Yet another weird SF fan


I'm a mathematician, a libertarian, and a science-fiction fan. Common sense? What's that?

Go to first entry


 

Archives

<< current
 
E-mail address:
jhertzli AT ix DOT netcom DOT com


My Earthlink/Netcom Site

My Tweets

My other blogs
Small Sample Watch
XBM Graphics


The Former Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse:
Someone who used to be sane (formerly War)
Someone who used to be serious (formerly Plague)
Rally 'round the President (formerly Famine)
Dr. Yes (formerly Death)

Interesting weblogs:
Back Off Government!
Bad Science
Blogblivion
Boing Boing
Debunkers Discussion Forum
Deep Space Bombardment
Depleted Cranium
Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.
EconLog
Foreign Dispatches
Good Math, Bad Math
Greenie Watch
The Hand Of Munger
Howard Lovy's NanoBot
Hyscience
Liberty's Torch
The Long View
My sister's blog
Neo Warmonger
Next Big Future
Out of Step Jew
Overcoming Bias
The Passing Parade
Peter Watts Newscrawl
Physics Geek
Pictures of Math
Poor Medical Student
Prolifeguy's take
The Raving Theist
RealityCarnival
Respectful Insolence
Sedenion
Seriously Science
Shtetl-Optimized
Slate Star Codex
The Speculist
The Technoptimist
TJIC
Tools of Renewal
XBM Graphics
Zoe Brain

Other interesting web sites:
Aspies For Freedom
Crank Dot Net
Day By Day
Dihydrogen Monoxide - DHMO Homepage
Fourmilab
Jewish Pro-Life Foundation
Libertarians for Life
The Mad Revisionist
Piled Higher and Deeper
Science, Pseudoscience, and Irrationalism
Sustainability of Human Progress


























Yet another weird SF fan
 

Monday, October 31, 2016

Not from the Usual Suspects

The historical ignorance among college students cannot come from the Usual Suspects:

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”

This is not due to college professors; the students had that miseducation when they entered college. It was also not due to “Fundamentalists”; Any Fundamentalist would know about Egyptian slavery.

A possible effect: Someone who believes that slavery was something distinctively American and who is also determined to be patriotic might be proud of being a bigot. Maybe that's where the “deplorables” came from…

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Deplorable Arithmetic

If half of the US population is Republican leaning …

And if 40% of those are Trump supporters (in contrast to Trump tolerators) …

And if half of those are deplorable …

Then only 10% of the US population are that type of deplorable. Sounds okay.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

The Front Label and the Back Label

On the front label it says “No GMOs.”

On the back label it says “25% JUICE.” The first two ingredients are water and sugar. The pomegranate juice that's supposed to be a superfood (this week) is the sixth ingredient.

Throw away the wheat and keep the chaff.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

The Russians Are Coming!

It's harder to make threats when you're regarded as a has-been.

For that matter, the hacked e-mails are pretty much a nothingburger. At best, they reveal stuff that's already known (Hillary and Co. are obnoxiously arrogant) and are one of the reasons she's not 50 points ahead. If anything, they make me slightly more likely to vote Democratic since it looks like no major secrets were put at risk … unless the Russians are still holding out.

I'm still trying to figure out what the Russians get out of this. Do they have a mole in the Trump organization ready to shut down oil and gas exports? Do they think the Trump administration is about to stop nukes and fracking? Or do they hope for a war between the US and China that makes them Number One?

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

Donald Trump and Arthur C. Clarke Had Something in Common

 
Profiles
My Blogger Profile
eXTReMe Tracker X-treme Tracker


The Atom Feed This page is powered by Blogger.