Learn a little about how experimental design and statistics work. As Darell Huff said, “it is easy to lie with statistics,” but as Frederick Mosteller said, “it is easier to lie without them.â€
A incisive essay on liberalism. I disagree with a lot of it, but I’m not sure why, which usually means I need to re-examine my beliefs. That’s a good essay.
The best baseball pitch I’ve ever seen.
Incredibly funny intro to the new AquaTeenHungerForce movie. Be sure to watch it all.
Muttrox,
The Insensitivity Training article was among the best reads of the year for me. I plan to put it into action now
TheGeaster
I agree with you on Coulter and her relationship to the media.
I was reading an interview with Rush Limbaugh once and he said something very telling.
They basically asked him if he really believed everything he said. His response was, “Of course, basically I side with everything I said. But remember, I’m supposed to be working peolpe up, supposed to be putting on a show. So I take my beliefs and kind of stretch them out, or target them to get people all riled up.”
I wonder if coulter is the same.
but where I’ve often seen Rush joking around with people, and smiling in a friendly way, I never see Ann do anything that doesn’t make my skin crawl.
She may, in fact, be exactly the monster she appears to be.
And the media likes that.
Which is a shame because there are many much more intelligent conservatives out there. People with whom I disagree, but who aren’t spewing hate.
South Park always has good viewpoints. I guess one of the interesting things is that conservatives and liberals each have their own set of favored classes and taboo words and subjects, they are just so different that it’s hard to recognize sometimes.
I have no problems with Coulter being the scum she is, I have problems with the media pretending that she’s something different, that she actually represents a legitimate viewpoint. It’s akin to the recent Supreme Court decision — they conveniently seem to forget free speech does not mean free airtime. Two entirely different concepts.
that was the best pitch ever….
Liberalism – nice essay. I think the thing that makes it work is that Larson seems to be trying his best to describe the situation with as little bias as possible.
I don’t know if he suceeds, but these days its enough that he tries.
It seems there are two main points
1) liberalism is a form of social control
2) liberals and conservatives have fundamentally different worldviews and tend to clan together which blinds them to views other than their own.
Of course, the real problem in #1 is that the phrase “social tolerance” uses the word ‘tolerance’ in a deceptive manner. In this context, ‘tolerance’ is used to mean ‘approval’. It isn’t required that you just tolerate gays, or muslims, or blacks. You must approve of them.
Which, of course, is moronic.
And not necessarily a desirable goal in the first place.
Bland, unthinking approval is meaningless, and dangerous.
Tolerance, on the other hand, means acknowledging that people do have the right to live their lives how they wish (assuming they are harming no one). For example, I think that Ann Coulter is a hateful demon-spawn who, I suspect (and hope), lays awake at night bathed in a fine sheen of misery oozing from her pores.
I would probably not pull her out from in front of a bus, but I wouldn’t push her either.
(unbelievably, South Park has an episode on this thats pretty good)
Tolerance comes from understanding that we all have to live together and this is the only way that doesn’t start with rounding peolpe up into camps.