Recent content by travc

Ugh... I'm stuck on level 12. I've solved it in 4, but it isn't recognizing my (very obvious) solution. Oh well, I should go to bed anyway.

I scored 'solid liberal', but most of the questions were pretty much toss-ups where both the statements were wrong/incomplete. This sort of binary choice quiz is pretty crap. Doubly so when many of the choices aren't even orthogonal.

Too true. Just the other day I was reading some suggestions regarding bug control, and someone pointed out the interesting fact that enzymatic de-greasers are good for killing tiny bugs (by partially dissolving their carapace.) Sadly, he/she completely ruined my "cool, I never thought of that"...

Ok... First off, the Monsanto studies aren't any icon of 'proper science', but that doesn't mean Selanini's paper isn't misleading crap. Selanini gives a shitload of various observations... The problem is that the experimental design (or lack there-of) did not produce nearly enough real data to...

They clearly saw one guy promising to "shut off the tap" of government spending... In a state which pays about $10.5B to the feds and gets back $21.7B! In contrast, Cochran actually ran *pro* government services/spending ads near the end of the campaign.

Don't be thick... To reiterate untermensche's point: The Southern Strategy ins't about Republican's being racists, it is about Republican politicians attempting to get racists to vote for them (without alienating too many moderates in the process). If you think for half-a-second about how do...

Yep... It is pretty much 6 one way, half-dozen the other. The polling is pretty crappy, but it appears that Childers (the Dem) would have most likely lost to McDaniel. It would have been great to see McDaniel win and then self-destruct in the general, but that would have been a long bet to...

No surprise. People who have convinced themselves the 'other side' is doing something dishonest/nefarious/illegal are way more than 1/2 way to convincing themselves to undertake that behaviour (or worse) themselves. Doesn't matter if the 'other side' is really doing it or not. 'Conservatives'...

Just reading the abstract and figures (including tables), this study seems quite weak. Table 2 is the main results, and it underwhelming... as well as being pretty crap 'clarity' wise. The decision to report number of 'pathologies' instead of number of specimens with particular pathologies is...

Fuel != energy source. Hydrogen as a fuel isn't a bad idea, given a clean energy source to make it. Just using natural gas to make hydrogen is pretty stupid though, since you can just use the natural gas directly instead.

I'm all for more transparency, but that list (and those numbers) don't seem unreasonable. BTW: Cowbirds are evil... they seriously screw over songbirds and our fragmenting of forests has pretty much made a perfect environment for them. Maybe some of the outrage is due to people just not knowing...

In reality-based news... U.S. airline union takes aim at regionals, not JetBlue Note the date... April 25, 2014 PS: Please do watch those Frontline episodes "Flying Cheap" and "Flying Cheaper" if you've never seen them. Very relevant and illuminating.

Ah... Airlines and unions. Perennial anti-labor topic for many decades, despite the fact that the industry went from having very strong unions (and regulation) to having relatively weak unions or non-union (and basically only having safety related regulations). I grew up (in the 80s) with my...

Your sympathy, or lack there of, is irrelevant. The legal system in the US is not supposed to be about satisfying a blood-lust for revenge. Bullets often don't do as much damage as you seem to think they do. Yes, a bullet to the back of the head will nearly always cause certain death, but the...

The type of linguist who studies what sort of "languages" (in the abstract sense) different sorts of computational automata can model from a finite sets of exemplars. Not the sort who thinks much about natural language, much less the specific definitions and denotations of English words. How...