As the report’s authors found, 42 percent of those surveyed “incorrectly believe that since scientists can’t predict the weather more than a few days in advance, they can’t possibl[y] predict the climate of the future."
It's one think to claim that you can't make predictions; it's another thing to claim that your predictions are accurate. This seems to come very close to confusing those two categories.
It does seem like a complete ripoff of a previous project by Jamie Oliver (which lives on) right down to the prominence of the number fifteen in the names of both resulting restaurants. The main difference appears to be snootier cuisine. Might work to get people employed, although wages in the sector aren't great, even for those with training.
The Freakonomics blog tackles the question of whether or not the economy has a significant impact on marriage rates as people are unable to afford weddings, and concludes that the answer is no. My thoughts: (a) as previously argued, I'd say that marriage as a legal institution is relatively meaningless. (b) You need to distinguish between a "wedding" (i.e. a party), and a wedding (the act of getting married)... one is expensive whereas the other need not be.
This seems like a typical example of the tendency to focus on the wrong aspects of the situation. Here the focus being how women in Latvia can't find well-educated, employed husbands rather than investigating factors like the country having the highest disparity in male-female life expectancy in the EU, a high early male mortality rate (3x the mortality rate of women), and a 50% higher female enrollment in university./dd>
On a positive note: he spoke of the need to distinguish between opponents and enemies. If someone like Palin got elected as president or vice-president "We'll be fine. You know, we had a civil war. Just - we're not that fragile, and I think we always have to remember that people can be opponents, but not enemies."
On an annoyed note: he talked of the "hypocrisy videos" in which they show a person saying one thing and then a video of the same person either saying the opposite thing, or presenting the same case as a new direction. Personally I despise these videos - to quote a guest writer on the Freakonomics blog, who authored a book entitled Being Wrong, "wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change." To make it more difficult for people to change their minds without being considered a hypocrite seems to weaken the ability to develop effective policies.
On a Glenn Beck note: he stated that "it's very difficult to argue with his [Beck's] facts. It's the conclusions." My question: should you treat Stewart calling Beck a "dumb-ass" (which seems to be the typical insult on the episodes of the Daily Show that I've seen), any different than Beck extracting "liar" as a substring of "libertarian"?
On a slightly amusing note: the interview seemed very much an overawed Stewart groupie. A quote from the transcript: "And please let me lead the standing ovation for you and the work that you do."
Personally I like The Colbert Report but find Stewart and his show a little annoying. Stewart seems often more a pundit than a comedian to me, whereas Colbert is basically stuck in character.
In Malcolm Gladwell's words: "Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires." As he notes, supporting a group or cause on Facebook doesn't amount to much, with charity fundraising campaigns often recording only a few cents of contributors per member of the group. Similarly with political causes, it's much easier to post a tweet about something than to actually make an impact.
Amusingly enough, the actor portraying the newest character on the Big Bang Theory actually has a Ph.D. in neuroscience. And, to further mess with your mind, she's also taking up homeschooling for her kids.
Here Paul Krugman argues that the total number of government employees has fallen rather than risen under Obama. I should note some lack of confidence in Krugman's facts, considering that others associated with the New York Times itself (where Krugman write) seems to fairly regularly inform me that his claims are often false. However, if true, it's kind of interesting. Also seems to support my hypothesis rather the U.S. Republicans and Democrats are more alike then they are different. Consider as well, for example, that Bush actually significantly increasing spending on both education and regulations.
I can't say that I'm much of a gamer. I've got a PS3 but it largely serves as a media player whether we're speaking of Blu-ray, DVDs, or network video (including Netflix). However, since at the time of purchase it'd been a bit of a toss-up between a PS3 and a Wii, I decided to grab Playstation Move, the motion controller platform recently released for the PS3.
I'm happy that it's not the exclusive controller for the PS3, as motion control can be overused, but it seems to make a decent controller for certain games. Reviews suggest that it's motion tracking is better than the Wii's, but that's not too surprising given that it dates from a few years later, on a more powerful platform, and also uses a controller + webcam approach to motion tracking. Still, when playing table tennis ping pong, there were a few motions that the controller can't seem to accurately pick up on.
As well, the Move has a pretty lousy selection of games at the moment with little available beyond the starter sports package. A controller like the Move's seems to demand a Star Wars games, although so far I haven't seen plans announced for any. Thus far, the coolest sounding game that I've seen announced is Sorcery, even though it's not scheduled to release for a while yet:
Perhaps support for the Move will also be patched into some existing games. However, Sony appears to be gradually shifting away from a free Playstation Network, to one favouring paid memberships, so I'm not sure when I'd expect to see a lot of these patches available without forking out some extra amount of cash.
