Daily Archives: September 29, 2011

Running the Asylum

Posted on by

Unequivocal: Today’s Right is Overwhelmingly More Anti-Science Than Today’s Left

Both left and right have fringes, where silly claims are made. Thus, for instance, after Fukushima some lefties went hunting for dead babies on the U.S. West Coast from ionizing radiation supposedly traveling across the Pacific. Like I said, fringes.

But the fringes aren’t very relevant—unless the inmates are running the asylum. That’s what you have today on the right, where Republicans and Tea Partiers overwhelmingly reject mainstream knowledge in key areas and these views are also endorsed by elected representatives and even presidential candidates.

Bingo. The wackaloons on the left aren’t in a position to decide on legislation.

Schadenfreude

Posted on by

September Collapse of Red Sox Could Be Worst Ever

There are different ways to measure the magnitude of pennant race collapses. One approach, which I’ve used in the past, is to calculate a team’s playoff probability after every game of the season, and to see which team had the highest probability of making the playoffs but failed to do so.

By that standard, the Red Sox collapse — if it comes to fruition — might rank as high as the second or third worst of all time, rivaling that of the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers and the 2007 New York Mets. It wouldn’t be quite as bad, however, as that of the 1995 California Angels, who had in excess of a 99.9 percent chance of making the playoffs on Aug. 20, 1995, when they held a 9-and-a-half-game lead over the Texas Rangers in the A.L. West, and were 12 games ahead of the Yankees for the wild card, but missed the playoffs after finishing their year 12-26.

Not the worst-case, since they won on Tuesday, but still pretty epic. Especially delicious because I’m a Yankees fan.

Update: And they’re well aware of the proportions of the collapse

“It shouldn’t have been this way. We were 7-20 in September. We go 9-18, we’re where we want to be. Nine and 18 is winning one-third of your games. The worst teams in baseball win one-third of their games. There’s no excuse. We did this to ourselves.”

You Can Handle the Truth

Posted on by

Teaching children the real truth about science

”Science is totally misunderstood … It is the only philosophical construct that we have to determine the truth with any degree of reliability, and that requires evidence, which elevates it to a different plane – it elevates it to something that every child should have,” he said.
…
‘[Science] can’t be a belief system, because belief by definition is to accept something without evidence,” Professor Kroto said. He pointed to the push in some parts of the US to teach creationism alongside evolution in schools.
”There is no theory which is more proven than evolution and the evidence for evolution comes from every discipline within the sciences,” he said. And so he is on a mission to reinvigorate science education and teach the next generation to think with reason to uncover why things are the way they are.