Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Problem With The Mann Judge’s Ruling

13 Comments

I noticed this at the time as well:

Interestingly, it appears that Judge Combs Greene has mixed-up the defendants in the court’s ruling, attributing actions taken by the Consumer Enterprise Institution to Mark Steyn and National Review.

I have no comment. I also have no comment on these comments.

[Wednesday-morning update]

In fairness to the judge, the people most likely to comment at a site like that are going to be people unhappy with her rulings — it’s less likely that someone should show up to laud her, regardless of the quality of her work.

Also, Phil Plait has more, with several links. He’s very happy, of course.

It’s very frustrating to not be able to make any substantive comments on this.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This at the always misnamed ThinkProgress is hilarious: “Mann has been vindicated yet again!”

Yes. Right.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

McDonalds Math

12 Comments

This sort of thing is why we don’t want economic illiterates in charge of the economy. Hey, morons. Don’t you think that if McDonalds could just raise their prices (and hence revenues) by 17% (actually 26%), they’d have already done that?

[Update a while later]

Another question:

Let’s say McDonald’s decided to double all its salaries, so that the entry-level wage became $16 an hour instead of $8 an hour. Why would McDonald’s continue to employ their $8 an hour workers when instead they could hire “better” workers who are worth more? (And those of you who think that the skills, linguistic abilities, experience, intelligence, etc. of fast-food workers makes no difference in service don’t eat in McDonald’s much.)

Again, this is why you don’t want people making policy who don’t understand how business works. And this administration (and sadly, Congress, of both parties, but much more so among the Democrats) is full of such people.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Climate Skeptics

3 Comments

…and the scientific method:

…how can criticisms of sceptics as politically motivated be squared with science’s commitment to findings always being provisional and open to challenge? At what point can we judge that a scientific question moves from a position of “doubt” to being “settled”?

Both climate change sceptics and advocates of climate policy see this question as important; sharing a faith that scientific evidence is the basis for public policy. However, such a faith omits the possibility that science is not suited to such a role, and that “solving” climate change does not flow linearly from agreement on the science. The attentions of sceptics may or may not be improving the practice and knowledge of climate science. However, if sceptics’ never-ending audit is really damaging policy, that may be more a reflection of an overly scientised policy process than a basis for denying them a voice in debate.

Yup.