Category Archives: uncategorized

Signal, Noise, and Practical Significance

In this article Roger Pielke Jr. notes that it may take a long series of trials to detect shifts in the mean of a variable if those shifts are small  compared to its random fluctuations. The example he uses is … Continue reading

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Misunderstandings or Deliberate Obfuscations?

Source: (1000) Are the denialists seriously claiming that today’s global heating is just coincidence and has nothing whatever to do with the CO2 we are pumping into the air? – New Real Climate Science – Quora The foolishness of citing … Continue reading

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Isabel Crook 

There’s a fuzzy line between Stockholm Syndrome, fanatic devotion to a corrupted regime, and admirable forbearance of “mistakes” made in pursuit of laudable goals. Source: Isabel Crook devoted her long life to making a new China

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Why can’t journalists get things right?

It’s not just the headline writer that got it wrong in the Economist’s article: Propane-powered heat pumps are greener.  The expression “propane-powered” is actually used in the body of the article too, but it is clear that what is being … Continue reading

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Facebook News Ban Is Risking Lives in Wildfires, Say Eby and Trudeau 

So now we are complaining that they don’t want to pay for the privilege of transmitting our public service announcements? Source: Facebook News Ban Is Risking Lives in Wildfires, Say Eby and Trudeau | The Tyee

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Right-Wing Writer Richard Hanania’s Racist Past Exposed | HuffPost Latest News

Source: Right-Wing Writer Richard Hanania’s Racist Past Exposed | HuffPost Latest News

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Why Make It Difficult?

There is a pattern that often happens when people feel the need to change the behaviour of others, where for some reason those who want the change seem to see it as in some sense punitive and so actually make … Continue reading

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Evolution without accidents?

The subheading of this article claims that “Despite advances in molecular genetics, too many biologists think that natural selection is driven by random mutations”. Several examples in the article show how the random changes which natural selection acts upon do … Continue reading

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 ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ 

This  story reminded me of the fact that I have often been puzzled by premature references to the anthropocene as an epoch rather than an event. Source: Opinion | The ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ movie craze tells a dark story – … Continue reading

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What was Wrong with ‘National Socialism’

It’s nice to know that Stephen Harper thinks of himself as a collaborator with Viktor Orban in the re-branding process: Nazi=National Socialist<=National Conservative<=”right-wing, conservative”<=”centre-right parties” On the other hand, I might be being unfair “Perhaps Harper was there to try … Continue reading

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Bill C18 is Stupid Overreach.

It’s perfectly reasonable to prohibit the copying and embedding of content in a way that bypasses the revenue generation mechanisms that have been implemented by the owners of that content. But if you demand that the aggregators pay just for … Continue reading

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Failing at Failure

The existence of this article is proof that Emil Cioran (and perhaps to an even greater extent, Beckett) was in the end an abject failure in his goal of avoiding any hint of success. Source: Learning to be a loser: a … Continue reading

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For These(?) Colleges…

For this story about Covid-Relief Money for US Colleges, the illustration shows a Canadian high school

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Are conservatives more “balanced” than liberals?

I wrote earlier about how I found Jonathan Haidt’s claim “a bit offensive”, but the more I think about this the more irritating and offensive I find it. I just don’t buy the claim that ” Conservatives appear to endorse … Continue reading

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Bizarre Projection of a Political Agenda

The role reversal in the ‘Roman Charity‘ story reminds me to some extent of that in Robert Munch’s delightful little tear jerker Love You Forever. The daughter’s adoption of a maternal role is especially apparent in representations like these two: Others … Continue reading

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What’s This Nonsense About “Electoral Interference”?

There has been a lot of noise lately about alleged Chinese “interference” in recent Canadian elections, but the suggestion that anything has somehow compromised the actual vote counts is just a load of crap. Of course any kind of covert … Continue reading

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Zombie Mathlets

So… For any who have been wondering about the lack of posts recently, here’s a partial(*) explanation for the most recent gap. Back in the waning years of the last century, I became interested in the potential for web-based “applets” … Continue reading

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Adolescence is a ‘use it or lose it’ time for moral development | Psyche Ideas

Not exactly in accord with Loyola, but consistent with the theories behind many educational movements – from “public” schools through Boy Scouts to Hitler Youth, Red Guards, and street gangs (and perhaps why the current fights over school curricula are … Continue reading

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How to think about truth | Psyche Guides

Source: How to think about truth | Psyche Guides I am surprised to see it claimed that truth is a more basic concept than falsehood. In fact, it seems to me that the naive mind initially accepts any proposition at … Continue reading

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More Philosophical Silliness

Source: On the advantages of believing that nothing is true | Aeon Essays The claim that “nothing is true” only makes sense if one has a well defined concept of what it means for something to be “true”. What makes … Continue reading

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