Fla*ed protocol *eakens brain study

There’s an obvious design fla* in this experiment reported in the LA Times. The researchers ran a simple experiment *here the subjects *ere sho*n a series of letters, and they *ere supposed to tap a key *hen they sa* one, but not the another. The subjects *ere classified by their political vie*s, from left-*ing to right-*ing, and a correlation *as discovered: students *ith liberal vie*s had more brain activity and made fe*er mistakes than conservatives. This fits *ell *ith my biases, but I *ouldn’t *ant to s*ear to the trust*orthiness of the *ork. There *as a very poor choice in the design.

The letter that you *ere supposed to tap *as “M”. The one that you *ere supposed to avoid *as an upside do*n “M”, the letter also kno*n as “*”.

[Read more…]

Kathy Griffin is my new hero

We won’t get to hear Kathy Griffin’s Emmy award speech — it’s being censored. Here’s what she said:

In her speech, Griffin said that “a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.”

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, “This award is my god now!”

The off-color remark was to say, “Suck it, Jesus.”

I thought it was funny. If I ever win an Emmy (do you have to be on TV to win that, or something?), I hope to remember to say something similar. It is, of course, ridiculous to censor someone for denying the influence of an invisible phantasm, but I guess the usual suspects got huffy. You know who I mean: the Indignant Sour Prune of the Airwaves, Bill Donohue.

The comedian’s remarks were condemned Monday by Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who called them a “vulgar, in-your-face brand of hate speech.”

Hate speech? Who did she hate? She laughed at an old superstition, mocking the habit of celebrities giving credit to an omnipotent ghost for nudging a shiny statuette their way. If Donohue were serious about his religion, he ought to be more upset at the trivialization of the Lord of the Cosmos into the guy who hands out trinkets.