Not a substantive post, but amusing, and relevant to this blog:
Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
Occasionally Jon Stewart has made the comment that it’s sad that the major media outlets are getting things wrong, and it takes a comedian to call bullshit. I’m actually not convinced by that; political humor has often been a check on politicians, and it’s not unreasonable that it should also be a check on media. Comedy is good at that.
(Hat tip to Nick for sending this along to me)
This is the latest email forward I’ve received, and they don’t get much more full of bad data and mis-attributed scholars than this. This has been covered in other places, notably at Snopes; this particular link actually points to the original 2000 version of the email. Factcheck.org also deals with the 2008 version.
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I haven’t posted recently due to a conference trip to California, and I don’t have much time at the moment to write, but I wanted to post this graphic:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/leftvright_world.html
It’s simplifying, etc. but still interesting.
Here is one of the most obnoxious emails I’ve seen; apart from just being generally designed to divide people, it’s also clearly false.
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This is not an email post, or really a wingnut post at all.
There’s an article from the August September (2009) Harper’s, Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school, which is now, happily, available for free. I say happily, but I’m actually very unhappy with this article. Slouka seems to have a very skewed perspective of what is happening in academia, and gives the impression that us “mathandscience” folk are getting so much attention in grade school that it’s destroying the humanities.
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…In which we take a look at Glenn Beck. I should note in advance that I am not listening to his program, I am reading his newsletter. It is entirely possible the man is making subtle points when considering the transcript in its entirety, or that the people who summarize the show are badly misrepresenting him. Either way, the email is misleading– and misleading emails are what we’re all about here.
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This blog has some secondary uses. One of those is Beer.
Notably, today is 9/10/9 — this means that yesterday, 9/9/9, marks the latest Stone Vertical Epic. This year’s is a “Belgian Porter with spices” — and it is beautiful. I have not had the previous Vertical Epics, and I am now saddened by this fact.
All of this is to say go out and try it; I’m fortunate enough that the local Flying Saucer has it on draught, and my friends brought it to my attention tonight. I found that while the front wasn’t all that exciting, the flavors it leaves behind are amazing. The effect was not dissimilar from that of my favorite beer, the St. Bernardus Abt 12.
I had intended to supplement beer posts with pictures, but that plan had escaped my mind by the time I got around to the 09.09.09 this evening. You should be running out to try it anyway, so you’ll see it for yourself.
I’m not quite certain how to post the original forwarded messages; unfortunately, a nontrivial number of them actually contain large numbers of images, some pertinent, some just annoying. For now, we’ll skip the images, and consider the most recent forward I’ve received, which features misquoted Founding Fathers, inaccurate statistics, and religion… Read more…