and prosocial incentives—induces captains to improve efficiency in all three key flight areas: pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight. We estimate that our treatments saved between 266,000-704,000 kg of fuel for the airline over the eight-month experimental period.

Unless Virgin Atlantic Flight Operations is hopelessly negligent, this cannot possibly be true.

At my airline, flight plans specify the most economical available altitude and airspeed. Flight Management Systems are exquisitely tuned to use the best power setting for takeoff and climb, and are equally focused on attaining the best descent profile.

The Flight Operations Manual sets out criteria for Auxiliary Power Unit usage, single engine taxi, speeds and configurations on departure, and energy management on arrival.

All of this is backed up by frequent line checks, quality assurance observations, and continuous data downlinks.

The requirements and guidance are clear; the only variable is pilots' skill in achieving them within the context of the operational environment.

Spoiler alert: performance information, personal targets and prosocial incentives — uhh, oh never mind — have nothing to do with that.

Which is why I'm quite certain this is the last anyone will hear of this seminal! study!

Restating the Seemingly Obvious

The NYT ran a story last week about the University of Chicago's unambiguous refusal to coddle its students, or allow the heckler's veto:

Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,” John Ellison, dean of students, wrote to members of the class of 2020, who will arrive next month.

So what. A restatement of, particularly in the university setting, should be the glaringly obvious.

Except, as any mild familiarity with that clown car we charmingly refer to us a liberal arts education, it is instead a pointed reminder to any potential students to look elsewhere for cosseting and indoctrination.

Except for the reflexive nod in the direction of journalistic bias — in what regard is The Federalist conservative? — the story is pretty well balanced. Along the way, they quoted Kevin Gannon — aka The Tattooed Professor — who teaches history at Grand View University in Des Moines. Trigger Warning: Elitism, Gatekeeping and Other Academic Crap certainly let me know what to expect, and I was not disappointed.

There are several paras of bloviation and cant, and the assumption that the University of Chicago's letter was an effect without cause.

Then, and I'm sure you, too, saw this coming from a semester away:

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the backlash against so-called “political correctness” in higher education has intensified in direct variation with the diversification of the academy, areas of scholarship, and-most significantly-the student population.

Because racism and sexism.

Then he provides the rationale for trigger warnings:

For every ginned-up hypothetical scenario of spoiled brats having a sit-in to protest too many white guys in the lit course, there are very real cases where trigger warnings or safe spaces aren’t absurdities, but pedagogical imperatives. If I’m teaching historical material that describes war crimes like mass rape, shouldn’t I disclose to my students what awaits them in these texts? If I have a student suffering from trauma due to a prior sexual assault, isn’t a timely caution the empathetic and humane thing for me to do?

Aside from the obligatory nod in the direction of racism — progressives must have a quota to fill — he calls into question either his professional competence, or his students' intelligence. Could be both How so? If Prof Tats is competent then his syllabi will describe the course and associated materials in sufficient detail to let students know what they are getting in for. Syllabi are themselves trigger warning.

Competently prepared that is.

Meaning students don't need trigger warnings. If they exercise sufficient due diligence, that is.

And that is before getting to the information problem: how are professors to know their students' sensitivities?

But wait, there's more. Just as coercion follows socialism, so censorship follow progressive academics:

To move from the hypothetical to the real, the Virginia Tech students who protested their university’s invitation to Charles Murray to deliver a lecture weren’t some sort of intellectual gestapo, they were members of a community calling out other members’ violation of the community’s ethos. Murray is a racist charlatan who’s made a career out of pseudoscientific social darwinist assertions that certain “races” are inherently inferior to others.To bring him to campus is to tell segments of your student community that, according to the ideas the university is endorsing by inviting Murray, they don’t belong there. This isn’t a violation of academic freedom. It’s an upholding of scientific standards and the norms of educated discourse-you know, the type of stuff that colleges and universities are supposed to stand for, right?

Translated: disagreement is verboten.

Prof Tat has no qualms about stopping other people hearing about something with which he clearly has no knowledge.

Not that has ever been a barrier to progressives; after all, every idea they have is true because they have it.

Perhaps the UoC was really just engaged in trolling, as both the story and various comments charge. Alternatively, the UoC may have perceived a coming collapse of universities as a concept, and wants to distance the UoC brand as much as possible.

Oh, and providing fair warning that students whose SJW zealotry inclines them towards thought policing, to either restrain that zealotry, face expulsion, or go elsewhere.

What's that Saying about Having and Eating Cake?

Near as I can tell, the NYT has decided to emulate that young adult amateur webzine, Slate.

Clearly, it is time for a fisking.

In other words, journalism, to the extent it ever existed at the Paper of Record, has now descended to clickbait. To wit: When the Pilot is a Mom: Accommodating New Motherhood at 30,000 Feet.

Boarding a flight can feel like stepping into a time capsule — men typically fly the plane, while most flight attendants are still women. [And the rest are gay. Just saying.] Which is why a female pilot from Delta Air Lines did something dramatic at a union meeting recently.

I think there is a term for this antecedent — men fly the plane, women are flight attendants — and the consequent is, uh, ummm …

Standing before her male colleagues, the captain unbuttoned her uniform, strapped a breast pump over the white undershirt she wore underneath, and began to demonstrate the apparatus. As the machine made its typical “chug, chug, chug” noise, attendees squirmed in their seats, looked at their feet and shuffled papers.

… just on the tip of my tongue … savor it, and there it is! Yes, the famous non sequitur, right up there in the annals of journalistic foolishness with the Fox Butterfield Effect.

It was the latest episode in what has proved to be a difficult workplace issue to solve: how to accommodate commercial airline pilots who are balancing new motherhood.

With? Enquiring minds want to know about the unmentioned counter poise. Balancing with what? Melons? Cantaloupes? Peaches? How is it the author didn't write, nor the editor insist upon "how to balance new motherhood with being a commercial airline pilot"?

This is a sure sign of clickbait. Superficial attention seeking is rarely overly bothered with silly details like syntax and reason.

But the flight deck of a jumbo jet isn’t a typical workplace. Pilots are exempt from a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring employers to accommodate new mothers. At 30,000 feet, the issue touches not only on pilot privacy, but also aircraft safety.

Indeed, it isn't. Not merely because it isn't in all regards, but also because most flight decks aren't jumbo jets, and that non-jumbo flight decks are just as atypical as the jumbo kind. Never mind that at 30,000 feet, when it comes to balancing safety and privacy (Annalyn, did you see what I did there?), precisely no one should give even a tinker's damn about privacy.

“The airlines have maternity policies that are archaic,” said Kathy McCullough, 61, a retired captain for Northwest Airlines, which merged with Delta in 2008, who has advocated on behalf of the pilots to Delta management. “I am so glad that they’re stepping forward and taking a stand.”

One reason for the lack of rules is that women make up only about 4 percent of the nation’s 159,000 certified airline pilots — a number that has been slow to rise over the past decade or so.

Reality: thanks to patriarchal attitudes — and I'm being serious here — women were excluded from professional flying simply because they chose their plumbing poorly. In the early 1970s, overt discrimination started waning to the point where now poorly chosen plumbing has become brilliantly chosen plumbing: any woman with even the minimum qualifications will get an interview. And, absent glaring disorders on the order of uncontrollable drooling, will get hired. Consequently, the percentage of female airline pilots has skyrocketed from zero all the way to four. And stayed there. (Trigger warning: contains specious reasoning and sexist assumptions as means to avoid the readily apparent.)

(Fun facts: 96% of airline pilots are male; roughly 0% are gay. In contrast, of flight attendants, 78% are female, the rest gay. Because patriarchy.)

At Delta, a group of women pilots have banded together through a private Facebook page and have approached their union with formal proposals for paid maternity leave — unheard-of at the major airlines — because they say they would like to stay home to breast-feed their babies. At Frontier Airlines, four female pilots are suing the company for discrimination, seeking the option of temporary assignments on the ground while pregnant or nursing.

Oh noes, the dreaded private Facebook page.

There are reasons that paid maternity leave is unheard of at major airlines. Chief among them is that all pilots are treated the same, regardless of plumbing choice. My airline is typical. Pilots get one month sick pay per year. Unused sick pay accrues in a "disability bank". Pilots requiring more than a month sick time in a year can draw from their disability bank until it is zero. After that, they don't get paid.

Male, female, doesn't matter.

Just as with temporary ground assignments. No medically distressed pilots get them, male or female. Why? They don't exist. In yet another symptom of going full click-bait, the "journalist" never bothers to ascertain what these mythical beasts might be, instead taking as given that they roam airline rosters in large, slow, easily caught herds.

More than 40 years later, the major carriers still haven’t resolved this issue. They set their policies for pilots based on the collective bargaining agreements negotiated by the unions. But women of childbearing age account for just a sliver of union membership, so maternity leave and breast-feeding policies have not been at the top of union agendas.

Plus, some members oppose the proposals, citing the costs. One local union leader told several women in an email: “Having a child is a personal choice and asking the rest of us to fund your choice will be a difficult sell to the pilot group.”

I'm not sure why, but just as nearly all pilots are male, almost all are conservatives, and about the only ones who don't own guns live in places that don't allow them. Yours truly, for instance.

So it shouldn't come as a stunner that this is a group particularly inclined towards seeing compulsory payment for others' choices as socialism in a C-cup.

Female pilots can begin to lose wages months before a baby is born. Most contracts at major airlines force pregnant pilots to stop flying eight to 14 weeks before a baby’s due date.

I'm not at all certain from which data dumpster that comes, since the citation is glaringly absent. But it is decidedly whiffy. My airline allows pregnant pilots to use vacation whenever they choose. From the 21st week through a month after delivery, they may use available sick leave, then accrued long term disability, and unpaid leave of absence. And $200 for a maternity uniform.

My airline has nothing to say about when pregnant pilots stop flying. That is a fitness-for-flight issue. So long as a pregnant pilot is able to fulfill the requirements of the job, some of which are inherently not pregnancy friendly (E.g., being able to move the flight controls through their full travel, a particular issue for shorter women. It's amazing what the patriarchy can do.)

While their proposals differ, all say they aim for one thing: to avoid situations in which pilots have been leaving the cockpit in mid-flight for as long as 20 minutes, the amount of time often required to pump breast milk.

Hey, I have an idea. Let's introduce that evergreen journalistic trope, the person in the seat. Except let's make it the mother with her newborn in 17D: "The First Officer has a baby. How happy are you that she is taking a twenty minute break from the cockpit*?"

I'm guessing not happy at all. Obviously, in the new NYT clickbait world, some new mothers' opinions are worth more than others.

Consider what it took for First Officer Brandy Beck, a 41-year-old Frontier Airlines pilot, to pump breast milk. Once the plane was at cruising altitude and in autopilot mode, she would seek the agreement of her captain to take a break. In keeping with Frontier policy, the remaining pilot was required to put on an oxygen mask.

Next a flight attendant — to prevent passengers from approaching the lavatory — would barricade the aisle with a beverage cart. Then the attendant would join the captain in the cockpit, in keeping with rules that require at least two people in an airline cockpit at all times.

Odd. The NYT doesn't seem particularly inclined to wonder why it is OK for women to have a condition requiring absence from the flight deck for 20 mins at a whack, whereas a man similarly indisposed would lose his medical stat.

And what to do about the patriarchal Capt that says "Not only no, but capital NO"? (If I was that Capt, I would have agreed, and told the FO that if she didn't call in sick before the next leg, I'd remove her from the trip.)

Frontier’s management has argued that extended breaks from the cockpit raise safety issues. The company has not offered an in-flight alternative for breast pumping …

Gee. Ya think? And what alternative might there be that doesn't involve flying over fantasy land at a million feet?

Ms. Beck said that after nearly 20 years in the aviation industry, she assumed she could keep her job and nurse her baby. “I guess it never came to light in my mind that I couldn’t do both,” she said.

That would be a fool's conclusion, the kind that would shame even a village idiot. But, for the impressionable, the consequence of feminism: women can have as much as they want of what they want. Choices are for chumps.

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued no official rules for pilots who pump in-flight. But Alison Duquette, a spokeswoman for the agency, said that “leaving the flight deck for 20 minutes would not be acceptable” under most circumstances.

What the FAA really meant to say, and which it would if women were held as accountable for their actions as men is that for FO Beck to fly knowing she had a condition requiring her absence from the flight deck for 20 minutes is a knowing violation of FAR 117.5, Fitness for Duty.

Oh, and that most circumstances include all of them not involving a divert worthy medical emergency.

And the Delta and Frontier pilots know they are pressing an issue that still plagues a group long dominated by women: flight attendants.

This year, a flight attendant for Endeavor Air, a regional airline owned by Delta, filed a discrimination complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, claiming the airline failed to provide reasonable breaks or private places to pump breast milk in her workplace. The commission is investigating.

Have any of these people ever been in an airplane? Even once?

“This is part of breaking down the cockpit door — that’s the glass ceiling here,” said Ms. Grossman, a professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “How do you make a job work when it was designed without you in mind?”

Here's a lifestyle pro-tip. Reality wasn't designed with any of us in mind. Not only are doors not ceilings, but life, even for women, really does involve choices.

One would think that actually having a choice would be a good thing, compared to having none at all. Men, if they want to live happily with a woman have two choices: wage slave, or wage slave. But a woman can do pretty much whatever she pleases, and the zeitgeist insists that pleasing herself has no costs. She should be paid as much as those who did not take leaves of absence, her needs should be accommodated, no matter how impractical, foolish, or unfair those accommodations might be.

I have an idea. When presented with a fork in the road, take it. And accept the consequences.

---

* When I was at Northwest, there was a massive disappearing of every instance of "cockpit" from all flight manuals, to be replaced with "flight deck". On account of the obvious phallocentric connotations. Except that it derived directly from nautical term from the days of sail referring to a well deck where the tiller was located, and, because of the inherent confines, was also where cock fights were held.

Counter Intuitive?

When I see the terms "research" and "counter intuitive" in an article, it's amazing to me how often the supposedly counter intuitive results of the research I find perfectly intuitive. This seems to be especially true in the social sciences.

The latest such article to catch my attention states:

Dr Brinkman said the research was counter intuitive to popular thinking about exposing young people to babies...

And just what was so counter intuitive?

Digital baby dolls that wake up crying in the middle of the night and need feeding, rocking and nappy changes are supposed to deter teenagers from falling pregnant.

But in an ironic twist, researchers have found they have the opposite effect. [...]

“The most alarming figure is girls are 1.36 times more likely to have pregnancies if they were exposed to the babies,” Dr Brinkman said.

Well, personally, I think the most alarming figure was the cost of the study:

The findings of a 10-year program and study involving more than 1250 girls and costing more than $1.5 million has found the dolls are actually more likely to encourage motherhood.

That was a waste of $1.5 million. Has nobody other than me observed women cooing over someone else's baby? Looking at said baby with clear desire? Especially when there's a gaggle of such women? Perhaps I'm the only one who notices this because I once had a woman say to me, "when I see a young baby it hurts to not be pregnant." Oh wait, hold on, I'm not the only one who's been exposed to the concept of "baby fever":

Maybe it’s the tiny mews coming from a stranger’s passing stroller, the sweet smell of a friend’s new baby’s head or a glimpse of a onesie so cute it makes your ovaries hurt… whatever sets it off for you, most moms know the warning signs of baby fever. But while your mom and girlfriends might tease you about it, researchers from Kansas State University found that people—both men and women—actually do experience baby fever.

So I just don't see how it could possibly be a surprise that giving young fertile women a very realistic and somewhat cute doll might actually entice them to have a real baby.

Karl's Still Going Strong

Here's an interesting tidbit: Karl Marx is the most assigned economist in U.S. college classes:

More than 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the onset of market-economy practices in China, “The Communist Manifesto” still ranks among the three most frequently assigned texts at American universities. 

That’s according to data from Open Syllabus Project, which tracks books and other works assigned to students in more than 1 million syllabi.

That's pretty good staying power!

Go Forth and Multiply

A couple of paragraphs in an article titled How Anti-Discrimination Became a Religion, and What It Means for Judaism caught my eye (don't ask me how I happened upon that article - I have absolutely no idea!):

As for those who remain active members of the Jewish community, they will be divided among a large but shrinking cohort of mostly Reform and other religiously liberal Jews; a smaller but vigorous group of modern and centrist Orthodox Jews joined by remnants of the rapidly declining Conservative movement; and a large and rapidly growing group of ḥaredi or “ultra-Orthodox” Jews. 

At some point, indeed, this last-named group, whose current rate of per-year population growth stands at an astonishing 5.5-percent, will form a significant element of the public “face” of American Jewry.

Before I get to my main point, I first have to point out that even though I'm jewish through ancestry (though non-practicing), ultra-orthodox Jews are as strange and exotic to me as the Amish or Tibetan monks or something like that. For example, if, for some reason, I suddenly decided that I needed to go to some sort of religious service, while my first choice would be a Reform Jewish service, I'd much rather go to, oh, I dunno, let's say a Methodist service or something like that, rather than an ultra-Orthodox Jewish service.

As far as I can tell, the ultra-Orthodox could never really be the "face" or in any way representative of all American Jews. Or, at least, I rather hope not.

But there is that population growth thing to consider. 5.5 percent per year really is astonishing (basically more than doubling every generation and amounts to over 6 children per woman on average) and if maintained, would indeed eclipse the rest of the shrinking American Jewish population in just a handful of generations.

What really caught my attention, though, was how well this real-life scenario potentially fits the population simulations I did a while back:

The simulation is fairly simple. Start with a population of 1,000,000,000 people. There are two types of "genes" in this population. The most common and also dominant gene is the "barren gene" and compels its individual to produce one child on average. Given that it takes two parents to produce a child, if this were the only "gene," the population would halve every generation and mankind would indeed go extinct in only a few hundred years.

The second "gene" is the "fruitful gene" and potentially compels its individual to have three children on average. However, since this "gene" is recessive, the individual is only compelled to have three children if he or she has two of these "genes." At the start of the simulation, only five-percent of the genes are of this type. So not only is it recessive, it's also rare. If a double "fruitful" mates with a someone with at least one "barren gene", they split the difference and have two children.

This very pessimistic simulation shows the population dropping fairly precipitously for 15 to 20 generations until the "fruitfuls" finally become common enough to overwhelm the "barrens" and then the population comes roaring back in 20 to 30 generations.

Here, in real life, the non-ultra-Orthodox American Jews pretty much follow the "barren" pattern (somewhat more than one child per couple) and the ultra-Orthodox Jews are more than "fruitful" (more than 6 children per couple), at least at the moment. In addition, unlike the simulation where all mating is random making it unlikely for the rare "fruitfuls" to mate with each other until enough "barrens" have died out, the ultra-Orthodox clearly seek each other out at a far greater rate than would occur in random mating.

That's why when some folks get to hand-wringing about falling birthrates, I'm far from concerned. Some group will always be happy to go forth and multiply and be there to inherit the earth.

His true greatest blunder?

Albert Einstein had an interesting life.

No, I do not mean revolutionizing physics and the human knowledge, or to become one of the most recognized faces in history. I mean he had, by any measure, a life full of interesting and rich experiences.

He got to closely witness the two World Wars and the advent of the Nuclear Age brought on his shoulders. He got to personally witness totalitarian - and racial - persecution. He got to witness the onset of communism in Russia and the rise of the Soviet Empire. He got to travel the world and experience many different cultures, in a time when that was a privilege for very few. When he took refuge in America, he had a good knowledge of much of the globe to compare to his new capitalist and rich home.

Before fame, he got to work within the bureaucratic machine in an alleged boring job (patent clerk), and afterwards in a few Universities owned by the State, so he was hardly a strange to Kafkanian government inefficiencies. Heck, he actually worked in Prague for a couple of years and had Kafka as an acquaintance.

And he got to witness all that from the height of a privileged mind, one that allegedly had much interest in society and the human condition, departing from the stereotype of the absent minded scientist.

All the above is to say that, to this blogger - a far lower mind than Einstein and possessing incomparably less world shattering life experiences - it is a complete mystery how Einstein could write this apology for Socialism.

It is a most daring effort for crackpots (and also real physicists) out there, since at least 1905, to try and prove Einstein wrong at his famous theories. I therefore invite the readers of this Great blog to take their shot at, in an once in a lifetime chance, really proving Einstein wrong upon reading his text. Beware though, for he is famed to always be right at the end - even when he was widely believed to be wrong, as the cosmological constant (his self declared greatest blunder) teaches us.

This does not sit well

Now this comes to light:

What possible reason would the French government have for covering up the fact that many victims of the terrorist attack in Paris at the Bataclan music hall were apparently savagely tortured?

They not only covered it up, they're still lying about it today.
...
 The lies and coverup are the result of the government not trusting that the people can handle the truth. Horror of horrors if there's an anti-Muslim backlash or voters demand that the French government do more in the fight against ISIS. It's far easier to suppress the truth than deal with the reality that the terrorists are operating on another moral plane than the rest of us, which gives them a significant advantage. They don't have to worry about whether a bombing attack will kill civilians. It's part of their strategy for civilians to die. They don't care if we blanch when they execute a prisoner in a particularly gruesome way. They want us to be scared of them. And they have no qualms about carrying out the most gruesome torture on helpless victims. They want our horror to paralyze us.
...

But nations like France, which have done little to assist the U.S. in fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, don't want to acknowledge the truth. If they did, they would have to do something about it. So they treat their citizens like little children and try to suppress the knowledge that there are monsters under the bed who want to do them harm.

This is not a strategy for victory against ISIS.

In a free society, people have a right to know these things.

Dennis Prager has his take on the matter:

It appears that no matter how many men, women, and children Islamists slaughter or maim, few in the West take Islamic terror seriously. This may sound odd given how much talk there is about terror, but a compelling case can be made for this assertion.
...

It is inconceivable that this situation will long endure. Most people in the West do not share its elites’ broken moral compass.

Michael Walsh says, "enough"

...And yet still the West refuses to take even the most rudimentary steps to protect itself against a known, sworn enemy. Why?

Lots of reasons: ennui, cultural Marxism, the mutation of the Left into a suicide cult that wants to take the rest of us with it. A loss of faith in organized religion (some of it brought on by the faiths themselves, or rather the imperfect men who represent and administer them). The transformation of government schools into babysitting services for subsections of the populace with severe cultural learning disabilities, no matter the skin color of the pupil. The marginalization of the very notion of excellence. And a political class that is little more than a collection of criminals, throne-sniffers, pantywaists and bum-kissers, all dedicated to their own enrichment.
...
 Western civilization has defended us for centuries. Isn't it about time we defended it?

Common Phrases

There are certain ideas that are frequently stated. In fact, some ideas are stated numerous times by nearly every parent who ever lived. For example, ideas about the value of hard work and the value of people believing what you say. In English alone, each of those ideas has been expressed countless billions of times by parents, teachers and mentors.

There are only so many ways to express each of those ideas. The simplest way to express the first value above is "work hard for what you want." "Work hard" is simpler but not quite complete. It can be modified and/or embellished, for example, "work hard for what you are passionate about" or "work hard for what you want in life" but there's really not that many different ways to convey that particular idea and keep it simple, short and concise.

So I'm more than a little surprised that Melania Trump is being accused of plagiarizing a speech many years ago by Michele Obama. Here are the two most similar (nearly identical) excerpts (non-matching punctuation removed by me in each since they were delivered verbally):

"...values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say..." Michelle Obama, 2008

"...values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say..." Melania Trump, 2016

That's not that long of a string of words discussing nearly universally held values with not all that many ways to say them in a speech where brevity and conciseness is important. I've certainly personally said or written "work hard for what you want in life" and "you do what you say" many, many times. Much of the rest of the wording is connectors (like "and," "that" and so forth). I personally wouldn't say "your word is your bond" because that's not my style but I'm certain that Michelle Obama is NOT the first person to coin that phrase and I've heard it many, many times as well.

There are two possibilities. One is that those 23 words are one of the most effective ways to convey those particular values in a speech and, as a result, Obama and Trump happened to use the same words. The other is that Melania Trump and supporting speechwriters pored through Michelle Obama speeches and deliberately copied those 23 words. Perhaps there are other possibilities as well, but I think those are the most likely.

Of those two possibilities, the first seems far, far more likely to me. As I write this, I think "they" are still investigating, so I'm curious as to what the final outcome is.

But if that is considered plagiarism, I'm certain that many of the one to two dozen word strings I've written in this blog (and elsewhere) certainly match something somebody else somewhere sometime has written. In which case you can look down your nose at me as a lowly plagiarist too! Sorry, we can't all be perfectly original all of the time.

An efficient lecture

Knowing very well, by now, the preferences of most readers of this Great blog, I am aware videos (and a long one at that) of discredited sources (Al Jazeera!) would hardly make it past their clicking threshold.

So why would I make my first post here at Great Guys such a flop?

Well, because in three weeks my country will be the source of nearly 4 billion question marks around the globe. And I can answer most of the awkward political questions that may follow with one single 10 minutes video. 

Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) was our President from 1995 to 2003. He was very cozy with Bill Clinton back then. He is hailed as modernizing and introducing Brazil to then so called (and now forgotten) ’Washington consensus’. He is, to many people out there, the opposite of the ‘socialists’ we’ve got since he left office. Or so they suppose. Because all you need to know about our politics, past, present and future, is condensed in those short 10 minutes. Really.

When I watched it, my first thought was "Hey, in my 20+ years of watching FHC on TV, I never saw an interview where he was treated like that. I mean, not even 10% like that. What a cheap media we have in this Banana Republic!"

But then I tried to remember Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton ever getting such treatment, and disavowed myself of that notion.

It's all Perfectly Clear

Baseball.

Unclear on the Concept

I guess the scientism discussion we had not too long ago was completely futile. According to James Blachowicz, professor emeritus of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, there is no scientific method.

In 1970, I had the chance to attend a lecture by Stephen Spender. He described in some detail the stages through which he would pass in crafting a poem. He jotted on a blackboard some lines of verse from successive drafts of one of his poems, asking whether these lines (a) expressed what he wanted to express and (b) did so in the desired form. He then amended the lines to bring them closer either to the meaning he wanted to communicate or to the poetic form of that communication.

I was immediately struck by the similarities between his editing process and those associated with scientific investigation and began to wonder whether there was such a thing as a scientific method. Maybe the method on which science relies exists wherever we find systematic investigation. In saying there is no scientific method, what I mean, more precisely, is that there is no distinctly scientific method.

There is meaning, which we can grasp and anchor in a short phrase, and then there is the expression of that meaning that accounts for it, whether in a literal explanation or in poetry or in some other way. Our knowledge separates into layers: Experience provides a base for a higher layer of more conceptual understanding. This is as true for poetry as for science.

Wait. What?

Near as I can tell, this is the charge: Since the poetry, or indeed any, editing process is similar to scientific investigation, then there is no method that is distinctly scientific. (That's entirely aside from a perfect example of question begging: asserting as true that which hasn't been demonstrated.)

This, in a sentence, encapsulates the enduring problem with philosophy. Start from an unknown point and head in your preferred direction, and you can end up wherever you want.

The problem here, in case it isn't already obvious, is that the process he is describing is recursion: repeated application of the output of a process to the input of the process. That's it. Nothing more, and nothing inherently scientific about it.

His argument is that the scientific method amounts to nothing more than recursion, but this is exactly where he goes astray, and in more ways than one.

Yes, at some level, the scientific method appears recursive. Acquire data, formulate/modify hypotheses, accept those that best explain the data. Rinse and repeat. He equates "meaning" with hypothesis, without regard to the subjectivity of "meaning" and, I guess, though it isn't clear, words with data.

He further illustrates this process by reaching rigorous definitions for words:

Suppose you and I try to define courage. We would begin with the meaning that is familiar to both of us. This shared meaning will be used to check proposed definitions and provide typical examples of it. Commonly, we may not be able to explain what something is, but we know it when we see it.

So what do we mean by courage? Let’s try, “Courage is the ability to act in the face of great fear.” This is an attempt to articulate (define) what we mean by courage. What we do next is to compare the actual meaning of courage we both possess with the literal meaning of the expression “the ability to act in the face of great fear.”

More lather-rinse-repeat, stripping away overburden and sloppy contradictions until we reach the essence of the word. But that is yet another example of question begging: there is, in a series of letters, a pure concept that means the same thing to everyone in a given circumstance, never mind all manner of circumstances.

Now comes the part of the essay where the square peg meets round hole:

Early on, Kepler determined that the orbit of Mars was not a circle (the default perfect shape of the planetary spheres, an idea inherited from the Greeks). There is a very simple equation for a circle, but the first noncircular shape Kepler entertained as a replacement was an oval. Despite our use of the word “oval” as sometimes synonymous with ellipse, Kepler understood it as egg-shaped (in the asymmetrical chicken-egg way). Maybe he thought the orbit had to be lopsided (rather than symmetrical) because he knew the Sun was not at the center of the oval. Unfortunately, there is no simple equation for such an oval (although there is one for an ellipse).

When a scientist tests a hypothesis and finds that its predictions do not quite match available observations, there is always the option of forcing the hypothesis to fit the data. One can resort to curve-fitting, in which a hypothesis is patched together from different independent pieces, each piece more or less fitting a different part of the data. A tailor for whom fit is everything and style is nothing can make me a suit that will fit like a glove — but as a patchwork with odd random seams everywhere, it will also not look very much like a suit.

The apparent lesson? It isn't just observed facts driving theorizing, but rather an insistence upon an outside the evidence notion of underlying simplicity. This is crazy talk. Kepler determined the Mars' orbit isn't circular, despite settled opinion on the matter, because observations didn't fit. He didn't force the theory to fit the observations, he chucked the theory. One could resort to curve fitting, but that inevitably entails the same problem of using adjoining maps for wallpaper: very quickly, things don't fit, and there is no smoothing the discontinuities.

Apparently unsatisfied with mere question begging and conceptual confusion, he betrays profound ignorance:

Yet in science, just as in defining a concept like courage, ad hoc exceptions are sometimes exactly what are needed. While Galileo’s law prescribes that the trajectory of a projectile like a cannonball follows a parabolic path, the true path deviates from a parabola, mostly because of air resistance. That is, a second, separate causal element must be accounted for. And so we add the ad hoc exception “except when resisted by air.”

Yes, of course. The mass of air molecules isn't just as much a matter of physics as gravity. It is ad hoc.

Right.

Professor Blachowicz ultimately makes a valid point, that the results of science are more reliable than other realms of human inquiry because the data the hard sciences deal with is sufficiently quantifiable to allow some hypotheses, while excluding others. Because of that, the scientific method, properly understood has that name for a very specific reason: it works with concrete subjects, and nowhere else.

Of Course I Don't

Kurt Schlichter proposes the following as an example of following the rule of law:

Think about it. If you are out driving at 3 a.m., do you stop at a stop sign when there’s no one coming? Of course you do.

Of course I DON'T. Oh sure, once upon a time I stopped, but now? Nope, I look around to make sure there aren't any cops, make sure I won't cause an accident, and then I roll right on through.

California has metered on-ramps. I think they actually work reasonably well so I have no problem with the concept. However, like the one in the picture, sometimes there's nobody there, so to stop and then accelerate to freeway speeds is simply a waste of time and gas (and hey, I should care about those CO2 emissions, right?). So for on-ramps I'm familiar with, if nobody's there, I just make sure no cops are watching and then I blow right on through.

Then, of course, I got to thinking (always dangerous). What's really the difference between running a metered on ramp red light and red lights in general? Or stop signs? Or ignoring any traffic law as long as safety isn't compromised (too much)? And many if not most people exceed the speed limit anyway, right? Therefore, I decided that there's no difference, and I take traffic laws as sort of advisory coupled with some effort to avoid getting caught breaking them.

Schlicter's point is that if people believe in the rule of law and believe in the leaders and rulers, they'll follow the law by custom. But as he notes:

The idea of the rule of law today is a lie. There is no law. There is no justice. There are only lies.

This is Schlicter's Independence Day column. Conservatives are simply giving up. We are no longer part of the nation. Some are working against the system. Most, like me, are just ignoring the system whenever possible (things like traffic laws and bureaucratic ridiculousness) and are keeping our heads down and hoping nobody notices us while we live out the remainder of our lives. Sort of like serfs. And note that freedom is decreasing World Wide:

The world was battered by crises that fueled xenophobic sentiment in democratic countries, undermined the economies of states dependent on the sale of natural resources, and led authoritarian regimes to crack down harder on dissent….

I think it bodes badly for the country and perhaps the world but that's for the younger generation to worry about. And that's the context within I wrote the TEXIT post the other day. Would conservatives be allowed to migrate to one state and leave or will we and our descendants be forced to live within this nation controlled by progressives until the end of time?

Is there a right to self-determination?

Ignorance on Parade

Before I could even form the outline of a post based upon a fine column, Jonah Goldberg is on it:

Kevin Williamson’s piece on “Rationalia” may be the best thing he’s written in a while — which is quite a high bar. But I may be biased because it is so in my wheelhouse. For those of you who read the Tyranny of Clichés or any of my extended rants on philosophical Pragmatism and “science,” this should be no surprise.

Kevin is right that Neil deGrasse Tyson’s brain fart fantasy of a virtual country where “All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence” is “school boy nonsense.” We all knew kids in high school — some of us may even have been that kid before we matured — who pompously argued that this or that law or controversy was stupid because the right answer is obvious. The problem is that such thinking isn’t educated out of kids, it is pounded into them. Worse, as Kevin notes, it has been routinely and consistently elevated to a level of intellectual and philosophical profundity.
...

The Pragmatists gave philosophical heft to the Progressive crusade for “disinterestedness.” Progressive officials and journalists weren’t pursuing their own interests or privileging their own agendas, they were simply charting the course for the best outcomes based on “science.” This habit of mind, which Hayek dubbed “scientism,” has poisoned the liberal blood stream ever since. Woodrow Wilson suffered from it, as did FDR and JFK. Paul Krugman insists he has no liberal biases, it’s just that facts have a liberal bias. Confidence that planners, armed with reason alone, could outthink markets in particular and reality in general, has been the most reliable midwife of unintended outcomes for the last two centuries.

The epistemological problems with this kind of confirmation bias are obviously bad enough. But the more important point is that this line of thinking is fundamentally undemocratic. The whole point of this line of argument is to take decisions away from the people and put it in the hands of experts who know better.
...

Politics in the most basic Aristotelian and democratic senses rests on the idea that people can disagree about what the right course of action is.

...

Indeed, most meaningful political disputes are fundamentally disputes over competing values. That means people of good will can disagree on what the evidence shows or, more importantly, on which evidence should win out. Tyson thinks that all good and right people will see the “evidence” the same way. I honestly believe only arrogant or naive fools and oblivious dogmatists can think that is right.

There are many disputes that arise from differing  preferences.  When those differences are about values, negotiating a peaceful resolution in the political realm are a bit tricky.  Refusal by either side to engage in open and honest discussion of such matters is just asking for heightened conflict.  Given the behavior I frequently encounter, it's hard to know if the ignorance is willful or if it derives from a will to power.  I try to give the benefit of the doubt but sometimes it's real hard.

update:

I highly recommend the video at the end of the column linked to  - for those who don't do videos, if you follow the video to youtube, the "more" drop-down menu has a very accurate transcript.

Also, another column reminds me of a recent observation.  In the last year or two many of my progressive friends have exhibited not just difference of preferences, but a growing intolerance to the mere expression of difference of opinion.  Friends who are not progressives have confirmed that same experience.  It's getting even more difficult to have fruitful discussions.

I don’t think people appreciate how pernicious and widespread this crowdsourced totalitarianism really is. Routine lies in the service of left-wing narratives are justified in the name of “larger truths,” while actual truth-telling in the other direction is denounced as hate speech or “triggering.” 

Even when liberals call for an “honest conversation” about this, that, or the other thing, what they really mean is they want everyone who disagrees with the prevailing progressive view to fall in line. Almost invariably, when I hear calls for “frank talk,” “honest dialogue,” or a new “national conversation,” I immediately translate it as, “Let the next chapter of indoctrination begin.” It’s a way of luring dissenters from political correctness out into the open so they can be smashed over the head with a rock.

...

But when someone on the other side of the ideological chasm questions the official narrative, they must be demonized or otherwise silenced. Why? Because the last thing progressives want is to start an honest conversation. They want to have their conversations — and only their conversations.

More Gloom ... for Apocaholics

The Malthusians of the world are always right until they’re wrong. They’ll warn of impending resource depletion until they’re blue in the face, but time and again human ingenuity (and natural providence) has made fools of them. We’ve seen two welcome new examples of Gaia’s riches this week—what’ll we find next?

So concludes an article at The American Interest. (h/t Instapundit)  It mentions:

 As one of the researchers put it, “[t]here’s a lot more fresh groundwater in California than people know.” The breakthrough here involved searching for water deeper underground than aquifers designated for human consumption typically lie.

...
    

Halfway across the world a different group of scientists employing a novel new detection technique found an enormous new supply of helium gas—an increasingly scarce element that’s critically important for advanced scientific research and medical technologies—in Tanzania. The University of Oxford reports:

[A] research group from Oxford and Durham universities, working with Norway-headquartered helium exploration company Helium One, has developed a brand new exploration approach. The first use of this method has resulted in the discovery of a world-class helium gas field in Tanzania. […]

...
 

Helium prices have quintupled since 2000 as supplies have started to dwindle. You can understand, then, why this discovery is being described as a “game changer,” and not just for the fact of this specific supply alone, either: this was the first place these scientists employed their new surveying technique. They’re batting 1.000, and could now apply this technique in areas with similar geology in different parts of the world.

The Apocaholics, control freaks and statists of varying stripes just never learn...

Brexit! Texit?

The British voted to leave the EU.

I realize that the political structure of Britain within the EU is different than the political structure of Texas within the United States, but if Texas wanted to leave, from the perspective of human rights and the right of self determination, would a TEXIT be that much different than a BREXIT?

Unintended Guns

Can you ban heroin use? Given that US federal law for being caught with a mere pound of heroin is life in prison yet more than a half-million people in the US have used heroin in the past year, I'd say either no or that the cost of doing so would be intolerably high (for example, killing on-the-spot anyone even suspected of either buying, selling or possessing the drug without due process might work, but that cost would be awfully high and probably intolerable). And heroin use is probably not protected by the constitution.

Can you ban AR-15s? Just like heroin, you can pass legislation to do so, but in reality, no, you really can't. Because unlike heroin, AR-15s are easy to make. Really easy. Unfortunately, because of fear of anti-AR-15 legislation, there is now a burgeoning underground market for the equipment to make critical AR-15 components:

But even fears of such legislation have lead gun owners to stock up on guns and ammunition after every mass shooting in recent history. And now a newer trend has emerged in the days since Omar Mateen killed 49 people with a handgun and a Sig Sauer MCX rifle: sales are spiking for the equipment and materials used by DIY gunsmiths to make their own, fully-functional, semi-automatic weapons. 

Using power tools, chunks of aluminum, and cheap, consumer-grade digital gadgets, those firearm-focused members of the maker movement fabricate homemade weapons like AR-15s and AR-10s that skirt all regulation and would be untraceable in some imagined, future crackdown in which the government were to seize registered weapons. “People are hopping off the mainstream train and accepting an underground dissident mentality when it comes to guns,” says Cody Wilson, the founder of the Austin, Texas-based DIY gun group Defense Distributed. “They’re making the connection: If [an AR-15 ban] is enacted, I can get this machine and make one anyway.”

Since the fall of 2014, Defense Distributed has sold approximately three thousand of the $1,500 devices it calls the Ghost Gunner, a computer-controlled, one-foot cubed milling machine designed to let anyone carve their own aluminum body of an AR-15 at home. Since all other parts of the gun can be bought without any regulation, the result is a lethal weapon that’s free from background checks, waiting periods, serial numbers, or any other government involvement.

On a typical day, Defense Distributed sells four or five of its gun-making machines, according to Wilson. But on the day after the Orlando gun massacre, it sold seven. The second day after the killings, as Democratic senators were filibustering, it sold 11. In all, Defense Distributed’s total revenue has jumped from around $30,000 a week to more than $50,000 last week, the most sales it’s seen since the hype around the Ghost Gunner’s initial launch 20 months ago.

Those are basically cheap CNC mills that are the same as what's used to machine every metal prototype part in the world, so those can't be banned without bringing new product innovation all over the world to a complete halt.

So congratulations anti-gun people. You have now guaranteed that not only can the AR-15 never be eradicated (and it never could've been), you've also guaranteed that any criminal and/or would be terrorist can make an untraceable AR-15 cheaply and easily no matter what future legislation is enacted.

I'm guessing that's a good example of an unintended consequence.

One for Clovis ...

... or maybe Hey Skipper's son and his BMW.