Understanding Polls and Probabilities
Jonathan Last defends Nate Silver, but it’s really just explaining what “probability” means. HT: Dispatches.
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Mother Jones on Failing Schools
ByhenryI have the same sort of ambivalence on evaluating school performance as I do regarding church performance. A “by the numbers” approach keeps people from (successfully) making excuses, but it may not measure what you actually want to measure. In the case of schools, as I see it, the problem is that education is not…
Thinking about 9-11
ByhenryI appreciated the contribution of Bob Cornwall, who calls on us to make this a time of building bridges. One of the most disastrous wounds that result from this event is the combination of our fear, anger, hatred, and desire for revenge. I don’t mean to diminish the impact of the evil act of hatred…
Another Conservative View on Thompson
ByhenryReformed Chicks Blabbing reports that [tag]James Dobson[/tag] won’t support [tag]Fred Thompson[/tag], with the last straw apparently being his support for a constitutional amendment on gay marriage that falls well short of conservative hopes. I now see what I missed before. Thompson supports an amendment that prevents states from being forced to recognize gay marriages from…
Civility in Political and Religious Debate
ByhenryJoe Carter at the evangelical outpost is going after Ann Coulter. He’s very concerned about civility: Our political culture has truly become debased when even conservatives now accept what James Q. Wilson has described as the elevation of self-expression over self-control. (Perhaps it is to be expected, though, of a movement that has replaced the…
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My Country, Right or Wrong?
ByhenryBack in 2007 I wrote a post about patriotism in which I said: Im going to annoy quite a few people with this post, but I have noticed for a number of years that Christians in America often conflate Christianity and American patriotism. … I didn’t post on July 4th this year, but I did…
Pay as You Go – But Will They Do It?
ByhenryIn a fine example of political maneuvering, the new Democratic majority in congress is pushing a pay as you go policy on spending, to combine with greater transparency on pork barrel projects. Since it’s probably impossible to have federal building projects determined strictly by some neutral group on the basis of value in building infrastructure…