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Why Glenn Reynolds has Credibility and the MSM doesn’t One Sentence:

Posted: December 2, 2021 by datechguy in blogs, education, media
Tags: ,

The sentence?

My mistake. I’m bumping this up so that people will see the correction. And thanks, Dean Caron!

We’ve seen how the MSM will at best make “errors” and then quietly issue a correction or stealth edit a piece. Glenn Reynolds shows how to do a correction properly:

Earlier yesterday he put up a piece on how the ABA is allowing law schools to use the GRE vs the LSAT for admission and suggested this was a way to dodge the standards to get students. He got feedback from Paul Caron noting his implication was incorrect:

ERROR-CORRECTION UPDATE: I’m wrong above — this has already been taken account of. Paul Caron writes: “Your comment isn’t right — U.S. News takes GRE scores into account.” Here’s how:

Median Law School Admission Test and Graduate Record Examination scores (0.1125; previously 0.125): These are the combined median scores on the LSAT and GRE quantitative, verbal and analytical writing exams of all 2020 full- and part-time entrants to the J.D. program. Reported scores for each of the four exams, when applicable, were converted to 0-100 percentile scales. The LSAT and GRE percentile scales were weighted by the proportions of test-takers submitting each exam. For example, if 85% of exams submitted were LSATs and 15% submitted were GREs, the LSAT percentile would be multiplied by 0.85 and the average percentile of the three GRE exams by 0.15 before summing the two values. This means GRE scores were never converted to LSAT scores or vice versa. There were 60 law schools – 31% of the total ranked – that reported both the LSAT and GRE scores of their 2020 entering classes to U.S. News.

Not only did he get the correction up fast but he bumped the original piece to make sure people saw the correction.

That’s how you maintain a reputation as a credible source the MSM could take a lesson here if they were actually interested in something other than pushing an agenda.

Of course if the MSM had Reynolds standards people might still trust them.

I’m old enough to remember when Instapundit was called the NYT of bloggers but Glenn took that down as that comparison was not favorable. Perhaps if they emulated his methods of corrections someone might call them the Instapundit of newspapers.

December Indulgence Calendar for download

Posted: December 1, 2021 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine
Tags: , ,

Here is the indulgence Calendar for December.

dec-calendar-radioDownload

And the blank calendar if you want to fill in all your own names

dec-calendar-blankDownload

You know ever since I’ve started the indulgence calendar stuff (I don’t think I’d call it a ministry) things have happened to make it difficult. Last month the difficult reached the blog but that suggests it’s something worthwhile.

The Lootings Will Continue Until there are Consequences

Posted: November 30, 2021 by datechguy in crime
Tags: , ,

Captain Disko: I guess there’s nothing left for it [rears back and hits Harvey who’s been threatening them]

Harvey: You HIT me

Captain Disko: Now you just lie there and think about it

The mass looting of stores in broad daylight has spread from San Francisco.

At least two Minneapolis-area Best Buy stores are the latest victims in a flash mob that ransacked the premises, providing a possible alternative meaning to the supply chain crisis and the associated empty shelves.

Similar dystopian looting unfortunately occurred in San Francisco, Los Angles, and other lawless areas controlled by pandering, soft-on-crime Democrats on the traditional big shopping day known as Black Friday and before.

The effect of this is going to be far beyond the actual insurance loss, it’s going to mean that normal shoppers are not going to feel safe in such places.

But never fear our friends on the left have a solution for this looting problem:

As the Bay Area grapples with a wave of seemingly organized smash and grab robberies this weekend, policing and journalism analysts are cautioning against the use of the term looting…To some, the distinction may be small, but Lorenzo Boyd, PhD, Professor of Criminal Justice & Community Policing at the University of New Haven, and a retired veteran police officer, emphasized that words matter.

Because not calling it looting will make it all better.

How does this stop? Well being Sicilian the first thing that came to mind was this scene from Godfather three (which is not as bad as everyone said it was, it just wasn’t an all time great picture like the first two but I digress) where two assassins come to kill Vincent (Andy Garcia) and take Grace(Bridget Fonda) hostage:

Now the lesson here isn’t to start shooting these guys which while it would be effective in stopping it in it’s tracks and appeal to the Sicilian in me also would offend my Catholic sensibilities so I can’t advocate that, but the lesson is there has to be consequences for these actions.

Put simply until the cost for looting is prohibitive there is no incentive for people to stop doing it. Sort of like stealing elections, as long as people think they can get away with it they will do it.

When Democrats treat looters as harshly as they are treating those still being held in the Jan 6th protests it will stop.

And it’s in the best interest of people for this to stop because if the authorities decide to let this go eventually the people will turn to Vincent’s solution and it won’t turn pretty.

Ok Democrat Cities, your call.

Brady vs Belichick the Mac Jones update

Posted: November 29, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

A while back I wrote about the relative measures of success for Brady and Belichick in their new positions. As Brady has already won a superbowl we can safely state that he has met the goals without re-iterating them.

As for the Patriots and Belichick I graded the Pats on the following scale based on the pre-Brady years:

Any year that the New England Patriots post Brady:

  • Have a winning record: should be considered OK
  • Win 11 games: should be considered a success
  • Win their division: should be considered a big success
  • Make the playoffs: should considered a huge success.
  • Win a playoff game: should be considered an spectacular success
  • Go to the Superbowl: should be considered an extraordinary success
  • Win a Superbowl: should be considered a Miracle

Now there are those who consider that a fair amount of Tom Brady’s success in general and the Patriots success in particular should be given to Coach Bill Belichick who some consider the greatest coach in Football history. For those of you who consider this the case let’s make a slight adjustment.

Any year the New England Patriots Under Belichick post Brady

  • Win a Superbowl, it’s an extraordinary success
  • Go to the Superbowl it’s a spectacular success
  • Win a playoff game it’s a Huge success
  • Make the playoffs, it’s a big success
  • Win their division, it’s a success
  • Win at least 11 games, it’s an OK season
  • Win less than 11 games…fire the bum!

These are reasonable expectations. I suspect that Patriots fans after two decades of winning will not be as generous as me with their expectations.

with the disastrous Cam Newton season I wrote this about Belichick:

This makes the Bill Belichick Era going into today’s game a 24-34 as the coach of the New England Patriots in games not started by Tom Brady and in the three seasons that he coached the team sans Brady he made the playoffs….nearly once.

My expectations scale was “fire the bum” if he failed to win at least 11 but given the Covid situation that while effecting all teams hit his team hard I’d give him another season’s leeway, particularly if he can manage to make .500. If not I think we can safely say that the question of Bill vs Tom in terms of credit has been answered conclusively.

Well the Patriots are now 8-4 , in first place in their division and while not a lock for the playoffs yet looking pretty good with Rookie Mac Jones at the helm. Under standard Patriots scale it’s already an OK season and the Pats only have to go 3-2 the rest of the way to qualify for OK status under my Belichick scale.

Belichick has done this with a Rookie QB who had four other QB’s picked ahead of him.

It may be early to say this but I think we must conclude that Brady + Belichick were the perfect storm of the best in their professions coming together and that neither one negates the greatness of the other.

But there are still a few games to play so let’s see…

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