Posts by Steve Parks
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Josh Addison,
Still catching up on this thread so may have also been linked, but if not, here's another one.
...we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.
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I quite like this song: a little reminiscent of The Pixies with a touch of Modest Mouse and a sprinkle of Puff the Magic Dragon...
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Scott Chris,
Yes, because we are blessed in the West with a prevailingly liberal culture which tolerates dissenting views – such as those expressed by neo-crusaderist-civilizationists. ;)
Scott makes a good point in response to those of you who were wanting Michael Cox to be dealt with by the Ministry of Truth.
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to DexterX,
Isn’t such an error [of attribution] a fundamental underpinning of all bigotry?
To my mind bigotry is the active expression of hatred or intolerance of others.
But it’s not like it was just an “oopsie” kind of error. Cox went from describing the repugnant act of an identifiable group that clearly does not represent the views of all Muslims, and then attributed it to “The Muslims”. It seemed clear to me from the overall context that this wasn’t just a one-off instance of poor expression; it was his angle.
[ETA] Hence, I think ‘idle bigotry’ is a reasonable, maybe even generous, description of the column.
As a rough analogy, take the vile acts of an extreme anti-abortionist Christian, and attribute them to ‘The Christians’ – would that be reasonable?
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Angus Robertson,
The columnist has shown demonstratable research and with quotations and everything.
Well gosh, I mean, if he’s quoted someone he should be taken seriously.
If it is inherently wrong (as you seem to suggest) to have a debate about political Islam,
How’d you get there?
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Cox's post seems to have been deleted.
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Scott Chris,
I think you’re over reacting.
Yes, it wasn't so bad, it was only bigotry.
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Hard News: Media3: Standards Showdown, in reply to Russell Brown,
But I gather Keith and Jonathan Milne had a productive discussion afterwards*, which is a good thing.
*Unfortunately, Keith brought shame on bloggers and data geeks by having his eft-pos bounce at the bar, meaning he had to go begging to the dreaded MSM for a drink. The secret liberal bloggers cabal is considering a formal censure.
Ah, tweets I saw from days ago now have more specific meaning. Not to mention secret cabal's being involved. This is coming together like a Neil Gaiman novel.
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No one bumped this yet?
Just watched the media3 interview with Hartevelt, Milne and Ng again. Some observations.
– media3 should allow for longer interviews. I would like to have seen Keith with more opportunity to explain his points. Not that he didn’t do well, but Johnathan and John did take up quite a bit of the time between them. I’ve thought that about other shows too: allow for a longer main interview segment, even if it means having fewer stories per episode.
– Hartevelt seems to be arguing that league tables are a bad idea, but that if the data were to be published at all, it must be with the ability to make comparisons between schools. Surely that’s just de facto league tables?
– Hartevelt: “Are you saying they’re randomly made up numbers? You’re saying that’s what teaches have done?” Wow. Way to miss the point being made.
– Milne should just have accepted that the way they presented the data around class sizes was misleading. It’s all very well to say there was a weak correlation, but it was a weak correlation they blared from a headline.
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OnPoint: Because Statistical Rigour, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’ve just realised that Jonathan Milne is actually the author of both the story about the failure of national standards in Britain and the “big class sizes are awesome” news story.
In an update to this post, the Dim-Post notes Milne's explanation for the 'class sizes' angle.
Update: HoS editor Jonathan Milne called me to clarify that (a) they ran the analysis with and without the special schools, and acknowledged that the trend is less-pronounced without them, but still there – which is why they angled on it, and (b) there’s commentary and analysis of the data and results in the hard copy that hasn’t made it online yet.