A 700-by-50 foot section of a roof over a parking area buckled on Feb. 13 at a garden pond construction and supply company in St. Charles, Ill., west of Chicago. No one was injured in the collapse, which occurred on a Sunday afternoon when few people were working at the company, Aquascape Inc.If you don't know the answer to a question like that, you shouldn't be putting tons of water absorbing dirt on top of a gigantic roof.
Nearly a week later, investigators were still waiting to try to determine why the roof collapsed, said Ed Beaulieu, a company vice president...
“The collapse happened right at the beginning of the thaw,” he said, leading to speculation that ice on the roof might have prevented meltwater from draining off. “But right now no one really knows.”
Showing posts with label bad science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad science. Show all posts
Why, oh, why did the "green" roof collapse? You'd think it would have been "sustainable."
Isn't nature sympathetic to our efforts to be good people?
"If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community."
"They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value."
Says University of Virginia social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, quoted in this John Tierney piece in the NYT, which gets pretty good if you read past the first half. The first half invites mockery for being so head-slappingly obvious. Glenn Reynolds already wrote just about exactly the post I was about to write. I might have gone even shorter, though. "Duh" is shorter than "Indeed." So, yeah, conservatives are so radically underrepresented in academia that it can't be mere chance.
But let's skip into the middle of the piece and think about the mechanisms of exclusion, these "sacred values" that displace scientific thinking. Haidt notes the example of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, back in 1965, who "warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks" and "was shunned by many of his colleagues at Harvard as racist."
Here's Haidt on Bloggingheads, back in 2008, talking about the social psychology of conservatives and liberals. And here's Haidt's "Your Morals" website project about morality and political ideology.
Says University of Virginia social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, quoted in this John Tierney piece in the NYT, which gets pretty good if you read past the first half. The first half invites mockery for being so head-slappingly obvious. Glenn Reynolds already wrote just about exactly the post I was about to write. I might have gone even shorter, though. "Duh" is shorter than "Indeed." So, yeah, conservatives are so radically underrepresented in academia that it can't be mere chance.
But let's skip into the middle of the piece and think about the mechanisms of exclusion, these "sacred values" that displace scientific thinking. Haidt notes the example of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, back in 1965, who "warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks" and "was shunned by many of his colleagues at Harvard as racist."
Similarly, Larry Summers, then president of Harvard, was ostracized in 2005 for wondering publicly whether the preponderance of male professors in some top math and science departments might be due partly to the larger variance in I.Q. scores among men (meaning there are more men at the very high and very low ends). “This was not a permissible hypothesis,” Dr. Haidt said. “It blamed the victims rather than the powerful. The outrage ultimately led to his resignation. We psychologists should have been outraged by the outrage. We should have defended his right to think freely.”According to Tierney, Haidt's audience of social psychologists "seemed refreshingly receptive to his argument."
A few even endorsed his call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that’s 10 percent conservative by 2020.Affirmative action? Why not just stop giving affirmative action to liberals? I think that would get you way above the 10% quota... if you could do it. Ironically, talking "affirmative action" is inherently off-putting to conservatives. It's more of those sacred values from the tribal-moral community that ward off outsiders.
***
Here's Haidt on Bloggingheads, back in 2008, talking about the social psychology of conservatives and liberals. And here's Haidt's "Your Morals" website project about morality and political ideology.
"A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an 'elaborate fraud'..."
CNN reports:
Our shared interest in the rule of law is equivalent, yet how could we punish the lawyers and judges who push the law beyond what is truly legal? We'd only end up with worse legal arguments, and our "rule of law" would lose the qualities that made us value it in the first place. Nevertheless, science is different. The scientific method is more agreed-upon. But scientists, like lawyers and judges, go looking for the answers they want. Something non-neutral pulls them along. And yet we expect them — like judges (if not lawyers) — to conduct their search within a professional methodology. We'd like to be able to trust them, and yet we'd be fools to trust them. But we need to trust them, and we trust them all the time....
An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study -- and that there was "no doubt" Wakefield was responsible.What psychological suffering this man caused in so many vulnerable parents of little children! For a scientist to subvert science — why don't we have a much more intense feeling of horror about that? How dare those trained in science to misuse it and undermine the enterprise of science? Our shared interest in science is so strong – our need to rely on experts so great — that we should severely punish those who betray it. But we can't, really, can we? If we tried, we might only exacerbate the pressures on scientists to toe the line and give us the answers we want, lest we target them for destruction.
"It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors," Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor-in-chief, told CNN. "But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data."
***
Our shared interest in the rule of law is equivalent, yet how could we punish the lawyers and judges who push the law beyond what is truly legal? We'd only end up with worse legal arguments, and our "rule of law" would lose the qualities that made us value it in the first place. Nevertheless, science is different. The scientific method is more agreed-upon. But scientists, like lawyers and judges, go looking for the answers they want. Something non-neutral pulls them along. And yet we expect them — like judges (if not lawyers) — to conduct their search within a professional methodology. We'd like to be able to trust them, and yet we'd be fools to trust them. But we need to trust them, and we trust them all the time....
"City officials wanted the campaign to have... a 'major gross-out factor' that would make the YouTube video, called 'Man Drinking Fat,' 'go viral' on the Web."
Oh, I'm grossed out all right.
The video, which has been viewed more than 700,000 times, shows a young man sucking down fat from a can as it dribbles down his chin to a cheery calypso-flavored tune.I'm not grossed out because I watched it. I didn't. I avoid government propaganda. I'm grossed out that it's done at all.
It was the video that sparked the dispute, with its claim: “Drinking 1 can of soda a day can make you 10 pounds fatter a year. Don’t drink yourself FAT.”Uh... you already called us fat when you said drinking soda would make us fatter. The government can't get the science right. It can't even get the English usage right.
"Brooklyn is now overrun with rats and opossums."
"A few years ago, officials in Brooklyn, New York came up with a seemingly brilliant idea to deal with the rat-infestation problem in their borough: release opossums into the neighborhood to eat the rats...."
Ha. Of course, like rats, they prefer garbage. No shortage of that.
"The critters have a mouth full of 50 sharp teeth, tend to exude a foul odor, and can occasionally contract rabies... They are nocturnal, and some Brooklynites have become terrified to go into their yards at night."
Oh, Brooklynites! I thought youse guys were tough.
Time to bring in some wolves, I think. They eat rats.
Ha. Of course, like rats, they prefer garbage. No shortage of that.
"The critters have a mouth full of 50 sharp teeth, tend to exude a foul odor, and can occasionally contract rabies... They are nocturnal, and some Brooklynites have become terrified to go into their yards at night."
Oh, Brooklynites! I thought youse guys were tough.
Time to bring in some wolves, I think. They eat rats.
"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains."
Uh oh! That's Christine O'Donnell, my dear friends.
Via Memeorandum.
ADDED: And here she is with Eddie Izzard!
Via Memeorandum.
ADDED: And here she is with Eddie Izzard!
"I blame not Heaven, but rather a society..."
"We must pray..." for the brilliant comic actor Glenn Shadix, who gave the hilarious funeral sermon in "Heathers" (and played the interior decorator in "Beetlejuice"), and who has died now, at the age of 58.
On his website, he told this story:
... Faced with estrangement from those I loved, I decided to put my fate in the hands of the Birmingham Alabama Psychiatric Community and see if I could rewire myself into something resembling a heterosexual.
... This therapy consisted of male and female pornography and electrodes attached to a large car-size battery and then to me. I was told to look at the male pornography until I became aroused and then dear Dr. Hainey would turn up the juice as I stared at the male nudes and the muscles in my arm would begin to burn and contract. When the pain became intolerable (I was told not to be a sissy about it and to take as much pain as possible) I was then to turn my head and when I looked back the male nude was replaced by a female nude and Dr. Hainey would shut off his little current of torture....I just want my high school to be a nice place...
ADDED: He's really saying "I blame not Heather..."
William Saletan slams Elena Kagan.
"All of us should be embarrassed that a sentence written by a White House aide now stands enshrined in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, erroneously credited with scientific authorship and rigor. Kagan should be most chastened of all. She fooled the nation's highest judges. As one of them, she had better make sure they aren't fooled again."
I'm not to pleased with the idea of relying on someone who distorted science to detect, for our benefit, the distortions of others. What we have is someone who put a political agenda ahead of science. We all need to heighten our skepticism about the way politicians and lawyers use our embrace of the authority of science to scam us.
***
I'm not to pleased with the idea of relying on someone who distorted science to detect, for our benefit, the distortions of others. What we have is someone who put a political agenda ahead of science. We all need to heighten our skepticism about the way politicians and lawyers use our embrace of the authority of science to scam us.
So now there's this theory that the iPad is going to cause insomnia but the Kindle will not.
This is a big, long article in CNN that doesn't seem have much science to it. Theoretically, the light emanating from electronic screens is different from the light from a lamp that bounces off a paper book or a nonglowing screen like the Kindle. Much is made of blueness.
The New York crime of having a balloon.
In NY, a court found helium a "noxious substance" and upheld the charge of "unlawfully possessing or selling noxious material" against a man who sold 2 helium balloons. It says "possessing or selling," so I must infer that even having a helium balloon is a crime. So watch out kids.
"He said one night he looked down and saw his white body next to her black body and couldn't take it anymore."
He was John Tesh. She was Oprah Winfrey. According to the new Kitty Kelley book about Oprah, this happened in the mid-1970s in Tennessee. The quote is (obviously) hearsay. Some other woman who dated Tesh served that up to Kelley. Really untrustworthy, because who is she, and what does she have against Tesh, who didn't stay with her? And even if she was utterly accurate about what Tesh said to her, Tesh could have been lying to her, perhaps bullshitting about how her body was better than Oprah's or some such lover's nonsense.
But let's assume Tesh and Oprah were lovers. Oprah has said they went on a date together, so there is probably some connection. What connection? In the years since the 1970s, both Tesh and Oprah have led the "New Age" movement — Oprah by seducing millions of TV-watchers into believing all manner of pseudo-scientific notions and Tesh by composing that innocuous music. Perhaps the music is not so innocuous. Perhaps Tesh has been softening the very brains into which Oprah has planted her noxious seeds. Conspiracy theory anybody? (Crack?)
Bonus: a slideshow of unlikely celebrities match-ups.
But let's assume Tesh and Oprah were lovers. Oprah has said they went on a date together, so there is probably some connection. What connection? In the years since the 1970s, both Tesh and Oprah have led the "New Age" movement — Oprah by seducing millions of TV-watchers into believing all manner of pseudo-scientific notions and Tesh by composing that innocuous music. Perhaps the music is not so innocuous. Perhaps Tesh has been softening the very brains into which Oprah has planted her noxious seeds. Conspiracy theory anybody? (Crack?)
***
Bonus: a slideshow of unlikely celebrities match-ups.
There's a big epidemic, no, not of sex addiction...
... but of wives deciding their husbands are sex addicts who must get treatment.
Read the whole post by Dr. Marty Klein. It's pretty funny, these men sent in by their wives to get treatment, after learning from their wives that "either I’m a sex addict and I couldn’t help it and I need treatment, or I’m just a selfish bastard and she wants a divorce."
How come so many women have gotten the idea they can diagnose this ailment? It's easy to figure out that wives grasp at the idea of addiction instead of facing the pain of rejection and betrayal, but why the big change in the last 3 years? There are people — not Dr. Klein — who make money in the addiction treatment racket, and they've managed to get their pitch out to the public, but how and why now? Some "Oprah" show?
I looked back into my blog archives to see what relevant things started 3 years ago. In 2007, there was the Larry Craig story. That got processed as "sex addiction" to some extent. In 2008, there was the Eliot Spitzer thing. Hmm. I wonder why something so inherently unbelievable gained traction when politicians were using it. It's testimony to the strong appeal of the sex addiction theory of marital infidelity that women bought it when they heard it from such low-credibility sources.
Is "sex addiction" one of these things that's going to be treated under the new health care regime, even as Medicare patients are given pain pills in lieu of hip replacements and heart valves?
ADDED: Why aren't wives more worried about treatment for sex addiction? You want the man to be "sexually addicted" to you. How would health workers remove the part of his sexuality that's goes toward other women and leave the part that goes to you? Even assuming this is a disease, the cure seems dangerous, unless you want a desexualized husband.
I’ve been a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist for 30 years.... But until about three years ago no one ever came in claiming to be a sex addict, or saying that his partner told him he was one....
I don’t treat sex addiction. The concept is superficial. It isn’t clearly defined or clinically validated, and it’s completely pathology-oriented. It presents no healthy model of non-monogamy, pornography use, or stuff like S/M. Some programs eliminate masturbation, which is inhumane, naïve, and crazy....
Oh, I observe people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and a few other exotic states. That accounts for some of what laypeople call “sex addiction.”Thanks to regular commenter Julius Ray Hoffman, for sending me that link.
What I mostly see instead of “sex addicts” is people who are neurotic or narcissistic....
Read the whole post by Dr. Marty Klein. It's pretty funny, these men sent in by their wives to get treatment, after learning from their wives that "either I’m a sex addict and I couldn’t help it and I need treatment, or I’m just a selfish bastard and she wants a divorce."
How come so many women have gotten the idea they can diagnose this ailment? It's easy to figure out that wives grasp at the idea of addiction instead of facing the pain of rejection and betrayal, but why the big change in the last 3 years? There are people — not Dr. Klein — who make money in the addiction treatment racket, and they've managed to get their pitch out to the public, but how and why now? Some "Oprah" show?
I looked back into my blog archives to see what relevant things started 3 years ago. In 2007, there was the Larry Craig story. That got processed as "sex addiction" to some extent. In 2008, there was the Eliot Spitzer thing. Hmm. I wonder why something so inherently unbelievable gained traction when politicians were using it. It's testimony to the strong appeal of the sex addiction theory of marital infidelity that women bought it when they heard it from such low-credibility sources.
***
Is "sex addiction" one of these things that's going to be treated under the new health care regime, even as Medicare patients are given pain pills in lieu of hip replacements and heart valves?
ADDED: Why aren't wives more worried about treatment for sex addiction? You want the man to be "sexually addicted" to you. How would health workers remove the part of his sexuality that's goes toward other women and leave the part that goes to you? Even assuming this is a disease, the cure seems dangerous, unless you want a desexualized husband.
"Earth Hour"... and other revealing "climate change" hypocrisies.
"Some of the lights the state Capitol were turned off Saturday night as part of Earth Hour a worldwide effort to get people, institutions and governments to shut off their lights for an hour to bring awareness to climate change."
Oh, I'm getting some awareness out of this, all right. This is heightening my awareness that the people who do stunts like this do not actually believe in the "climate change" emergency. Anyone who actually believed would oppose — among many, many other things — all the decorative illumination of the exteriors of public buildings. Just turning it off for an hour? Do you think we are idiots?
This reminds me of those churchgoers who pray for an hour a week — in public — and spend the rest of their time engaging in whatever nasty behavior they please. Why do they do this? Do they think they'll get absolution? Eh. You have to actually believe to think there's absolution. If they really believed, they wouldn't behave like that. I think they, in their selfish interest, hope to gain favor and to prompt other people to believe and behave virtuously.
Some illumination of public buildings is required by the FAA, as noted in the linked article. But that reminds me: Why are people flying all over the place anyway? If we really believed in the touted emergency, we would limit flying to the truly essential. And what would be truly essential?
Business and government meetings can be done by video conference. Close down that that government building altogether! Think of all the carbon emissions that would save. (I will concede that in a representative democracy, officials really may need to mingle together in the flesh)
Recreational travel is a monument to disbelief in the seriousness of the climate change alarm. How can you go jaunting about to Europe or wherever and turn around and expect other people to buy tiny tin-can cars?
How about if everyone stays home and reads. Read until you figure out how to write English (or whatever language you think you know). The Wisconsin State Journal writes "to bring awareness to climate change." Like "climate change" is an entity that could be jolted into conscious thought.
Oh, I'm getting some awareness out of this, all right. This is heightening my awareness that the people who do stunts like this do not actually believe in the "climate change" emergency. Anyone who actually believed would oppose — among many, many other things — all the decorative illumination of the exteriors of public buildings. Just turning it off for an hour? Do you think we are idiots?
***
This reminds me of those churchgoers who pray for an hour a week — in public — and spend the rest of their time engaging in whatever nasty behavior they please. Why do they do this? Do they think they'll get absolution? Eh. You have to actually believe to think there's absolution. If they really believed, they wouldn't behave like that. I think they, in their selfish interest, hope to gain favor and to prompt other people to believe and behave virtuously.
***
Some illumination of public buildings is required by the FAA, as noted in the linked article. But that reminds me: Why are people flying all over the place anyway? If we really believed in the touted emergency, we would limit flying to the truly essential. And what would be truly essential?
Business and government meetings can be done by video conference. Close down that that government building altogether! Think of all the carbon emissions that would save. (I will concede that in a representative democracy, officials really may need to mingle together in the flesh)
Recreational travel is a monument to disbelief in the seriousness of the climate change alarm. How can you go jaunting about to Europe or wherever and turn around and expect other people to buy tiny tin-can cars?
***
How about if everyone stays home and reads. Read until you figure out how to write English (or whatever language you think you know). The Wisconsin State Journal writes "to bring awareness to climate change." Like "climate change" is an entity that could be jolted into conscious thought.
"The food portions depicted in paintings of the Last Supper have grown larger - in line with our own super-sizing of meals, say obesity experts."
That is not from The Onion, folks. That's BBC.com.
Professor Brian Wansink, who, with his brother Craig, led the research, published in the International Journal of Obesity, said: "The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food...."Never eat anything larger than your disciple's head.
His team used computer-aided design technology to scan and calculate the relative measurements of items in the paintings, regardless of their orientation.
These included works by El Greco, Leonardo Da Vinci, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Rubens.
Based on the assumption that the width of an average loaf of bread from the time should be twice that of the average disciple's head, the researchers plotted the size of the Passover evening dishes.
The main meals grew 69% and plate size 66% between the oldest (carried out in 1000AD) and most recent (1700s) paintings. Bread size grew by about 23%.Take, eat, this is my supersized body....
The sharpest increases were seen in paintings completed after 1500 and up to 1900AD.
Craig Wansink, who is a professor of religious studies, says the changes in portion sizes is probably a reflection of culture rather than theology.
"There is no religious reason why the meals got bigger. It may be that meals really did grow, or that people just became more interested in food."
"Just look at what has been happening for the last three days," Al Gore said.
"The so-called skeptics haven’t noted it because it’s not snow. But the downpours and heavy winds are consistent with what the scientists have long warned about."
Now, what's the rule on whether we can observe the weather and say something about climate change? I'm just trying to get this straight. I think the rule is: Weather can be used as evidence of climate when it supports the theory ofglobal warming anthropogenic climate change. There's also a corollary: Whatever happens is evidence global warming anthropogenic climate change. Another way of putting this is: You may only make statements of belief in global warming anthropogenic climate change.
See how easy it is to be a member of the Church of Gore?
Go. And sin no more.
Now, what's the rule on whether we can observe the weather and say something about climate change? I'm just trying to get this straight. I think the rule is: Weather can be used as evidence of climate when it supports the theory of
See how easy it is to be a member of the Church of Gore?
Go. And sin no more.
"Feeling a bit off?"
I was struck by this inane point-of-purchase ad for a homeopathic remedy:
"A bit off"... what the hell kind of a medical problem is that? Perhaps one that goes perfectly with the non-remedy that is homeopathy. It made me think of this ad from 1930 for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound:
But these ailments! They are relics of one historical era or another. Who would complain about not having a good appetite today? Today, you'd get rich if you could bottle a remedy that caused not having a good appetite. And today, feeling a bit off is something you'd shell out money to cure.
Miscellaneous things:
1. I love the assurances on that package: "No Side Effects, No Drug Interactions, Non-Drowsy." Well, duh. It's a homeopathic remedy.
2. Can you believe people pay $9.99 for a product labeled "Gas"?
3. Why did I run across that ad for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound? We were fooling around with the Google News Archive and did a search for "iPod." We were intrigued at a hit from 1930. Upon inspection, we saw that the word "good" — in "never had a good appetite" — was printed with the "g" and the "o" corrupted enough to make it look like an "i" and a "p." I love odd mistakes like that.
"A bit off"... what the hell kind of a medical problem is that? Perhaps one that goes perfectly with the non-remedy that is homeopathy. It made me think of this ad from 1930 for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound:
"I was very nervous and weak and never had a good appetite. Almost every day I would have to lie down. My aunt used Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound and so did other women. I often wondered if it would help me but I hesitated to try it. After the firs bottle I felt better, so I kept on. I have already taken five bottles and feel as strong as can be."As strong as can be, eh? 5 bottles? Is it 5 bottles of placebo or is it booze?
But these ailments! They are relics of one historical era or another. Who would complain about not having a good appetite today? Today, you'd get rich if you could bottle a remedy that caused not having a good appetite. And today, feeling a bit off is something you'd shell out money to cure.
***
Miscellaneous things:
1. I love the assurances on that package: "No Side Effects, No Drug Interactions, Non-Drowsy." Well, duh. It's a homeopathic remedy.
2. Can you believe people pay $9.99 for a product labeled "Gas"?
3. Why did I run across that ad for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound? We were fooling around with the Google News Archive and did a search for "iPod." We were intrigued at a hit from 1930. Upon inspection, we saw that the word "good" — in "never had a good appetite" — was printed with the "g" and the "o" corrupted enough to make it look like an "i" and a "p." I love odd mistakes like that.
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