It's hard to figure out precisely what the changes actually are -- the article isn't specific, and there's no sketch -- but it suggests the "Crescent of Embrace" is now a circle.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (28)
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One of the only good jokes she's gotten off since the Ben Stiller show was cancelled.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (31)
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Ka-ching:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy grew at a lively 4.3 percent pace in the third quarter, the best showing in more than a year. The performance offered fresh testimony that the country's overall economic health managed to improve despite the destructive force of Gulf Coast hurricanes.

The new snapshot of economic activity, released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday, showed the growth at an even faster pace than the 3.8 percent annual rate first reported for the July-to-September quarter a month ago.

...

"In anybody's book this is an outstanding performance for the economy," agreed Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.

...

The third-quarter's showing marked a sizable pickup from the 3.3 percent increase in gross domestic product registered in the second quarter of this year.

...

The upwardly revised reading for GDP in the third quarter also exceeded the expectations of business analysts. Before the report was released, they were forecasting the economy to clock in at a 4 percent pace.

...

When the government's new employment report for November is released Friday, many economists are forecasting a healthy rebound, with the economy adding more than 200,000 jobs during the month.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (23)
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The New Yorker does a good rundown on “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?”, a new book by Berkeley academic, Philip Tetlock.

As the title suggests, itÂ’s all about how accurate the predictions the political and economic pundits we see and read actually turn out to be. And Tetlock isnÂ’t just some crank, shooting off his mouth. HeÂ’s pretty rigorous:

[H]is conclusions are based on a long-term study that he began twenty years ago. He picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends,” and he started asking them to assess the probability that various things would or would not come to pass, both in the areas of the world in which they specialized and in areas about which they were not expert. …By the end of the study, in 2003, the experts had made 82,361 forecasts

And his conculsion? The ‘experts’ are full of it.

eople who make prediction their business—people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables—are no better than the rest of us.
Â…

Tetlock also found that specialists are not significantly more reliable than non-specialists in guessing what is going to happen in the region they study. Knowing a little might make someone a more reliable forecaster, but Tetlock found that knowing a lot can actually make a person less reliable.

And the big shots are the worst:

Tetlock claims that the better known and more frequently quoted they are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be. The accuracy of an expertÂ’s predictions actually has an inverse relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote.

Tetlock points to a number of explanations, most centering on the psychological foibles inherent in assessing uncertainty, along with simple stuff like the fact there’s really no puditocracy penalty for ‘getting it wrong.’

Anyway, the piece is relatively short, not one of those New Yorker book/articles and well worth the read.

(N.b. My predictions were not part of the study, and remain, of course, rock solid certainties. You can continue to bet the farm on the Good Doctor's forecasts)

(h/t Jane Galt)

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 09:00 AM | Comments (9)
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In a kinda missing the point pan of Silverman's supposed "racism," this TAP writer notes the following Silverman jokes:

She sidesteps the question [of whether she's a racist] entirely: “I don’t care if you think I’m a racist,” she says in Jesus. “I just want you to think I’m thin.”

...

“I once dated a guy who was half-black,” she says, as proof she’s a nice, progressive person. “Oh my God … I’m such a pessimist … he’s half-white.”

... The comedian kicked up a storm when she used the word “chink” in a routine on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 2001. She described wanting to get out of jury duty by writing something offensive on the candidate form. A friend suggested, “I hate chinks.” Not wanting to be so racist, she claimed, she wrote, “I love chinks.”

["Apologizing" for the joke on Bill Maher's show, she said:]

“As a Jew -- as a member of the Jewish community -- I was really concerned that we were losing control of the media. Right? What kind of a world do we live in where a totally cute white girl can’t say ‘chink’ on network television? It’s like the fifties. It’s scary.”

Okay, the writer does take this shot at Margaret Cho:

Silverman doesnÂ’t need to go into Pulpitland, where the once screechingly hilarious and now tiresomely pedantic Margaret Cho now lives. She doesnÂ’t need to strap on her social-justice message and fuck the audience up the ass with it, as self-proclaimed fag hag and raunch queen Cho does these days.

Screechingly hilarious? I guess I missed those five minutes.

The writer identifies herself as half-Asian (she's writing for a liberal magazine, so it's always necessary to demonstrate one's diversity-quals), but she seems to be going out of her way to find offense in this absurdist gag:

But Silverman could take out the lazy jokes, like the one that draws on an old anti-Asian playground taunt that I didn’t get. “My friend Steve…actually went pee-pee in my Coke,” she riffs in Jesus. “He’s all, ‘Me Chinese, me play joke.’ Uh, if you have to explain it, Steve, it’s not funny.”

Indeed, if you have to explain it, it isn't funny. But it's not a joke about Asians; it's a joke about, well, overanalyzing a completely puerile joke and the futility of such.

As a white guy, I can certainly understand that I've never really been exposed to seriously-intended racism and so I shouldn't just say, "Oh, toughen up." But these seem pretty harmless to me. They're ironic. They're jokes about racism. They no more endorse racism than her crack, "I was raped by my doctor... being a Jewish girl, it was so bittersweet" is an endorsement of rape. [That gag recalled by a poster whom I forget.]

Doesn't mean the movie's any good, though. Just sayin'.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 PM | Comments (63)
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The peace group to which the four kidnapped westerners announces on its website:

CPT does not advocate the use of violent force to save lives of its workers should they be kidnapped, held hostage, or caught in the middle of a conflict situation.

In related news, my local 7-11 has a sign announcing, "Warning: Safe contains a hell of a lot more than $50, the cashier definitely does know the combination (and don't let her tell you otherwise!), and incidentally has a hell of a body on her to boot."

Or at least it used to have that sign. After every single item was looted from it, the place was bought for dimes on the dollar by a guy who put up this sign:

May not look like much, but at least he's still in business.

Via Instapundit, who has his own policy.

Posted by: Ace at 07:15 PM | Comments (16)
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I missed the whole controversy.

A poster kinda-sorta erred by posting a picture of a troll and his family. I say "kinda-sorta," because the guy had it up on a website (assuming it was him at all). Still, he didn't offer that connection to his personal life himself, and it's not cool to post stuff like that.

I was just on a site -- I don't think I'll bother to say which one, because I don't want to give them traffic* -- where the proprietors or someone involved began researching the IP's of conservative interlopers and outing the place of work they were posting from.

It's not really such horribly damaging information, but it's creepy and threatening. I don't know what someone could do with such information to really harm you, but the implied statement is "I can get to you personally. I can do things to screw up your life."

Empty threat? I don't know. I know it's possible to find the exact location someone's posting from with the right software. And with that-- who knows?

Monty and others were wise to caution against this, the guy who posted it manned up and confessed error and asked to have the information edited out of the post, and Laura did the right thing by honoring the request. Thanks, all.

And to the poster whose picture may (or may not) have been linked-- I apologize for that. You're annoying as hell, and you evade any point you don't have a glib answer for, but we deal in arguments (and insults) here, not in the public revelation of private information with the nasty insinuation that more might be coming.

As Monty (I think) said, "That's the way we don't roll."

Again, sorry I missed this controversy, and good on Laura for fixing it. And yes, Laura, I trust your judgement on these things and I don't think it's likely you're ever going to do something that makes me recoil in horror.

* I also wouldn't want you going there because they'd just start posting your IP address and getting your place of employment. And, who knows, making phone calls to your bosses. They also hack posts they don't like by taking all the vowels out of them -- a cute practice they call "disenvowelment" which they maintain, quite straight-facedly, has nothing at all to do with the censoring of points of view they don't like -- so you wouldn't have any fun there anyhow.

Edited: I took out the name of the poster who put the link up, because people thought I was picking on him, which wasn't my intention at all. It wasn't the worst thing ever done, he decided it was wrong, he asked for it to be edited out.

I'm just noting all this not to call attention to what was specifically done, which wasn't all that terrible, but to make it clear that it's just not a cool area to get into.

Posted by: Ace at 04:33 PM | Comments (104)
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Now here is a novel tactic in the war against Islamofascism that we should be able to unite behind!

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 04:28 PM | Comments (4)
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A huge political scandal, a fall of government, an election held during the holiday season -- mark your calendars, 29 November 2005 is the date upon which Canada nearly threatened to almost become somewhat close to marginally interesting.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (19)
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Good piece from Lorie Byrd about Democrats who say, with some degree of pride, that they never acted to remove Saddam Hussein despite believing him to be a threat.

As Lorie says, it's a simple question. All intelligence is, by its nature, vague, fragmentary, and open to multiple interpretations. After 9/11, should our instinct be to act upon worrisome but incomplete information, or to refrain from acting?

Before 9/11, the nation did the former. And the Democratic Party wants to continue that policy. Because, you know, that worked so beautifully for us during the 80's, 90's, and early 00's.

The Democratic Party

Our national security policy is taking the old "wait and see" attitude. After all, what's the worse that could happen?

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (18)
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