Thursday, October 28, 2004
Ghost blog
A haunting in the next day or so....
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Ankylosing spondylwhosits
Once back in remission, I hope to start fresb with a new blog with a fine stable of quality larcenous back-up bloggers.
I've already got a bag of apples practicing gregarian chant, so I'm on my way to the big time.
Monday, October 04, 2004
CNS Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties -- 10/04/2004
Pens, schmens.
This means more to presidential debates than any low-grade rule-flouting.
I wonder how carefully CBS would vett these memos?
This means more to presidential debates than any low-grade rule-flouting.
I wonder how carefully CBS would vett these memos?
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Hailey Halloween Horror
I'm working on a little fisk of David E. Hailey's paper (revised web, revised PDF), though it's hardly worth it; I dont' think anyone takes it seriously anymore.
Whether he was fooling himself or attempting to fool others is probably unanswerable at this point, but LORD! I have never read such unsupported gobbledy-gook passed off as research in all my life.
I don't really give him a pass on attempting to persuade others with fakery.
I think he was trying to make himself a little Charles-Johnson style "convincer" here (orig psd on his site here), by tweening each character in photoshop. Here's an animated gif I made that highlights some of the more obvious text "tweens".
When I try to make a convincing photomash, if there is text to match, I often resort to cutting and pasting letters from the original image, instead of picking a near-match font and using the photoshop fonts and text tools to make my doctored copy. If you cut letters out of an existing image, you can kern the letters by hand, and get a perfect color and font match. Using selections of cut text, however, has its downside.
Hailey falls victim to it - the bottom of the text line is uneven, and he did not clean up his selections well enough to keep from cutting off adjacent letters, and he inserted artifacts of cutting and pasting around the edges of his selection.
He thought better of putting this "reproduction" in his paper, apparently. However, he did the same thing in his figure five "convincer" (gif) (psd) that did make it into his paper.
Hailey was capable of producing a "perfect match" , with a digital "typewriter-style" font, as long as he changed the spacing with cut-and-paste, and inserted certain letters and numbers from entirely different fonts. Therefore a typewriter produced the memos.
If you didn't follow that, you needn't bother with Hailey's arguments.
Still, the fellow does have the power to amuse. I was looking through papers in Hailey's CV and ran across this gem :
"Online Education Horror Stories Worthy of Halloween: A Short List of Problems and Solutions in Online Instruction" [Computers and Composition 18 (2001) pp. 387-397] (pdf) , wherein he discusses some of the pitfalls an instructor might face teaching online courses, based on his own personal experience.
Listen to this lament about rogue online students from the journal page 389:
And p.391:
That dastardly interweb! On the bright side, he should be able to write another great paper.
Whether he was fooling himself or attempting to fool others is probably unanswerable at this point, but LORD! I have never read such unsupported gobbledy-gook passed off as research in all my life.
I don't really give him a pass on attempting to persuade others with fakery.
I think he was trying to make himself a little Charles-Johnson style "convincer" here (orig psd on his site here), by tweening each character in photoshop. Here's an animated gif I made that highlights some of the more obvious text "tweens".
When I try to make a convincing photomash, if there is text to match, I often resort to cutting and pasting letters from the original image, instead of picking a near-match font and using the photoshop fonts and text tools to make my doctored copy. If you cut letters out of an existing image, you can kern the letters by hand, and get a perfect color and font match. Using selections of cut text, however, has its downside.
Hailey falls victim to it - the bottom of the text line is uneven, and he did not clean up his selections well enough to keep from cutting off adjacent letters, and he inserted artifacts of cutting and pasting around the edges of his selection.
He thought better of putting this "reproduction" in his paper, apparently. However, he did the same thing in his figure five "convincer" (gif) (psd) that did make it into his paper.
Hailey was capable of producing a "perfect match" , with a digital "typewriter-style" font, as long as he changed the spacing with cut-and-paste, and inserted certain letters and numbers from entirely different fonts. Therefore a typewriter produced the memos.
If you didn't follow that, you needn't bother with Hailey's arguments.
Still, the fellow does have the power to amuse. I was looking through papers in Hailey's CV and ran across this gem :
"Online Education Horror Stories Worthy of Halloween: A Short List of Problems and Solutions in Online Instruction" [Computers and Composition 18 (2001) pp. 387-397] (pdf) , wherein he discusses some of the pitfalls an instructor might face teaching online courses, based on his own personal experience.
Listen to this lament about rogue online students from the journal page 389:
...two or more such students working together to complain about the teacher can create a much more dangerous situation. Enlisting even one ally can greatly increase the credibility of a student's complaints if they are directed outside the class, where a student found a confederate and both wrote not only to the teacher but also to the department head and the state governor. [They can even do so wearing pajamas!!! ed. note - SW]
And p.391:
Complaints in traditional, face to face classes are more likely to stay within the class of department bounds, where it is easier to for the teacher to control...
..By contrast fires in an online class can spread quickly and unconrollably...
..Multiple and strongly worded complaint messages from more than one student can blow a minor problem out of proportion and can damage a teacher's careerbefore the teacher even knows that he or she is in trouble - especially if the addressees include powerful political figures such as a state governor who has a particularly strong interest in online education....p. 394 -
Teachers who elect to teach online may inadvertantly be putting themselves and their career at risk
That dastardly interweb! On the bright side, he should be able to write another great paper.
Men are all alike in their promises.
It is only in their deeds that they differ.
Go watch the video at INDC Journal
Kerry agreed to the rules before he broke them.
Go watch the video at INDC Journal
Kerry agreed to the rules before he broke them.
It was my understanding there would be no math...
Friday, October 01, 2004
Before I climb into my morning bath of hot blogs, I thought I'd record my own impression of last night's Kerry/Bush debate.
Overall, Kerry Kicked George Bushes noble rump. I'm sure others will see it differently, but those others are not the persons this debate could possibly influence. FOr swing voters with only a superficial familiarity with both candidates and the positions they put forward, Kerry was absolutely the winner.
My vote is beyond Kerry's capture...however, if I were mostly undecided and familiar only with the surface of the record and the issues, if I had not already been persuaded that, along with the foreign enemy, the real undermining force against victory in Iraq (and elsewhere) were naysayers on the left obsessed with ridding the country of George Bush, giving the enemy encouragement and serving as obstacles to prosecution of the war, I would be inclined to accept the impressions painted in the debate.
I've always said I would have no problem with Kerry's election, if he were actually the man he pretends to be, instead of the man he IS: a liar, a poser, an opportunist lacking in nearly every moral and intellectual quality I value. But anyone with only a surface knowlege of the arguments he made last night was more likely to be persuaded by him than Dubya.
Kerry seemed to be aided by that lecturn clock his aides were threatening to screwdriver off...it made Kerry *focus* and kept him from his natural tendency to ramble and double-back.
George Bush had no great stumble, but he WAS his ususal stumble-tongued self. Worse, and relied on repetition of key words to fill up his time, instead of the many persuasive arguments he had at his disposal but did not unleash on his opponent.
We were discussing Bushes many strengths, but oratorical handicaps, this morning at my breakfast table. My husband made me laugh: "Wouldn't it be great if, in a debate like this, George Bush, could have pinch-hitters for particular questions. "Now subsituting for George Bush, number 43, Mr. Christopher Hitchens!" Who would then proceed to mop up the floor with Kerry' lame ass.
Sure, Saddam was in a box. But there were hundreds of thousands of Iraquis trapped in that box. Where was the mention of the 200,OO0 Saddam murdered? And the riches he was siphoning off the oil-fo-food program? And why wasn't that corruption brought up as a reason to limit UN involvement? Where the mention that Saddam was about to get out of that box? What about the tremendous internation pressure to remove the sanctions, which would have allowed Saddam to take his oil-for-food riches and use them to re-invigorate his weapons development. He still had these programs waiting in the wings. And there can be no doubt he would have used them.
One more thing, if Leher is not now kicked off the top pf INDC Bills "most fair" list
I'm going to be mad. "No hackles raised?" what kind of question is THAT?
I guess I'll go take my blog-bath now, and collect some of my thoughts. Maybe steal some. :)
Overall, Kerry Kicked George Bushes noble rump. I'm sure others will see it differently, but those others are not the persons this debate could possibly influence. FOr swing voters with only a superficial familiarity with both candidates and the positions they put forward, Kerry was absolutely the winner.
My vote is beyond Kerry's capture...however, if I were mostly undecided and familiar only with the surface of the record and the issues, if I had not already been persuaded that, along with the foreign enemy, the real undermining force against victory in Iraq (and elsewhere) were naysayers on the left obsessed with ridding the country of George Bush, giving the enemy encouragement and serving as obstacles to prosecution of the war, I would be inclined to accept the impressions painted in the debate.
I've always said I would have no problem with Kerry's election, if he were actually the man he pretends to be, instead of the man he IS: a liar, a poser, an opportunist lacking in nearly every moral and intellectual quality I value. But anyone with only a surface knowlege of the arguments he made last night was more likely to be persuaded by him than Dubya.
Kerry seemed to be aided by that lecturn clock his aides were threatening to screwdriver off...it made Kerry *focus* and kept him from his natural tendency to ramble and double-back.
George Bush had no great stumble, but he WAS his ususal stumble-tongued self. Worse, and relied on repetition of key words to fill up his time, instead of the many persuasive arguments he had at his disposal but did not unleash on his opponent.
We were discussing Bushes many strengths, but oratorical handicaps, this morning at my breakfast table. My husband made me laugh: "Wouldn't it be great if, in a debate like this, George Bush, could have pinch-hitters for particular questions. "Now subsituting for George Bush, number 43, Mr. Christopher Hitchens!" Who would then proceed to mop up the floor with Kerry' lame ass.
Sure, Saddam was in a box. But there were hundreds of thousands of Iraquis trapped in that box. Where was the mention of the 200,OO0 Saddam murdered? And the riches he was siphoning off the oil-fo-food program? And why wasn't that corruption brought up as a reason to limit UN involvement? Where the mention that Saddam was about to get out of that box? What about the tremendous internation pressure to remove the sanctions, which would have allowed Saddam to take his oil-for-food riches and use them to re-invigorate his weapons development. He still had these programs waiting in the wings. And there can be no doubt he would have used them.
One more thing, if Leher is not now kicked off the top pf INDC Bills "most fair" list
I'm going to be mad. "No hackles raised?" what kind of question is THAT?
I guess I'll go take my blog-bath now, and collect some of my thoughts. Maybe steal some. :)
