James Joyner provides a rebuttal to the notion that KSM should be tried, and it is notable for the fact that it contains actual arguments and not screaming and wailing and wet underpants.

Word on the street is that Dems have the votes to get this whole health care huckleberry through the House tonight.

I know some of the amendments suck. But still, we’re one step closer to getting health insurance for tens of millions of Americans.

I have a hard time writing about health care reform without sounding sappy, so I’ll shut up and throw up a YouTube.

DougJ +5

Update. We are at 212.

Update 218!

As recommended by a commenter, time 4:30 of this.

Update update. Maybe this is a link too far. But I don’t think so.

As much as I love the professional climatologists who write RealClimate, they rarely let the anti-science crowd bait them into the kind of high dudgeon that makes PZ Myers or Tom Levenson so much fun to read.

Part of the reason for their patient tone is that most denialists are either too limited (e.g., Inhofe) or too mercenary (TechCentralStation, George Will) to absorb any correction. Since the debate opponent won’t even acknowledge that you exist most of the time, real climate scientists usually write for interested third parties. That is what makes the response from RC to the pseudo-denialist authors of Superfreakonomics (in truth, contrarians of the vanity kind that DougJ writes about), professionals with credibility to defend, so worthwhile to read.

I have very much enjoyed and benefited from the growing collaborations between Geosciences and the Economics department here at the University of Chicago, and had hoped someday to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. It is more in disappointment than anger that I am writing to you now.

I am addressing this to you rather than your journalist-coauthor because one has become all too accustomed to tendentious screeds from media personalities (think Glenn Beck) with a reckless disregard for the truth. However, if it has come to pass that we can’t expect the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor (and Clark Medalist to boot) at a top-rated department of a respected university to think clearly and honestly with numbers, we are indeed in a sad way.

No more excerpts. The whole post is great so go read it.

Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning, first proposed by psychologist Benjamin Bloom in 1951, revolutionized the science of education by allowing the cognitive level at which students and teachers work to be classified on a simple scale. Professional academics, for example, regard any work that does not reach the sixth and highest level, evaluation, as derivative. A proper work of Evaluation requires one not only to understand the fundamentals of a given topic, but also to weigh the competing perspectives of other scholars before reaching a coherent and original conclusion.

On a rare occasion when Megan McArdle bothered to ground her suppositions in fact, and therefore performed what a professional would call ‘learning’, McMegan arguably reached level one. McMegan correctly summarized the argument of one relatively dated theoretical report on healthcare spending and innovation, without noting that numerous equally qualified professionals disagree. McMegan also did not note that the same authors later tested their model in the real world and concluded that their earlier study was wrong [correction – cannot fully explain what happens in the real world].

One can also reach Bloom’s first level by opening the newspaper and reading a paragraph at random. Reading two paragraphs in order, you will probably pick up context and reach level two. Middle schoolers who hope to earn an ‘A’ grade typically reach level 3, Application, on a regular basis. Glibly making crap up, on the other hand, generally won’t net you better than a gentleman’s ‘D’.

Long form: 1, 2, 3, 4.

***Update***

Note the correction. Also, below the fold, I have reprinted with permission a summary that Tom sent me by email last night. (more…)

Thursday, September 24 is National Punctuation Day! Please mark you’re calendars.

***Update***

open thread.

Someone not named Taibbi went on television and told the truth. I’m kind of shocked:

This can not be stated enough, and we now have Tapper and Harwood on record that this is nonsense. The rest of the media is still in he-said/she-said mode.

For a while, I’ve been trying to come up with three questions that you could ask anyone and determine if they were a wingnut. Up until now, the list was:

1.) Did we find WMD in Iraq?
2.) How old is the earth?
3.) Was Obama born in the United States?

I may have to add “Is it a bad thing if the President tells school kids to study hard?”

Posted in Excellent Links, General Stupidity, Going Galt | 36 Comments »