A Moment of Illumination.

Somebody had this up on the 'Book today, and it's just riveting.
Click on the image to enlarge it, for a fuller effect.

How I Passed Stats, 25 Years Ago...

I never really got the hang of the whole "stats" thing. Instead, I wrote doggerel. The prof was intrigued enough that he passed me in exchange for using the pomes in his (then) new stats text. Thanks, Richard!

Example:
"Them Number-Summers":

How 'BOUT them Numbers-Summers, ain't they hams?
Plottin they frequencies on they histograms?
Them "n-" countin' Number-Summers take PECULIAR pleasures,
Widdey "aspeks of dispersion" an' they deviatin' measures.
Them nomologic Number-summers, ain' they hot?
Keepin all they data in a box-and-whisker plot.

Or: "Them Co-Relators":

How 'BOUT them Co-Relators, it's all just "so..."
Widdey Pearson Product moment and they Spearman Rho.
Them co-efficient Co-relators AIN' ATALL metaphoric,
Study they dichotomies by means tetrachoric.
How 'BOUT them Co-Relators, ain' they fine?
Get they linear relations where they ain' no line?

Or, "Them Skill-Scalers"

How 'BOUT them Skill-Scalers, ain't they strange?
Plottin' YER 'deviation' cross they interquartile range?
Them skew-slopin' Skill-Scalers take they freedom by degrees,
Widdey leptokutrtic samples and they 'double-tail Ts.
Them scatter-plottin' Skill-Scalers, ain' they enigmas,
Gettin' they parentheses around all they Sigmas.

There are 10 of them, which I'll reproduce for anyone who desires 'em.

Everything That's Wrong With the US Chamber

One of those trick images: click on the image, then again on the NEXT image it presents you, to get the most legible shape.

TDSWJS & JO: "Freedom Packages!?"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
America's Freedom Packages
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Bill Maher Spanks the GOP Agenda

The man does his SNARK!

"Words," Episode 2: "Okay" & Episode 3: "Know"

Rall-y "Annoying": The Disposables

The fourth episode in a new animated webseries by award-winning syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall and animator David Essman.
Eps 1-3:

#1:


#2:


#3:

Tales from Facebook: "Begging the Question"

This was the hed, and the description of a vid linked on FB:

The universe is huge
www.youtube.com
The sheer size of the universe and our true place within it challenges the view that God created it just for us. Adapted from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot"
6 minutes ago · Like · · Share

This is the vid:

This is what I wrote:

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak Here's a good example of "begging the question/petitio principii": The sheer size of the universe and our true place within it challenges the view that God created it just for us.
Because it has nowhere yet been established the 1) there exists such a being as "God," or that if there were such, that it could "create" this gigantic universe. It assumes that which is to be proven. That's "begging the question" means.

It's always nice when such a perfect case drops into yer lap. The misappropriation of "beg the question" is one of those things that sets my teeth on edge.

A Letter To My State Senator, On The Passage By the NM Senate Of A Bill Which TOTALLY Sells-Out Teachers, Kids, and Learning

Dear Senator Feldman:

Boy was I surprised!

And not in a nice way, either, when upon happening to glance at the local TV news, I saw a story about the NM Senate passing and sending to the House "for approval" (really? that simple?) that bill which--well, I'll spare you the graphic description, but it does UNSPEAKABLE things to teachers, students, and pretty much the whole IDEA of education.

So I scurried over to the machine to ask you, Dede--we were on first-name terms when I met you at (a mutual friend)'s CD 'party' at the Flying Star--how?

How did that happen? How COULD that happen?

I never expected to make any "progress" with that puta Tejana, that tea-bagging slag, in the Mansion; but I really didn't expect to LOSE, and to lose so much, so soon and, apparently, so easily.

You may or may not know--or care--that I hold a Ph.d. in education (LSU, '89), and that I am perhaps more familiar than most with the vicissitudes of the craft, having myself been a secondary teacher as well as a scholar, and being one in a family of teachers. This is such an egregious insult, and such a calculated indignity: I would under no circumstances ever council anyone to become a teacher under this regime; would indeed actively discourage volunteers--because the kinds of teachers we--and especially the kids-- need will suffer (and probably be expelled, eventually, anyway), and the kinds we don't want will thrive.

It's ALMOST enough to make an observant person suspect Foucaultian epistemic skulduggery, GB Shaw's aphorism about 'cynicism'--"The power of careful observation is often called cynicism by those who haven't got it."--notwithstanding.

If you would feel so inclined, I would be interested in what were the machinations and motivations which brought this about.
Regards,
Y'r Ob'd't S'v't.

A Double Dose of Deity:

Consecutive Episodes of Season 4. Though these shows normally stand alone, these make more sense viewed together. The blasphemy is as gratuitous as ever, never fear, and they've added the last element of the fatal Abrahamic triangle. Plus, the begging is PRICELESS!

Mr Deity & The Matter


Mr. Deity & The Showroom

Mr. Deity & the Signs: "Tide Come In, Tide Goes Out..."

Episode I, Season IV of the smartest, funniest blasphemy you have EVER seen, now with a gratuitous jab at the fucknozzle of Fux News, Bill O'Reilly!

Tweety Disses The Huck & The Newt & The Rest Of The (FOX) Goon Squad

The Krewe of Mid-City, circa 1956

The Faith of Desperation

Via Wiki:

Rick Roderick (1949–2002) was born in Abilene, Texas, son of (by his own description[1]) a "con-man" and a "beautician". He was a teacher of philosophy at several universities, where he was much revered by many students for a socratic style of teaching combined with a brash and often humorous approach. His breakthrough into wider circles came with his engagement with The Teaching Company where he recorded several memorable lecture series. Rick Roderick died in 2002 from a congestive heart condition.

Nope. Capitalists Won't Pony Up For Job-Providing Infrastructure. Nagahapun!

There is much hand-wringing and wailing in DC and in the circles of the Wise elsewhere about the catastrophic, sustained problem of unemployment in the USer work-place. The common reply to the matter among the ones most distraught about it (the left-punditry, unions, workers' representatives, Bernie Sanders, etc.) is to "call for" the resurrection of the USer industrial/manufacturing State of yore.

It was this capacity, in a war-desolated world, which permitted the erection of (relatively) the WEALTHIEST "middle-class" in history; the dissolution of which is the most important, most instructive story in the whole unfolding narrative of "decline and fall" that is unfolding (or is "crumbling" a better word) around us even as we speak.

So this makes me wonder if I'm missing something in the popular, mediated rhetoric and hurrah about creating jobs, and restoring Murkin manufacturing, and international competitiveness, an' all shit like that.

Here's the elephant turd in the soup tureen:

Where is the money gonna come from to RESTORE the infrasructure that the CorpoRats have spent the past 30 years up-rooting, off-shoring, destroying, dismantling, and selling off?

What makes anyone think the CorpoRats are gonna spend money to undo what they already MADE money destroying? They've sold off all the parts they could, long since. The bloody CorpoRats aren't gonna pony up. The USofA is a declining empire. It's expansive days are over. This market is topped out. The people are less important as consumers than hitherto. When you've sold out your citizenship for the convenience of being a consumer, and they close the fucking stores, what have you got left?

The Global corpoRats owe and claim no allegiance to the American nation, except as the military arm and instrument of their policies. They have NO incentive to invest in the failing CIVIC enterprise that is this country's heritage and legacy.

In fact, the CorpoRats have EVERY incentive to undermine, rebuke, and/or ignore it.

No CorpoRat encourages democracy. Democracy, especially in the work-place, is almost literally anathema to the CorpoRat mind, which is autocratic and authoritarian. They exhibit these proclivities every and in every way that they work to diminish or prevent the unions from exercising their power as the democratic representatives of the workers. CorpoRations are FEUDAL freeholds, and the Owners wish ONLY to preserve their OWN power over their vassals. Unions in the work-place, and democracy in the civic culture, are active opponents of those Medieval pretensions, and as such are subject to attack, destruction if possible.

The minions and lackeys of the CorpoRat State are even now busily engaged, where they have "won" the power to do so, in reversing 150 years of workers' gains. Some are resisting. I wish them success. But I don't trust USer cops NOT to shoot demonstrators, and I do not trust 'the people' NOT to turn against 'labor (or whatever makes them uneasy); but I am skeptical by nature, especially since I was witness to and involved in an incident at which the National Guard advanced on an unruly but NON-VIOLENT student demonstration with bared, fixed bayonets (UNM, May, 1970), while the good burghers of Albuquerque stood on the sidelines and spat on the students, and cheered when the Guard inflicted injuries; so I think my skepticism is earned.

There is much hand-wringing and wailing in DC and in the circles of the Wise elsewhere about the catastrophic, sustained problem of unemployment in the USer work-place. The common reply to the matter among the ones most distraught about it (the left-punditry, unions, workers' representatives, Bernie Sanders, etc.) is to "call for" the resurrection of the USer industrial/manufacturing State of yore.

It was this capacity, in a war-desolated world, which permitted the erection of (relatively) the WEALTHIEST "middle-class" in history; the dissolution of which is the most important, most instructive story in the whole unfolding narrative of "decline and fall" that is unfolding (or is "crumbling" a better word) around us even as we speak.

So this makes me wonder if I'm missing something in the popular, mediated rhetoric and hurrah about creating jobs, and restoring Murkin manufacturing, and international competitiveness, an' all shit like that.

Here's the elephant turd in the soup tureen:

Where is the money gonna come from to RESTORE the infrasructure that the CorpoRats have spent the past 30 years up-rooting, off-shoring, destroying, dismantling, and selling off?

What makes anyone think the CorpoRats are gonna spend money to undo what they already MADE money destroying? They've sold off all the parts they could, long since. The bloody CorpoRats aren't gonna pony up. The USofA is a declining empire. It's expansive days are over. This market is topped out. The people are less important as consumers than hitherto. When you've sold out your citizenship for the convenience of being a consumer, and they close the fucking stores, what have you got left?

The Global corpoRats owe and claim no allegiance to the American nation, except as the military arm and instrument of their policies. They have NO incentive to invest in the failing CIVIC enterprise that is this country's heritage and legacy.

In fact, the CorpoRats have EVERY incentive to undermine, rebuke, and/or ignore it.

No CorpoRat encourages democracy. Democracy, especially in the work-place, is almost literally anathema to the CorpoRat mind, which is autocratic and authoritarian. They exhibit these proclivities every and in every way that they work to diminish or prevent the unions from exercising their power as the democratic representatives of the workers. CorpoRations are FEUDAL freeholds, and the Owners wish ONLY to preserve their OWN power over their vassals. Unions in the work-place, and democracy in the civic culture, are active opponents of those Medieval pretensions, and as such are subject to attack, destruction if possible.

The minions and lackeys of the CorpoRat State are even now busily engaged, where they have "won" the power to do so, in reversing 150 years of workers' gains. Some are resisting. I wish them success. But I don't trust USer cops NOT to shoot demonstrators, and I do not trust 'the people' NOT to turn against 'labor (or whatever makes them uneasy); but I am skeptical by nature, especially since I was witness to and involved in an incident at which the National Guard advanced on an unruly but NON-VIOLENT student demonstration with bared, fixed bayonets (UNM, May, 1970), while the good burghers of Albuquerque stood on the sidelines and spat on the students, and cheered when the Guard inflicted injuries; so I think my skepticism is earned.

Jimmy Kimmel's "Shoe-In" For NEXT Year's Oscar