EPA Human Experimentation

This is disturbing, if true.  The “if true” part is extremely important here.

One interesting point is that whichever way it goes, the EPA loses.  If it turns out that particulate matter is as dangerous as the EPA has claimed, they’re knowingly subjecting experimenters to deadly poisons with absolutely no benefit (as their informed consent statement shows).  If, on the other hand, they are not knowingly subjecting experimenters to deadly poisons, this would imply that their stance on particulate matter is wrong and that regulation should disappear in a puff of smoke.

Frank J Wins

We all knew it was a great idea.  It turns out that the military thought the same.

Via Mark Steyn.

Being right vs. being useful: a primer

Look, I get that I’ll never convince the average baseball fan that RBI is a junk stat. As a compromise, how about including OBP? Or, if I can get greedy, the slash stats? That tells you why a player did poorly, not just that he did poorly.

Case in point: Kevin Youkilis hit “.235 (103-for-438) with 19 homers and 60 RBI”, which Paul Hoynes calls “not great.” You’re right, it isn’t. But let’s dig a bit, shall we?

His slash stats were .235/.336/.409. What does that tell us? Well, he drew a goodly number of walks (he’s still Kevin Youkilis). His isolated power was .174. That’s not terrific or ideal, by any means, but it’s not terrible either. He’s a pretty good defensive 3B, so that adds some useful context.

Let’s take it to the next level, though. I’m only going to add one more stat. BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play). This year, it was .268.

The lowest of his entire career.

Now, there are two possible explanations for Youkilis this year. 1) He’s hit the wall at 33. He’ll never be as good as he was ever again; this is the new norm. 2) He was really unlucky this year.

If he splits the difference between 2011 and 2012, as I suspect he will, Kevin Youkilis goes from “average major leaguer” to “useful player.” He’ll almost certainly lose cash in free agency, which means I, for one, would be delighted to see the Indians pick him up.

It’s proven now, idiot White Sox fans.

Even Science hates Hawk Harrelson. It is truly a great day for baseball fans everywhere.

For the record, even though I’d also give a pass to Rick Manning as a former player, I think he’s a terrible human being. Read this and you’ll understand why.

Only A Flesh Wound

Michael Mann is threatening to sue National Review and Mark Steyn.  I don’t want a lawsuit to happen, but honestly, the entertainment value would be tremendous.  So would, as Rich Lowry points out, the value of discovery.  We would get an opportunity to see just how fraudulent Michael Mann really has been.

From The Forefront Of Statistical Silliness

• College students under stress find slightly overweight women more attractive than otherwise.
• Music is getting worse.  One of my favorite Photoshop Phriday images involved learning how to play the guitar using all of the chords the Ramones use:  all three of them.

Fun with rankings

While writing for an online forum, I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Churchill to find out when he was born. I found out that he was the greatest Briton of all time, as voted by the Internet, to which I say, “Good show, Interwebs!” I’m perplexed by some of them — David Bowie is really #29? No H.G. Wells? — but these sorts of things are always fun. Here are some others, if you’re interested:

The Greatest American — This one is frankly weird. There’s no Andrew Jackson, but there is Brett Favre. Dr. Phil isn’t a greatest anything.

“The Name of Russia” – It’s in Russian, so here’s the list in English:

1. Alexander Nevskii

2. Pyotr Stolypin

3. Stalin

4. Pushkin

5. Peter the Great

6. Alexander Suvorov

7. Lenin

8. Mendeleev

9.  Dostoevsky

10. Ivan the Terrible

11. Catherine II

12. Alexander II.

That’s a fun list, isn’t it? Apparently, if you can believe Wikipedia, people wanted to use Lenin and Stalin even more than they did. (If you’re wondering where Putin is, you have to be dead first).

Unsere Besten – Certain people were excluded from the list of 300 you could choose from. You can probably guess who.

Greatest Canadian — I’m frankly stunned there were only two hockey related individuals in the top 10.

Thoughts On Algae

Folks on the Right are having a lot of fun at President Obama’s expense for his totally-not-fairy-dust algae plan.  But I’m actually going to offer a partial not-quite-defense and note that breeding of oil-producing algae is scientifically possible.  There are potential environmental concerns that will turn the Greenies against this as soon as it actually works (if it ever does), but if it turns out to be a profitable fuel source, great.

The big problem is that I see the President using potential crude oil-producing algae as a red herring—as mentioned above, if this were ever to make it out into the marketplace successfully, the NIMBY Left would oppose it just as strongly as they already do wind energy.

Spore (PC): The Review You Can Use! [tm]

Spore

EA/Maxis (PC)

Simulation

Pros

– Very intuitive and easy to learn

– Surprisingly deep

– The Space Stage is awesome!

Cons

– It’s not really possible to fail

– Cell Stage can be a bit boring

–  A little overhyped

Recommendation: Spore reminds me a lot of Black and White. Both were hyped to the moon, and a lot of people shied away from both when the hype failed. Both are worthy games, regardless of hype.  I recommend them both, but Spore is a little better for the casual gamer.

Strauss On Popper

I like Karl Popper’s notion of falsifiability as an important consideration in a modern science*.  Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin were less thrilled.  Though note that their criticism of Popper doesn’t sound so much like a critique of falsifiability, but rather Popper’s writing in the Open Society and Its Enemies.

I’m not really in a position to argue here.  Strauss and Voegelin certainly had the advantage in understanding of the classics, but I also despise Hegel and Plato…

Via NLT.

* – Yeah, I am aware of the term “science” as meaning “a collected body of knowledge,” but I am speaking of science in the more narrow, modern sense of the term.  With the former, wider term, I agree that falsifiability is not necessarily a required attribute, but even with those, if your theory can be proven wrong, you should re-think your theory.