Debate post-mortems

The post-mortems on the first presidential debate provided me with first-hand experience of something that I had previously only read about, which was that the reactions of actual viewers of such debates immediately after watching them can differ quite widely from the media consensus generated afterwards. The things that we are told were significant events in past debates tend to be things that many viewers did not even notice in real time but were created as part of the post-debate narrative. [Read more…]

Sri Lanka beat Pakistan in World Cup semi-final game

In the first semi-final game against Pakistan in the Twenty20 world Cup tournament, Sri Lanka scored 139 in their 20 overs. This was lower than the 160 or so runs that teams feel gives them a pretty good chance of winning but according to the analysts, the quality of the pitch (an important factor is cricket where the ball bounces before reaching the batsman) was such that this was a reasonable score. And they were proved right when Pakistan was able to score only 123 runs in their 20 overs. [Read more…]

Have we have destroyed our children’s taste for food?

[Sorry about the confusion about the posts! I accidentally posted the text of one post under the heading of the other!]

The comments on last week’s post on some students protesting the new nutritious food guidelines for school lunches were quite lively. So I went back and tried to find some data to see if that might clarify the situation. [Read more…]