Eh, kind of fun.

All the site does is to take the IMDB ratings for each episode of a show, and plot those ratings on a graph, noting the trendline (increasing, decreasing, or stable viewer ratings) season-by-season.

But it's kind of fun to see a new way of presenting Things You Already Know.*

For example, I already thought Person of Interest did a very good job of building to each season's mid-winter break and end-of-season climax. The usual season has about eight episodes about the building meta-plot of the season (the so-called "Big Bad"), and maybe twelve crime-of-the-week episodes. The crime-of-the-week episodes vary in quality, as you'd guess, but overall, people aren't watching the show for them. At best they're good, but not great. (At worst, they're a big waste of time, but that's true of any tv show.)

People are watching for the Big Developments about the characters and the escalating conflicts with long-running villains on the show.

The graph shows you what you already knew: Yup, the shows get better through each season, getting very good indeed before the winter break and then the end of the whole season.

And the graphs also tell you that Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which, I think, created the "Big Bad" structure of a season) also managed the same escalation, year in, year out.

The graphs tell you other things you already knew, like the fact that Seinfeld peaked in season 3, stayed pretty good for a number of seasons, and then really fell off in quality in the last season and especially that hated last episode.

Like I said, it's fun to learn things you already knew. So much more fun than learning new things.

But sometimes the graphs surprise you. @benk84 notes a show that was cancelled just as it was getting ready to take off into the stratosphere.

* I've long said there should be a specific word for "the somewhat shameful pleasure in 'learning' facts you already knew." Like, take Shark Week. Is there any shark fan out there who doesn't know that the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is sometimes called "the white death"?

And yet, we all watch Shark Week every year to hear the same basic things we already know.

There's a little thrill -- it's kind of shameful, but it's real -- in knowing the narrator is going to say "sometimes called 'The White Death'" in the next five minutes, and another shameful thrill in hearing him say it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (321)
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Like they say: Look around the table and see if you can spot the mark. If you can't find the mark, you're the mark.

When asked about this, Jay Carney denied being given questions in advance.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is denying a television news reporter's claim that reporters often 'provide the questions to him in advance,' before his daily briefings, and that he sometimes provides answers on paper before taking the podium.

'If only this were true,' Carney told MailOnline Thursday morning.

Jay Carney really knocked that answer out of the park with his cheeky, ironic answer.

But then again, he was given that question in advance, So.

[T]he White House was quick to dismiss her account of what Carney said. Carney himself tweeted a second denial after this report was first published.

Well, that's the end of this story then. Lord knows the White House has never lied to me before.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (437)
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Gabe mentioned this on the podcast last night.

Volokh discusses it.

First, the assault itself, as reported by the Santa Barbara Independent:

Joan said that at around 11 a.m., Dr. Mireille Miller-Young — an associate professor with UCSB’s Feminist Studies Department — approached the demonstration site and exchanged heated words with the group, taking issue with their pro-life proselytizing and use of disturbing photographs. Joan claimed Miller-Young, accompanied by a few of her students, led the gathering crowd in a chant of “Tear down the sign! Tear down the sign!” before grabbing one of the banners and walking with it across campus.

Joan said she called 9-1-1 and Thrin started filming, and that the pair followed Miller-Young and two of her students … into nearby South Hall. As Miller-Young and the students boarded an elevator, Joan said that Thrin repeatedly blocked the door with her hand and foot and that Miller-Young continually pushed her back. Miller-Young then exited the elevator and tried to yank Thrin away from the door while the students attempted to take her smartphone. “As Thrin tried to get away, the professor’s fingernails left bloody scratches on her arms,” Joan claimed. The struggle ended when Thrin relented, Miller-Young walked off, the students rode up in the elevator, and officers arrived to interview those involved.

This video shows some of the incident, but not the beginning. The video picks up after Miller-Young has already stolen Joan's sign, and walks off with the spoils of war flanked by two Harpy Robots. But later in the video, the woman recording all this on her cell phone follows them into an elevator, and that woman is pushed out of the elevator by Miller-Young.

A police report (viewable at Volokh) explains the proposed legal defense:

At about 1500 hours, I spoke to Miller-Young by telephone. I recorded my conversation with Miller-Young on my digital voice recorder.

In essence, Miller-Young told me that she felt “triggered” by the images on the posters. Miller-Young stated that she had been walking through the Arbor to get back to South Hall. Miller-Young said she was approached by people who gave her literature about abortion. Miller-Young said that she found this literature and pictures disturbing. Miller-Young said that she found this material offensive because she teaches about women’s “reproductive rights” and is pregnant. She said an argument ensued about the graphic nature of these images.

Miller-Young said that she situation became “passionate” and that other students in the area were “triggered” in a negative way by the imagery. Miller-Young said that she and others began demanding that the images be taken down. Miller-Young said that the demonstrators refused.

We actually discussed the theory of "triggering" two weeks ago on the podcast ("triggering" was the reason we innovated the Chill Groove Infotainment Format). Apparently it has become de rigeur among the academic left to include big WARNING SIGNS on all articles or images which may "trigger" an emotional response in the highly emotional. For example, an article about the practice of cutting may "trigger" a response from someone with a history of cutting; an article about rape may "trigger" a response from a rape victim.

But even feminists are complaining that this practice has been taken too far and become oppressive, as some highly-wound students are demanding "trigger" warnings even for class syllabi.

Trigger warnings in online spaces, though, have expanded widely and become more intricate, detailed, specific and obscure. Trigger warnings, and their cousin the "content note", are now included for a whole slew of potentially offensive or upsetting content, including but not limited to: misogyny, the death penalty, calories in a food item, terrorism, drunk driving, how much a person weighs, racism, gun violence, Stand Your Ground laws, drones, homophobia, PTSD, slavery, victim-blaming, abuse, swearing, child abuse, self-injury, suicide, talk of drug use, descriptions of medical procedures, corpses, skulls, skeletons, needles, discussion of "isms," neuroatypical shaming, slurs (including "stupid" or "dumb"), kidnapping, dental trauma, discussions of sex (even consensual), death or dying, spiders, insects, snakes, vomit, pregnancy, childbirth, blood, scarification, Nazi paraphernalia, slimy things, holes and "anything that might inspire intrusive thoughts in people with OCD".

...

College, though, is different. It is not a feminist blog. It is not a social justice Tumblr.

College... is, hopefully, a space where the student is challenged and sometimes frustrated and sometimes deeply upset, a place where the student's world expands and pushes them to reach the outer edges – not a place that contracts to meet the student exactly where they are.

Which doesn't mean that individual students should not be given mental health accommodations.... But generalized trigger warnings aren't so much about helping people with PTSD as they are about a certain kind of performative feminism: they're a low-stakes way to use the right language to identify yourself as conscious of social justice issues. Even better is demanding a trigger warning – that identifies you as even more aware, even more feminist, even more solicitous than the person who failed to adequately provide such a warning.

Well, sure, it's about that; it's also simply about controlling other people, asserting a privilege which creates an obligation in other people to behave in certain way.

All these different mutations of leftwing theorizing claim different bases and chains of (such as it is) reasoning, but they all are in service of the exact same conclusions:

1. Some people are privileged and have greater rights, and also have greater levels of civic/social obligations owed to them by other people.

2. Some people are disfavored and have lesser rights, and also are owed less in terms of civic/social obligations. (Apparently you can even commit a low-level assault against them if the whim strikes you, for example.)

3. The Privileged have the right and power to use the machinery of all institutions, governmental, private, or in-between, to enforce their curious and quixotic sense of reality upon the Disfavored.

It is this last one that keeps institutions from, for example, prosecuting people for filing fake, fraudulent police reports alleging "hate crimes" of one sort or another. They're entitled to do this, you see.

All of these arguments have a very simple goal: To prove that we're not equal in the eyes of the law, or, as the man once said, some of us are more equal than others.

This is the first time, though, that I've seen this new four-legs-good-two-legs-better theory called "triggering" used to justify both a physical assault as well as an assault on someone's first amendment rights.

Updates: "#BanBossy" suggested by "Seems Legit."

Brak also notes that we don't need this new word "trigger." We already have a perfectly good word for "the reason someone commits a crime." That word is "motive."

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (410)
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The Right Scoop's headline is precious: CNN Smears Black Holes in Latest Bout of Wild Speculation.

The only thing I can say in Don Lemon's defense is that he was... well, he said he was trying to respond to viewer questions. Apparently some people inquired about what I will call "The Black Hole Theory of the Crime." I guess you could say he was trying to inform people or something.

Of course, as usual, he was asking a non-expert to offer her expert opinion on the question. The woman he asked this question of opined that a black whole would swallow "our entire universe," which is... well, metaphorically true, I suppose, but only that. She did not note that there are theorized to exist microscopic black holes. If you remember, there was some fear that the Large Hadron Collider would produce some of these microscopic black holes, and do significant damage to the earth. (Spoiler alert: It didn't happen. And btw, I have no idea what the destructive potential of a microscopic black hole would be.)

I mean, if you're going to "explore the question" or whatever, then explore it. It's a silly idea, but if you're going to disabuse people of silly theories about black holes swallowing planes, then have an actual expert on black holes on to explain, as a scientific matter, "Nah, bro."

Meanwhile, Australia has announced "new and credible" information about large objects floating at sea which are possibly wreckage of the plane, spotted by satellite. They've deployed planes to take a closer look.

"Verification might take some time. It is very far and it will take some time to locate and verify the objects," the source said.

Watch out for the black holes, mate. Some say there's a swarm of them.

An ABCNews report on the search for the objects, stolen from Hot Air, below.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (418)
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In case you missed it last night, I did a podcast with Marc Marano of Climate Depot on the economics and politics of the "Climate change" movement.

There's some satellite imagery of debris in the Indian Ocean that might be part of the missing Malaysian Air flight.

Obama announced some more sanctions on individual Russians and a bank. He also told Putin that if Russia is willing to totally change its worldview this Ukraine thing can all work out in the end for everyone. I'm sure Putin is thrilled with the offer.

Jennifer Rubin used to think the GOP needed to do outreach to non-traditional voters. Then Rand Paul did it by going to Berkeley and now Rubin thinks it's a terrible idea. The problem is Paul talked about things liberals might agree with him, for example his opposition to domestic surveillance. Rubin would have preferred this outreach consist of Paul talking about things like support for traditional marriage (which Rubin disagrees with) that liberals would have hated.

It's pretty clear that Rubin's "ideological purity" tests for candidates will be the ruin of the GOP.

Say what you will about Paul's stance on a given issue but he's a smart politician. He tries to find ways to allow people to support him. Even if they don't buy everything he's selling, he tries to give them a bridge to vote for him. That seems like smart politics to me.

You know, it's almost as if Rubin is a hack who will say anything and bend herself into a pretzel to protect her beloved liberal Republicans (so long as they agree to BOMB ALL THE PLACES!).

Almost.

Open thread.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:41 AM | Comments (278)
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Happy Thursday.

Democrats' long-stated, but little-evidenced claim that voter fraud at the polls doesn't exist took another blow yesterday.

England and France failed to anticipate and thereby prevent World War II, in part, because the English and French leadership failed to take Hitler at his word. They thought he was irrational and unserious, but he meant exactly what he had said about the Anschluss. Here we are again, refusing to consider that Putin might mean to do exactly what he says he wants to do. Note the "first in line," language.

[RSS]

[On iTunes]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (253)
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Escape From East Germany

It's been almost 25 years since the Iron Curtain came down and already the memories of Communist oppression are fading from all except those who directly lived under it. Just two decades ago if you wanted freedom and economic opportunity but happened to live in the wrong part of Europe, you often had to risk your life using whatever means you could to escape to a better future.

In 1979 Günter Wetzel and Peter Strelzyk along with their families did just that, managing to escape from East Germany using a home-built hot air balloon. Inspired by a newspaper article on the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Wetzel and Strelzyk decided to build their own balloon and use it to cross over into West Germany even though they knew almost nothing  about balloons.

Since Peter Strelzyk and I, Günter Wetzel worked together at the beginning of 1978, we frequently had the opportunity to speak with each other.  Like many East German citizens we too had the ultimate aim to leave East Germany and that was frequently the topic about which we spoke.

Life in East Germany was far from satisfactory for us.  There was a whole list of things we found objectionable because we had to put up with and factor in so many constraints.  Fundamental reasons were that it was not possible either publicly or in one's private circle to voice one's opinion because one could never be certain whether one or even several persons present were police informers.  In addition, opportunities to travel to countries other than a few others in the Eastern Bloc were either nonexistent or extremely limited.  Even the job one could choose was limited, especially if one was not true to the Party line.  One could make one's life easier by becoming involved with the authorities in the correct manner e.g. by being a member of the Communist Party and helping the state authorities but I did not want that either.  There were of course many other reasons which I cannot list here but economic motives also played a role.

Like so many others, we spoke again and again about leaving East Germany but saw no way of pulling it off because the border seemed impossible to cross.

By sheer chance my wife Petra's sister, who had already left East Germany in 1958, came to visit us and brought with her a newspaper in which the annual International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, USA was reported.  Next to the report were also a few pictures of the hot air balloons.  Seeing this is what gave us the idea that a balloon could be used to get over the border fortifications.  It was clear to us from the outset that if we were to escape, everyone would have to come.  We were also certain that doing so by air was the only possible way since there were eight of us altogether - 4 adults and 4 children.  I remember the day we made this decision very well as it was 7^th March 1978, one day before International Women's Day which was actively celebrated in East Germany.

Over the next year and a half Wetzel and Strelzyk reverse-engineered a balloon, gas heater, and basket from pictures in books while their wives quietly collected fabric from across the country and began sewing it into a balloon. In the end they built three different balloons and numerous burner prototypes before they finally felt they had one reliable enough to get them over the border.

Eventually with the Stasi closing in on them and Wetzel about to be called up for military service they took advantage of a narrow window of good weather and launched their balloon during the night on September 14th, 1979. Despite several potentially fatal things going wrong they eventually touched down in Finkenflug, West Germany an hour later. You can read Wetzel's complete account of the escape here.

Swimming For Your Life From The GDR

Here is a video taken by tourists in the late 80's of four East Germans desperately trying to swim across the Spree to West Germany. Because the entire river belonged to the GDR they could be shot at any time by the armed guards in the approaching speedboat.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:44 PM | Comments (586)
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Need a little time off before the podcast. Here are some quick links.

Author Brad Thor speculates about his own personal Flight 370 nightmare scenario.

CBS's Marketwatch analyst is starting to get a little suspicious about this "economic recovery."

Liberal Richard Cohen rips out-of-control progressives for opposing charter schools at the expense of poor children-- while pretending that by punishing poor children, they're striking a blow against The One Percent.

The Democratic Party, which runs on Mediscare most elections, is firmly behind Obama's serious, deep cuts to home health care providers and hostels for the elderly. When you're paying them so much less, you can expect a lot less in return -- and many will simply go out of business.

This Cracked article by a real-life Top Gun on the Five Things You Don't Know About Piloting a Jet Fighter is pretty awesome.

I know you're going to call me a damned liar, but Tom Friedman has written something stupid about Sustainable Energy Serious You Guys.

Oh, and Former Enron Consultant Paul Krugman asserts that he knows the Tea Party is racist. How does he know this? Simple, really: While the Tea Party opposes wealth transfers to "Those People" (he actually says "Those People"), the Tea Party, he sagely informs you, has never complained about the government's TARP bailouts of banks.

Never! Not once! Never happened!

I've been trying to think of something clever to say about this Christina Hoff Summers article on the increasing tendency to treat masculinity as a disease, but I can't, so I'll just recommend it.

Slate must really need hits, because they've offered up their most controversial #TrollOutrage article yet: College Isn't For Everyone, So Let's Stop Pretending It Is.

Oh, and healthcare premiums will skyrocket under Obamacare. But you knew that.

The Meatball continues his Meatballish ways by appearing on Amy & Gay Patriot's The Wrap show at 9pm tonight.

For something cute/funny/sorta alarming, Dave in Texas sends this video of a kid who may be a Wile E. Coyote type genius when it comes to removing a loose tooth.

Which isn't a good way to be a genius. But still, a sort of genius.

Okay, to enjoy this video, put it outside of your mind, for a moment, that maybe this dad should take more ownership of this situation.

And don't worry: Nothing bad happens. Even Wile E. Coyote gets lucky every once in a while. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (533)
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Charles C.W. Cooke doesn't quite put it like that, but he does see reason for worry.

There is no plan to put the internet under the control of anyone, not per se at least. But the plan is to allow those threatened by free expression to share control over the basic structure of the internet -- which would give them leverage, should they wish to exert it.

Which, of course, they always do.

The “DNS’s authoritative root zone file” is effectively a master directory of website addresses, kept in one place to avoid duplication and to guarantee that when everybody types “nationalreview.com” into their browser, they get the same page; “IP addresses,” to put it oversimply, are the Internet’s “phone numbers,” assigned to each computer (or router) so that they can be contacted by others; “protocol parameters” inform the basic architecture by which the Internet operates — variables such as which characters may be used, and in what form commonly used services such as e-mail and Web pages are to operate. You get the idea.

As you might imagine, it matters a great deal who is in charge of this compendium, for whoever controls it can use the thing essentially as a global on/off switch. As it stands, a tyrant is able to restrict access to certain parts of the Internet in his own country, but he is unable to make a page or a server or a service disappear completely....

Consider how different the story might have been had the system’s guts been controlled by someone else — even by a relatively free country such as Britain or Canada, where the government is benign but speech is curtailed by law. Is it not possible that the temptation to bring the Web into line with “reasonable” limits on expression would have been too much to resist? Can one not imagine a pressure for “common sense” reform building from inside and outside — and leading to censorship of language that gave offense to, say, gays, or Muslims, or police horses? If so, imagine what less amiable nations might seek to impose.

He writes on the topic again today, linking this op-ed by L. Gordon Crovitz published at the WSJ.

This means, effective next year, the U.S. will no longer oversee the "root zone file," which contains all names and addresses for websites world-wide. If authoritarian regimes in Russia, China and elsewhere get their way, domains could be banned and new ones not approved for meddlesome groups such as Ukrainian-independence organizations or Tibetan human-rights activists.

Until late last week, other countries knew that Washington would use its control over Icann to block any such censorship. The U.S. has protected engineers and other nongovernment stakeholders so that they can operate an open Internet. Authoritarian regimes from Moscow to Damascus have cut off their own citizens' Internet access, but the regimes have been unable to undermine general access to the Internet, where no one needs any government's permission to launch a website. The Obama administration has now endangered that hallmark of Internet freedom.

...

The Obama administration was caught flat-footed at an ITU conference in 2012 stage-managed by authoritarian governments.

...

In the past few years, Russia and China have used a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union to challenge the open Internet. They have lobbied for the ITU to replace Washington as the Icann overseer. They want the ITU to outlaw anonymity on the Web (to make identifying dissidents easier) and to add a fee charged to providers when people gain access to the Web "internationally"—in effect, a tax on U.S.-based sites such as Google and Facebook. The unspoken aim is to discourage global Internet companies from giving everyone equal access.

And now the ITU stands as the likely successor to ICANN. This will be the "death of the internet," warns one critic.

Thanks to @rdbrewer4.

I have to admit, up until an hour ago, I thought this was a minor bookkeeping-level sort of thing.

Posted by: Ace at 01:13 PM | Comments (291)
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The problem with people ain't so much ignorance as it is knowin' thing that just ain't so.

[N]ew research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including monounsaturated fat like olive oil or polyunsaturated fat like corn oil.

...

But Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the findings should not be taken as “a green light” to eat more steak, butter and other foods rich in saturated fat. He said that looking at individual fats and other nutrient groups in isolation could be misleading, because when people cut down on fats they tend to eat more bread, cold cereal and other refined carbohydrates that can also be bad for cardiovascular health.

...

He said people should try to eat foods that are typical of the Mediterranean diet, like nuts, fish, avocado, high-fiber grains and olive oil. A large clinical trial last year, which was not included in the current analysis, found that a Mediterranean diet with more nuts and extra virgin olive oil reduced heart attacks and strokes when compared with a lower fat diet with more starches.

Alice H. Lichtenstein, a nutritional biochemist at Tufts University, agreed that “it would be unfortunate if these results were interpreted to suggest that people can go back to eating butter and cheese with abandon,” citing evidence that replacing saturated fat with foods that are high in polyunsaturated fats – instead of simply eating more carbohydrates – reduces cardiovascular risk.

Their study has concluded there is no link between fat intake and heart disease, but they say they don't want you to think that eating fat's okay, because, you know, the risk of heart disease and all.

Meanwhile, a doctor claims that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) simply doesn't exist.

He believes that a large group of symptoms is just being labeled as "ADHD" because no one has any real idea what causes vague symptoms like a lack of focus. He also says that some real problems are being misdiagnosed as ADHD just because it's such an easy (false) diagnosis to make:

ADHD makes a great excuse,” Saul notes. “The diagnosis can be an easy-to-reach-for crutch. Moreover, there’s an attractive element to an ADHD diagnosis, especially in adults — it can be exciting to think of oneself as involved in many things at once, rather than stuck in a boring rut.”

In private practice, Saul found himself wondering, what other problems do these patients have besides being easily distracted? One girl he treated, it turned out, was being disruptive in class because she couldnÂ’t see the blackboard. Correct diagnois: myopia. She needed glasses, not drugs.

A 36-year-old man who complained about his addiction to online games and guessed he had ADHD, it turned out, was drinking too much coffee and sleeping only four to five hours a night. Correct diagnosis: sleep deprivation. He needed blackout shades, a white-noise machine and a program that shut all his devices off at midnight.

..

One by one, nearly all of SaulÂ’s patients turned out to have some disease other than ADHD, such as TouretteÂ’s, OCD, fragile X syndrome (a genetic mutation linked to mental retardation), autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, learning disabilities or such familiar conditions as substance abuse, poor hearing or even giftedness. A boy who was disruptive and inattentive in math class (but no other) was, simply, bored by the material and needed to be advanced a grade to regain his concentration.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (325)
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