a subset of stuff George Will does not understand about science

• An average alone is not sufficient to quantify a statistical distribution.
• Two points are not, in general, sufficient to characterize a trend.
• Fluctuation and variation in a dataset is normal and should be expected.
• Experimentally, a single counterexample is not sufficient to invalidate a hypothesis.
• Repeatable counterexamples, however, are.
• Data showing temporal variation on two dramatically different timescales indicate that two different processes influence the data.

eating Fox

1. Clinton on Fox
2. Stewart on O’Reilly
3. Colbert on O’Reilly
4. O’Reilly on Colbert

Saturday night roomie visits

Me: Zzz*snort* Huh–euh–wha…? [Sits up violently] Hello?
Housemate: Heyyyyyyy. [Feeling his way along the wall]
Me: Uh… [rubs eyes] You all right, man?
Housemate: Yeah.
Me: Um, what’s up?
Housemate: I can’t find the stop sign. [Shuffles forward, slaps at wall]
Me: What.
Housemate: The stop sign? I can’t find it.
Me: Oh-kay. Are you drunk?
Housemate: Yes!
Me: [Stumbles out from under covers] Oh-kay. That explains things. [Turns on lights]
Housemate: Oh! This is the wrong room!
Me: Uhm, yeah.
Housemate: Whoops. Sorry for scaring you. [Sticks hand out]
Me: Oh, you just startled me is all. Uh… [shakes hand]
Housemate: Okay, goodnight!
Me: Maybe you should drink some water or something.
Housemate: Good idea. Bye! [Waves]

people who I really don’t want running a country

1. Joe Six-Pack
2. Hockey Mom
3. NASCAR Dad
4. Anyone on the receiving end of this bailout
5. Sarah Palin

Miis that people need to stop making

1. Darth Vader.  Okay, guys, none of them actually looks like Vader (especially the small ones), and can you really see Vader playing bowling?
2. Those shark-head things.
3. The little designs on the heads, and nothing else.  Particularly the obscene ones.
4. Michael Jackson.  Those are just frightening.
5. Jesus.

semester’s over now

1. Northern Water Snakes
2. Enemy at the Gates
3. Robert Downey, Jr.
4. Book sale
5. Modeling clay
6. Window envelopes
7. Scrambled eggs
8. Nimbus clouds
9. Callithump
10. Twelve-hour airplane flights
11. Five hundred dollars
12. Science fiction

trouble

1. Dell
2. American health care
3. Valentine’s Day
4. Dell Customer Care
5. Dentists
6. Money
7. Dell
8. Social conservatives
9. Ice
10. Dell Customer Care

Lists of Things Official 2008 Campaign Coverage: Clinton vs Obama

• Taxes
  • Clinton: Repeal the Bush tax cuts.
  • Me: Repeal the Bush tax cuts, close corporate loopholes, and reform the AMT. Heck, maybe even rewrite the whole damn thing from scratch.
  • Obama: Repeal the Bush tax cuts, cut taxes on the poor.

  Energy/Environment

  • Clinton: Sign Kyoto, cap-and-trade system to reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050, boost fleet auto fuel standards to 35 mpg in 10 years, increase nuclear power production.
  • Me: Ramp up auto fuel standards rapidly–50 mpg+, institute some kind of cap-and-trade system, ratify Kyoto and have another conference with even more ambitious goals, focus on solar and nuclear and R&D on more efficient technologies much more than biofuels.
  • Obama: Push plug-in hybrids etc, push domestic biofuel production, get fleet fuel standards to 50 mpg, use cap-and-trade to reduce CO2 80% by 2050.

  Healthcare

  • Clinton: Allow citizens to choose an expanded version of Medicare; paid for by their employers with tax credits and subsidies from the money we save by taxing the richest 1% again.
  • Me: My right to life shouldn’t have a rent charge associated with it. Healthcare costs in this country are stupidly high and stupidly bureaucratic, particularly for someone like me with a treatable chronic illness. I like the solution proposed on the last season of ‘The West Wing:’ extend Medicare to all who want it. Force HMOs to compete with Medicare; just like backbreaking-tuition private colleges compete with low-tuition state schools.
  • Obama: Universal health care for all citizens, maybe single-payer?

  Iran

  • Clinton: Direct engagement with Tehran, but maintain tough sanctions. Military strikes are OK.
  • Me: Stop being stupid; diplomacy works and sanctions work (proof: lack of WMDs in Iraq). Military action is the last thing we need in the Middle East right now; but it really shouldn’t be completely ruled out.
  • Obama: Sustained diplomacy; military action is OK if warranted.

  Iraq

  • Clinton: Bush made a mistake (and also duped her and the rest of the Senate); she would end the war. Our involvement shouldn’t be a “commitment without end;” nor should we pull out immediately. Leave a small number of troops in support/training roles.
  • Me: Announce a timetable for withdrawal that brings troop levels down slowly over the next three years and begins immediately. However, (1) be prepared to restore some level of involvement at the behest of the Iraqi government and (2) leave a fast-response force to respond to genuine terrorist threats and safeguard Iraqi politicians.
  • Obama: Wants to draw down troop levels in accordance with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

  Terrorism

  • Clinton: Boost the number of Border Patrol, help boost the level of education in Muslim nations.
  • Me: Fight terrorism not as a war, but as an intelligence/precision-strike operation. Be prepared to go after cells anywhere, and build up a strong political network to support this. Perhaps a treaty is in order? Also, policy decisions that mitigate the appeal of terrorism would help, too (i.e., bettering the lot of unemployed 20-year-old Muslim men).
  • Obama: Focus on al-Qaeda rather than the states in which terrorists reside, use the military in response to “actionable intelligence.”

  Gun control

  • Clinton: Supports bans on semiautomatic weapons, supports “sensible gun control laws.”
  • Me: If you’re not in the military or police, you don’t need a gun. I say, they should all be registered, any gun owner should have to have a license, there should be stringent waiting periods and background checks, and there should be zero tolerance for weapons in schools, universities, and malls.
  • Obama: Reauthorize Federal Assault Weapons Ban, enact restrictions on when/where/how often people can purchase guns. Came out for gun control every time the issue arose in Illinois.

  Abortion

  • Clinton: Personally opposed, but it should not be illegal. Strong education programs and availability of contraceptives should be used to reduce the number of abortions rather than bans.
  • Me: Should be “safe, legal, and rare” (quote: Bill Clinton)
  • Obama: Abortion should remain legal under Roe v. Wade.

  Education

  • Clinton: No Child Left Behind is too focused on testing and does not provide adequate funding for schools. Opposes vouchers.
  • Me: Schools should get money from closing tax loopholes. Their curricula should be (at least in part) federally mandated to avoid Kansas substituting religion for science, and should not be taught to a test (though some sensible testing may be used as a metric).
  • Obama: Merit pay for teachers (funded by cutting NASA’s budget). Opposes vouchers.

  Gay marriage

  • Clinton: Opposes Constitutional amendments, etc defining marriage as between a man and a woman; but prefers allowing civil unions.
  • Me: The issue is one of gay civil rights. Absolutely they should be allowed to marry, with precisely the same legal rights as a heterosexual couple.
  • Obama: Opposes Constitutional amendments, etc defining marriage as between a man and a woman; supports civil unions that are marriage in all but name.

  Stem cell research

  • Clinton: Supports embryonic stem cell research.
  • Me: DO IT.
  • Obama: Supports embryonic stem cell research.

  Net Neutrality

  • Clinton: Supports net neutrality.
  • Me: I like my tubes.
  • Obama: Supports net neutrality.

Conclusion

Tough call. I like Clinton’s take of health care (though Obama used to have a pretty great call to action on single-payer systems there). Obama is a little stronger on the environment. Clinton has some great specific ideas on foreign policy (her Iraq drawndown strategy, funding Muslim schools, engaging Tehran) but has generally been too hawkish for my taste. I like turning away from No Child Left Behind, Obama, but please don’t cut NASA–it’s great for inspiring those yoots to get edumacated! I think I’d be happy with either, but I lean slightly Obama, and I’m reinforced there in hoping that the Reactionary Right doesn’t rally against Clinton and elect someone silly (thankfully, though, it looks like McCain has prevented that). I guess my ideal general election matchups would be either:

Barack Obama (D) vs John McCain (R), or

Hillary Clinton (D) vs John McCain (R) vs Mike Huckabee (I)

…and either way, I happily vote Democrat.

Lists of Things Official 2008 Campaign Coverage: several political views of Ron Paul, each of which, alone, is sufficient to make me scared of him

1. He wants to eliminate the Federal Reserve and have a floating currency. Because, with a huge national debt and trade deficit, with China becoming an economic powerhouse and holding the largest foreign reserve of US currency, with the dollar sinking against other currencies, and with the current mortgage crisis, having no monetary policy at all would be great. Yeah, no risk of inflation or recession or staggering economic crash there.
2. He wants to abolish the IRS. I assume he thinks that citizens should decide on their own how much in taxes they owe to the government, and should make the check out to “The Government, c/o Ron Paul?” Seriously, he’s such a free-market nut, but why did he seemingly forget that companies tend to hire accountants?
3. He wants to prohibit the federal government from levying income taxes. Apparently, his US history is pretty weak: we have tried this twice before. The first time, under the original Articles of Confederation, we realized that our government was headed into a hole and we wrote the Constitution instead (with federal income taxes as a prominent feature). The second time, half of the US seceded and wrote itself a constitution that did not allow federal taxes, with the result that they printed a hugely inflated currency and had no capital to spend on the war they were trying to fight, a major reason why they lost spectacularly.
4. Speaking of, he lambasted Abraham Lincoln for fighting the Civil War at all. Uhhhh…yeah…way to endorse states’ right to secede, there. I hereby declare my apartment a sovereign nation.
5. He wants to pull out of the UN, IMF, NATO, etc. NATO! Why the *$&% would any Presidential hopeful want to pull out of that enormously successful alliance?! Also, this sends a great message to the rest of the world. Something akin to, “Frak you, we don’t care what you think, we’re just going to do whatever the heck we please to you and you’d better just take it lying down. How dare you suggest that we sign your pathetic treaties and try to work out our global problems.”  Because, of course, there are no problems that affect the whole world at once, just individual nations one at a time.  Kind of reminds me of a horrid sitting President I know.
6. He thinks that is basically okay for any American citizen to go walking around in a city with a concealed automatic grenade launcher. Because (so says Wikipedia) he thinks that school shootings etc are a result of “prohibitions on self-defense.” Logic?
7. He wants to eliminate federal agencies like FEMA (because we never have emergencies that need responses, no sir) and the Department of Education. (Because we don’t need educated children–after all, if we had an educated populace, who would vote for people like Paul?)
8. He supports legalizing prostitution. I fell like there is a very, very limited number of reasons why a male politician would want this.

important things to remember about Charles Darwin

1. He was a devout Christian.
2. He found it amazing and awe-inspiring that God chose to create the world through the process of evolution.
3. He did not “believe” in evolution a priori.  He became convinced of evolution through true scientific process of induction, of inference through observation.  It’s not like he was “indoctrinated” in “scientific dogma” in grade school.
4. He did believe in God a priori.  He wasn’t out to get religion.
5. His theory was formulated in terms of so-called “macroevolution,” and was founded on evidence of same.  So-called “microevolution” was observed later.  (Both so-called because the distinction is artificial: it’s a way for Creationists to refuse evolution without also giving up their vaccines.  This makes them Cafeteria Scientists as well as Cafeteria Christians!)