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Is Fox News full of BS?
20 August 2015 by 1 Comment
With the departure of Jon Stewart from The Daily Show there’ll be one less voice calling out Fox News for its bullshit. Was Stewart really justified in his constant criticism? I came across How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics, a paper on the Social Science Research Network by Bruce Bartlett discussing the impact of Fox.
Bartlett starts by discussing the liberal domination of media in the sixties and into the nineties, and how the abolition in 1987 of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC increased the scope for partisan broadcasting exemplified by Rush Limbaugh who was an early arrival:
There are many reasons why conservative talk radio worked so well. One is that conservatives finally had a news source that fed their philosophy. Another is
that conservatives viewed themselves as outsiders and were attracted not only to the philosophy of conservative talk radio, but its tone and articulation of outrage toward liberals that many listeners themselves had long felt.
Then Roger Ailes convinced Rupert Murdoch to let him build Fox News.
It should be noted that Murdoch has long been a conservative ideologue and Fox News fit into a larger conservative empire he built over the years that includes the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. Although the Journal has long had a conservative editorial page, prior to Murdoch gaining control in 2007, its news pages were free of bias. But soon after, a conservative tilt began creeping into the news coverage.
Science Isn’t Broken
19 August 2015 by Leave a Comment
The scientific method is the most rigorous path to knowledge, but it’s also messy and tough. Science deserves respect exactly because it is difficult — not because it gets everything correct on the first try. The uncertainty inherent in science doesn’t mean that we can’t use it to make important policies or decisions. It just means that we should remain cautious and adopt a mindset that’s open to changing course if new data arises. We should make the best decisions we can with the current evidence and take care not to lose sight of its strength and degree of certainty. It’s no accident that every good paper includes the phrase “more study is needed” — there is always more to learn.
via Science Isn’t Broken | FiveThirtyEight.
An interesting article about the problems of “doing science”: probability values are misleading, different analytical techniques can yield different results, people make mistakes, people cheat, people are biased, failed projects don’t make headlines…
Boys in the Alley
11 August 2015 by Leave a Comment
I’ve been sorting my photos from our Rome-Venice trip. I really like this one.
Boys Playing in the Alley
Critical Thinking
10 August 2015 by Leave a Comment
There has been a lot written about Jon Stewart’s decision to quit The Daily Show after 16 years as presenter. I’ve been catching up on his last few shows. One of the recurring segments on the show has been interviews in which people often make what seem to be completely outrageous statements. Apparently viewers have been asking whether these interviews are real or faked: “Why would anyone appear when they are made to look dumb?”
Well, it seems that these people didn’t mind, and to demonstrate the point Daily Show regular Jessica Williams re-interviewed some “stars of the past”. One such was Dr James David Manning, a pastor, who had compared Barack Obama to Hitler. He doubled-down on this assertion by saying that he now regarded the US President as a “son of Satan”. This was bad enough, but at the end of the interview Jessica asked the good doctor about his claim that Starbucks were using semen to flavour their lattes:
JW: You think that they’re using semen to flavour their lattes?
DJM: I do, yes.
JW: What empirical evidence do you have that Starbucks is using using semen to flavour their lattes?
DJM: What empirical evidence do I have?
JW: Yes.
DJM: I think if you’re asking for that, you may not be able to find my explanation suitable to meet the empirical standards, but let’s just say, I know.
THEORETICAL PHYSICS: “The Stars Died So That You Could Be Here Today” / Lawrence M. Krauss ☮
5 August 2015 by Leave a Comment
Top 25 Creationist Arguments
24 July 2015 by Leave a Comment
From Michael Sherlock: Top 25 Creationist Arguments.
I like number 20:
Ken Ham has poor eyesight, therefore God created the universe.
Colosseum by Night
23 July 2015 by Leave a Comment
One of the other things we did our our recent visit to Rome was to visit the Colosseum. We booked a tour with Dark Rome; we used them last time we were in Rome and they were excellent. As they’ve expanded, the company now calls itself City Wonders and Dark Rome is just a brand under the City Wonders umbrella. We also used them in Venice; so we’ve enjoyed six outings with them. I can happily recommend them, if you are going to somewhere they operate.
We tried to book one of the extended tours, but these were all full as we left it rather late. So we ended up with the Colosseum Night Tour. This turned out to be a good thing as Rome was “enjoying” temperatures of 33–34°C during the day, which had moderated somewhat by the start of the tour at 19:00.
Here’s a selection of pictures.
You can see a few additional pictures in this album.
UPS and Stupid Processes
22 July 2015 by Leave a Comment
UPS move a shitload of stuff around the world. Obviously, every once in a while something will go amiss, but they don’t seem to have very good processes in place when it does. I ordered an item from Amazon. The cost was £90.50 with free delivery since I’m an Amazon Prime customer. Presumably, this value triggered despatch via UPS rather than another courier.
Delivery was scheduled for Monday. We were out and, as it happens, so were our neighbours who I’ve listed as an alternate delivery point. When I checked delivery status, the package was listed as “Delivered: mailbox”. The thing is, I live in an apartment block where entry is protected by a videophone, and there is no communal external mailbox. So unless a package is pushed through the letterbox of our apartment and appears on our doormat, “mailbox” means nothing. But the manual, no doubt, says that a delivery location must be specified… tick!
I called UPS. The agent said she would pass the query to the depot. Someone would call me back “within an hour”. Within the specified hour Alan called me. He had no information because he hadn’t spoken to his driver. He would call back, though he didn’t say it, “within the hour” was implied. Another tick: called the customer within the required time despite having no useful info.
Another hour later, Lee called. He said he was the driver, but that his partner had actually delivered the package, so he didn’t know where it was left. He would speak to his partner and call me back. At that point communication ceased. Lee could tick off that he’d called me, but was, I assume, not required to log the need for an additional call. So the records will show that the process was followed, but probably not show that the customer still hadn’t got his package.
I called UPS again this morning. I was told to that I now had to contact Amazon—obviously, that’s the next step in the process. Camille from Amazon listened to my story, put me on hold for a while as she checked with UPS, and then promised to send me a replacement to be delivered tomorrow by UPS. Chances are that we will be out again…
oddrops 
