Archive for August, 2019

Posted Without Comment

Posted: August 26, 2019 by datechguy in blogs, internet/free speech, Uncategorized

Via Wombat

Up to this point, the Silicon Valley oligarchs have been careful to single out the edge cases, the people they can count on Bill Kristol and other #NeverTrump “principled conservatives” to go “Ewwww! Alex Jones deserved to get deplatformed! Laura Loomer deserved to get deplatformed! Lauren Shepherd deserved to – oh, wait…” But come September of 2020, what if they decide to emulate their heroes and business partners in Beijing, and shut down anyone who isn’t sufficiently woke for them? How many of us would be thoroughly cut off if our Gmail accounts, Blogger and WordPress blogs, and our Facebook & Twitter accounts were suspended?

We should be giving serious consideration to taking that power away from them. We should have accounts on Gab and MeWe, and e-mail accounts with local ISPs or third-party vendors, even if we have to shell out a couple of bucks extra a month for it, or at least have an account with Microsoft, which doesn’t seem to be moving in lockstep with its Silicon Valley partners – yet.

Report from Louisiana: Locking Up Cell Phones

Posted: August 26, 2019 by Pat Austin in education
Tags:

The new school year is now underway and with it come all of the typical classroom management issues that frustrate many teachers, especially at the middle and high school level.

One of those problems is cell phones. Since the cell phone has become as common as the Number 2 pencil teachers have been struggling to either incorporate the technology into the lesson or ban the devices altogether. There seems to be no middle ground as most teenagers simply can not deny the lure of social media or games on the phone.
It’s so much more entertaining to participate in an ongoing game of pool on the phone with a friend than listen to that history lecture.

In Bossier Parish, Louisiana, one high school English teacher used the first day of school to conduct an experiment: “Students measured how often they received notifications on their cell phones, from text messages, to phone calls, to news alerts, to Snapchat pings,” and by the end of the day there had been 868 distractions, or notifications, from student devices.

How can teachers compete against this?

Benton High School in Bossier City, Louisiana has found a way. The school purchased Yondr pouches, such as those used at some concerts. At the beginning of the school day students are required to put their phones in the pouch and there it stays until the end of the day when the pouches are unlocked as students leave the building. Students rent the pouches for the year and retain possession of the pouch/phone all day.

While teachers celebrate this development, students are nonplussed. Many feel like they are being punished for the sins of others.

As of now, two Bossier Parish schools are participating in this experiment, but teachers across the parish are hoping it catches on. The cell phone has moved beyond a classroom management problem. Many students pull out the phone and check messages simply as an automatic reflex these days and hey, while there, let’s take a cute selfie, and check that email, and check that new YouTube video real quick.

I’m curious to see how this pilot program works. I’m not clear on what happens if a student is caught with a second phone; many students have more than one phone and routinely carry a “throwdown phone” in case a teacher tries to take their device up.

It would all be much more ideal if students just had the willpower to keep the devices put away, but we are talking about teenagers and when many adults can’t even do this, how can we expect kids to?

Jedediah Tucker Ward: It’s not hypothetical to Dr. Pavel, he wrote it

Michael Grazier: So he says.

Jedediah Tucker Ward: So he says under oath

Class Action 1991

PM James Hacker: (On Phone): No, no, leave me out of it. A routine visit. (Listening) All right – a routine surprise visit. (Listening) Well, say they were invited earlier, but the NATO exercise got in the way. Now they’re not needed, they’re going anyway. (Listening) All right. Nobody knows it’s not true. Press statements aren’t delivered under oath.

Yes Prime Minister A victory for Democracy 1986

There is an awful lot going on in the word today of note but I’d say the single most significant story I’d seen lately is this one:

Some years ago, Dr. Tim Ball wrote that climate scientist Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” At issue was Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to show a sudden and unprecedented 20th century warming trend. The hockey stick featured prominently in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but has since been shown to be wrong. The question, in my view, is whether it was an innocent mistake or deliberate fraud on Mann’s part. (Mann, I believe, continues to assert the accuracy of his debunked graph.) Mann sued Ball for libel in 2011. Principia Scientific now reports that the court in British Columbia has dismissed Mann’s lawsuit with prejudice, and assessed costs against him.

What happened was that Dr. Ball asserted a truth defense. He argued that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud, something that could be proved if one had access to the data and calculations, in particular the R2 regression analysis, underlying it. Mann refused to produce these documents. He was ordered to produce them by the court and given a deadline. He still refused to produce them, so the court dismissed his case. [emphasis mine]

The significance of this can’t be overstated.

For decades now the media and the left have insisted very loudly that global warming/ climate change or whatever new name they’re giving it these days is going to doom us all and further requires massive tax increases, massive subsidies (coincidentally going to connected firms) and massive conferences (coincidentally always requiring plenty of air travel and taking place at very nice places full of very nice things for all the right people to enjoy) and that anybody who expressed any doubt to this narrative is a “climate denier” the equal to those who deny the slaughter of the jews by the Nazis.

Furthermore they have introduced a curricula to our public schools that has convinced kids that unless these things (which coincidentally enrich all the right people) they will not survive.

Yet when given the chance in a court of law to verify this data produced by one of the leaders of the climate change community, data that people leaned on for years for conclusions. Not only did this gentleman decline to produce the data proving the came to his conclusions honestly but he was willing to do so even if it meant losing his case and paying the costs of the person he sued, rather than let expose his data to the prying eyes of those who might examine it.

I ask any fair minded person is that the act of a scientist or of a fraudster?  If for example Donald Trump was suing a person for libel and refused to produce the recording of an exchange that could confirm said libel or prove it to be false, would you not assume that he was hiding something?

This is a story that should be shouted from the highest heights but will be downplayed by every media outlet in the world, at least until the president starts tweeting about it.

That will be fun.


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Brady vs Luck One Hit Away

Posted: August 25, 2019 by datechguy in Sports
Tags: , , ,

At the backup site I noted with Irony that Andrew Luck is retiring before Adam Vinatieri but his situation should be a reminder to Patriots fans in general and to Tom Brady in particular just how lucky we are.

As a rule in any sport, basketball, hockey, baseball and football etc an athlete is only one injury away from retirement, but in football this is more true than any other.

This is a sport where one is continually hit by extremely muscular people weighing 200 pounds or more if they’re small or 300+ pounds if they’re not and this takes place every 45 seconds for a period of 15 minutes. Often a person will be hit by more than one such man and it’s not uncommon for a person being hit to not see the person about to hit him until it happens.

Even with the new rules every single person on that field understands that they are one hit away from surgery and extensive rehab.

And that brings us to Tom Brady.

Tom Brady has been playing this game for 20 years and has had only one serious season ending injury in that time. That’s pretty good when you think about it, but he has been constantly on the field every other year. When he scrambled for a 1st down in last Thursday’s preseason game every single Patriots fan was asking himself “What are you doing, it doesn’t count!” but Brady being Brady knows that if he’s on the field he’s expected to play to win.

Yet he knows and most importantly his wife knows that each year the odds of an injury that will force him to live in pain for the rest of his life (presuming he already isn’t already living in pain every day) increases. That’s why his wife has been pressuring him toward retirement (I also suspect that such a compromise with her is the reason he no longer shows up to voluntary pre-season camps). Every single snap there is a tackle or a defensive end who dreams about wrapping him up and taking him down and if he scrambles for a 1st down those linebackers are not going to show him any mercy of deference, nor should they and in fact Brady would he expect them to do so.

I expect Brady to have a good year this year and likely a good year next year too but he has defined the odds, not only in terms of skill and victories but in terms of injury and that as much as all his other attributes is why is has managed to become the greatest player every to play his sport.

So was we wish the 29 year old Andrew Luck well, let us remember how lucky we have been to have a healthy Tom Brady leading our team to victory for two decades and be grateful for it.

I’m sure Tom Brady and his wife and family are.