Tag: News

Cool, Daily Life, Lists

Notions Of Cool V.008

A random list of things and shower thoughts that an old guy (who still thinks he’s 20) finds cool or worth pondering.

  • Wrapping up... So weather isn’t getting more extreme, the models are wildly inaccurate, Tuvalu isn’t sinking, the troposphere isn’t warming, and we had a 19 year pause in warming. The business of science is to be skeptical. At minimum all this should make folks think hmmm, maybe there’s more factors here than we originally thought. I’m open – please change my mind. What exactly is the crisis?
  • Was listening to an older podcast with Tim Kennedy. The obesity epidemic in this country has gotten so bad the military doesn’t have a large enough pool of people to select from for special units. This seems like sort of an issue, no?
  • Same podcast I learned that Josef Mengele, the angel of death Nazi, died of old age and a stroke on the beach in Brazil. That’s disconcerting. I’m going to have to watch his show now – Hunting Hitler. I had no idea that we actually don’t know if Hitler died in that bunker as we’ve been taught.
  • I sincerely hope the current North Korea summit goes well. The last thing we need right now is to get in a pissing match with a nutcase.
  • Some interesting thoughts from Tim Pool. There are more people and states in the country that identify as conservative. However there are more registered democrats than republicans. Trumps approval ratings are up and the view people have of America is up. I don’t see AOC’s rantings, the open borders thing, or Bernie being a positive thing for securing Michigan, Ohio, or New Mexico. Very early still.
  • A friend introduced me to this game – Geoguessr. Be careful, it’s addictive.

Song of the day: Sugar Ray “Fly”

Cool, Daily Life, Lists

Notions Of Cool V.007

A random list of things and shower thoughts that an old guy (who still thinks he’s 20) finds cool or worth pondering.

  • Continuing… The earth has warmed – this is not debatable. The warming has been roughly eight tenths of a degree Celsius. And shockingly, this is more or less what greenhouse gases demonstrate in laboratory conditions. What has not happened is the model predictions of runaway exponential temperature increase. So, change my mind – where is the crisis?
  • The new skis are the bomb. Very happy with my choice. Volkl M5 Mantras. Of course, calf deep powder didn’t hurt. The ski is a touch beyond my skill level, which is a good thing.
  • To the best that I can tell I have been in ketosis. Yesterday’s test was after two fried eggs with cream cheese and avocado, followed by four hours of hard skiing. Ketones were 1.5 mmol/l. (suggested range is 0.5 to 3)
  • As an RN, time management is everything. I’m not good at it and it drives me nuts. I’m going to make a full press effort to tame this beast. The conventional wisdom says to implement hourly rounding. The theory is that if you’ve addressed pain and toileting, you’re less likely to be interrupted by call lights. Hmmm. We’ll see.
  • I can’t find anything I agree with AOC on, but she gets social media. Politicians on both sides need to figure this shit out or she’s going to clean their clocks.
  • For the tech dorks, a great blog on security. In my mind I’m still a tech guy, but most teenagers have surpassed me at this point.
  • It’s shocking to me how primitive vehicles are in terms of software, connectivity and interacting with mobile devices.
  • Hard not to laugh at this meme of Senator Klobuchar emerging from a team meeting.

Song of the day: Rebelution “Inhale Exhale”

Confirmation bias

It Must Be True

Confirmation Bias – also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

If you haven’t been following the Nathan Phillips/Covington High School controversy the last few days… you’ve probably been living under a rock, and may be better off for it. If you have seen it, what was your first reaction when the story initially came out? Be honest.

The media showed a video clip of a high school student wearing a MAGA hat, with what looks like a an odd smirk, standing all up in the face of a native American banging on a drum. News reports said the high school students were shouting racial epitaphs and “build the wall”, and generally disrupting a peaceful indigenous people’s march.

Within nanoseconds the social media warriors had fired up the meme machines. White privilege, this is what a Trump supporter looks like, this is what white supremacy looks like, this is not my America, bla, bla, bla.

As Paul Harvey said, “and now the rest of the story”. It now looks like that’s not at all what happened. A group called the “Black Hebrew Israelites” seem to be the ones responsible for most of the racial epitaphs thrown at the native Americans. The high school kids were just waiting for their bus and began singing their school spirit song to drown out the inflammatory chanting. Statements by most of the kids seem to indicate they were all pretty confused as to what was happening.

And best of all… new video shows that it was Nathan Phillips, the native American drummer, who walked into the group of kids, got all up close and personal and began drumming right in one kids face. The kid just stood there respectfully and smiled.

Back to my question. How badly did you want the original story to be true? How certain were you that, of course a bunch of Trump supporting, MAGA hat wearing, kids exuding white privilege would do this? Because all Trump supporters are one step away from the Klan, right? There’s now several hours of video of the events and people are examining it second by second looking for evidence to support whatever side you’re on. I don’t really care about that outcome. The bigger point is that so many people rushed to pre-judge something that didn’t exactly happen the way it was portrayed.

Confirmation bias has become so rampant and damaging to society today. Unfortunately the news is helping to perpetuate it. Don’t be a part of it. There’s a difference between not agreeing with a policy or statement, and being so blinded by bias you read evil into everything. Wait to judge, take what you see in the news with a grain of salt, and stop being a part of the problem.

“We all see only that which we are trained to see.”

Robert Anton Wilson