Comments on: The War at Home (Wall Street Division)

By: Luther McLeod

Luther McLeod — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 23:35:36 +0000

Watching you folks is similar to watching a cat play with a mouse. Toy, toy, pounce. Toy, toy, pounce, Toy, toy, crunch. Quite amusing. And good job.

By: Buddy Larsen

Buddy Larsen — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 22:28:41 +0000

“The Murtha of All Defeats”…yes, he and his Murtha-Fogging “plan”.

By: PeterUK

PeterUK — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 19:39:34 +0000

“All Your Biases Are Belong To Us”

By: dougf

dougf — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 19:23:38 +0000

Any more difficult to credit than the fact that (in Kosland) he's a tool of the Saudis controlled by a Jewish cabal?--RB See? He is a uniter not a devider after all. What a guy !!

By: PeterUK

PeterUK — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 19:22:08 +0000

Supporting the troops by describing them as "Broken,worn out living hand to mouth,then celebrating their valour by forcing them to retreat. "The Murtha of All Defeats".

By: Rick Ballard

Rick Ballard — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 18:52:23 +0000

Any more difficult to credit than the fact that (in Kosland) he’s a tool of the Saudis controlled by a Jewish cabal?

I really like that one.

By: Charlie (Colorado)

Charlie (Colorado) — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 17:51:30 +0000

Oh, I wanted to throw in something about the ranch. MB, happens I grew up on a working cattle ranch. There’s no question that Bush doesn’t have a working ranch, and so far as I know he’s never made the claim that it was. But the notion that he’d bother to buy a couple of square miles of land, and spend as much time as he does on the ranch, when people are constantly bitching that he spends too much time there, and would be doing it for political reasons, is simply deranged.

As with other aspects of the reaction to Bush, I can understand someone deciding Bush is a semi-literate idiot; it’s not very well suited to the evidence, but what the hell. I can understand someone deciding that Bush is a machiavellian schemer; frankly, considering how often he ends up “losing” until he gets what he wants, I’d find that a lot more believable.

But the conclusion that he’s a machiavellian schemer who is at the same time transparently a fool just is a little difficult to credit.

By: Charlie (Colorado)

Charlie (Colorado) — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 17:40:23 +0000

I'm fascinated by the claim that most news outlets are biased. Sadly, I was born without the ability to spot it. Monkyboy, you should rephrase that as "all news outlets are biased." Uniformly. I could present a mathematical proof based in information theory if you'd like, and think you could follow it. The gist of it is that all reporting imposes a filter, and a filter can be seen as an effective computation that expresses a characteristic function. This characteristic function determines which things are in the set of "news", versus the set of "not news." The trick is that you can also, by looking at what is and isn't reported, construct an approximation of that characteristic function (with some good reason to think it happens cognitively by something like bayesian inference), if you have an idea what the inputs look like. If you don't — if you think that what you're seeing reported is everything there is — then you infer that there is no bias. Think of it this way: if you have eaten both asparagus and ice cream, you know if you like asparagus, or ice cream, or both. If you have eaten ice cream, but not asparagus, you at least have some idea what you like and what holes remain in your knowledge. but if you've eaten ice cream and don't know that asparagus exists, you don't even have an idea that your knowledge is incomplete.

By: Charlie (Colorado)

Charlie (Colorado) — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 17:14:15 +0000

He’s another sixth year junior 30 units short of advancing, Peter. Third major and a family that’s happy to send the money if it will keep him away from home.

Hmmm. Guys, this is entirely too much like my undergrad career for comfort.

Except I was on my 6th or 7th major, and accumulated 240+ undergrad hours.

By: PeterUK

PeterUK — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 16:58:21 +0000

Faith-based “logic” at its finest.You know Monkintire you are the best argument against intelligent design I have come across.

If you hadn’t been a liar these things could have been discussed…now nobody will bother because you are unserious…all your positions are judged false…

…and stop whining..what did you expect..you get your ares kicked everywhere you go…have you not noticed yet that it is you?