GroupThinkTank
Revolutionizing the world, one "I agree" at a time
Monday, February 28, 2005
David Bernat, 9:13 PM:
David Bernat, 1:42 AM:
1:40......1:41......1:42......1:42........
My racing mind is so tired of settling for the treadmill when it wants to run the roads that at this point I'm compelled to sell my brain to Fear Factor.
FARK.com
Photoshop Contest:
Photoshop what our Founding Fathers might be up to today.
Here's are the entries.
The second entry is a subtle spin on an obvious idea.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
X-Pub, 1:54 AM:
Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles: The Movie
Apparently, it exists. Damn shame since I was thinking about making it.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/roscoes_house_of_chicken_and_waffles_the_movie/
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=617&item=6360538820&rd=1&ssPageName=WD1V
Monday, February 21, 2005
Mike Russo, 12:11 AM:
Welcome to the Big Darkness
HST, RIP.
Motherfuck.
Not sure what to say besides God damn it, W, that's one more you owe us.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
stephen, 4:10 PM:
GWBush tapes
Actually, I think they make me like him a bit better. It seems consistent with the hypothesis that Bush is a human being rather than a supervillain. I admit I'm personally biased by the fact he really *doesn't* seem to personally have it in for gays. This reduces the reasons to hate to, oh, i dunno: rampant class warfare, political unilateralism, pathological lying, and destroying the earth. Still, an improvement.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
X-Pub, 3:35 PM:
Hunter S. Thompson vs. Bill Murray
Hunter S. Thompson called up Bill Murray at 3:30 AM to discuss his new sport, shotgun golf. A transcript of their conversation (as recorded by Hunter) is here:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=thompson/050216&num=1
I want to get paid to be a total nut. Then again, I am getting paid to to work with a theory that assumes that 97% of the universe is magical ether that only interacts with us gravitationally, so why am I complaining.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
David Bernat, 7:33 PM:
Report: The Plural of "Anecdote" Is Not "Data"
I'll break the silence. I have had on the backburner a simple statistical analysis that shows that that by the nature of the gaussian bell curve, if men are only slightly more likely than women to be more proficient in the sciences on average then it is not shocking at all that there are five or six or seven times as many male physicists than female physicists. Yes, if you have a napkin handy you can do it too. Useful facts: Tech was 66% men, and the average IQ has been estimated to be about 130-135 (A psychologist who tested Techer IQs offered this up at a meeting once.) It should be noted that I think that there are real social pressures keeping women out of the sciences. However, it should be noted that Tech heavily recruited women, and I imagine that other serious science programs would as well (though Colette swears she was left by the wayside when she entered into Columbia University major-undeclared). It should also be minded that currently tenured professors are products of social conditioning from a time that may well have pre-dated women's lib, and is certainly before Working Girl hit theaters.
My results have been derived by fitting the Tech scenerio (an IQ of 125 for admission puts the median at 130, and there are 2 men for every female). I also took liberty to set an IQ of 145 required for professors. You can argue this choice, but if you choose to do so you're missing the point I'm making, and I'm not interested. It's also not unreasonable to assume that only 1 out of 500 physics majors make the cut for top tier professor positions.
I determined using the Tech data that if women have math aptitudes with an mean of 100 and a standard devation of 15, men are either N( 105, 15 ) or N( 100, 18.7). The former puts professor candidate ratios at 3:1 and the latter puts it to 6:1. If the uncertainty in male aptitude was just 18% higher than that of women we would expect 84% of professor positions to be held by men. If anyone contends that evolution doesn't exert that much play within the biology of a species they can talk to Eric about white quarterbacks or the Kenyans about marathon running. And read about Elephants or Green Spoon Worms.
Here is the New York Times Op-Ed written by Olivia Jusdon that inspired half this post.
Suddenly, Newsweek's sqawks about the state of the science profession are put into a little context.
"The public uses statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost -- more for support than illumination."
Tom Fletcher, 12:35 AM:
Thursday, February 03, 2005
X-Pub, 8:09 PM:
Rumsfield NOT The Weakest Link
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/03/rumsfeld.resign/index.html
Rumsfield twice offered his resignation during the Abu Ghraib scandal, but Bush refused to sign it. I mention this only because Rumsfield is not the lower common denominator in integrity, apparently.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Mark Dixon, 10:52 AM:
Civil liberties trump war on terror - US 11th Circuit
Good quote from the US Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit in its decision in Roy L. Bourgeois v Bobby Peters. (The quote's on page 16):
"Given that we have been on 'yellow alert' for over two and a half years now, we cannot consider this a particularly exceptional condition that warrants curtailment of constitutional rights. We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War on Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over."
Damn right.
You can download a PDF of the full decision here.
