Tag: politics

“I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system.”

8:22 am

From a Nobel Prize winner: “I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system.”

Read the whole interview. The scientist outlines problems not only with peer review journals but with the whole structure of modern academic science, which to his mind would have prevented him from doing his Nobel Prize winning research had this system existed then.

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How Washington journalists conspire to not report accurately the President’s yearly budget proposal.

5:47 am

How Washington journalists conspire to not report accurately the President’s yearly budget proposal.

The article focuses on the bad reporting in connection with the Obama administration’s most recent budget proposal, but the criticism applies to every budget announcement since the 1970s.. Each year, the President’s budget proposal in the January/February/March time frame increases the amount the federal government will spend from year to year, as far as the eye can see. Washington journalists however report that the proposal cuts the budget instead. How can this be? As the writer notes,

In the 1970s, Congress tortured the English language by requiring that if federal spending grows less than expected, it should officially be called a spending cut. Outside of the beltway bubble, nobody talks like that. Reporters are letting the public down by accepting the word games of politicians and not reporting the real numbers in the language of ordinary Americans.

I have been fighting this dishonest reporting for decades. It is not the business of reporters to help the federal government get more money. They should report the budget, as it is.

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According to two surveys a large majority of the previously uninsured are uninterested in signing up for Obamacare.

5:25 am

Finding out what’s in it: According to two surveys a large majority of the previously uninsured are uninterested in signing up for Obamacare.

You can read one of the surveys here.

The main reason they are rejecting Obamacare is cost or “affordability challenges,” as the report so euphemistically call it. (See page 5 on the second link above). The simple fact is that the reason most of these people didn’t have health insurance before is because it didn’t make economic sense for them to buy it. Most are probably young and don’t need to visit a doctor very often. Why pay for insurance in that case? And since Obamacare has significantly raised the cost of insurance, these people have even less economic reason now to sign up.

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Thousands of union workers in Las Vegas might go on strike because of the increased costs of healthcare, imposed on them by Obamacare.

4:12 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Thousands of union workers in Las Vegas might go on strike because of the increased costs of healthcare, imposed on them by Obamacare.

On Feb. 20, thousands of housekeepers, porters, cooks, cocktail servers, and others represented by Nevada’s largest union, the Culinary Union Local 226, voted to end a contract extension the workers agreed to last summer. The union wants to maintain its current benefits — including health care coverage at no cost to workers, pensions, and guaranteed 40-hour workweeks.

Rising health care costs due to provisions in the Affordable Care Act could put those benefits in jeopardy, the union says.

I bet that most of these workers voted for Obama and Harry Reid. I also bet that most of them will continue to do so, despite the obvious policy failures imposed on them by these Democratic politicians.

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In testimony to Congress Wednesday, Elon Musk described how allowing SpaceX to compete as a military launch provider would significantly lower costs.

7:49 am

The competition heats up: In testimony to Congress Wednesday, Elon Musk described how allowing SpaceX to compete as a military launch provider would significantly lower costs.

[Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama)] said the Air Force EELV contracts require compliance with complex oversight and accounting practices that add costs to the program. As a result, he suggested comparing the cost of a SpaceX Falcon 9 and a ULA Atlas or Delta was comparing apples and oranges.

Musk agreed “there is additional cost for U.S. government missions due to the mission assurance process.” And he said SpaceX’s costs for launching a military mission would be 50 percent higher than for a purely commercial launch. Even so, he said, SpaceX could provide a Falcon 9 rocket for around $90 million as opposed to nearly $400 million for a ULA launcher. “Even when you add the Air Force overhead, there’s still a huge difference,” he said. [emphasis mine]

The only reason that Congress is against eliminating the military launch monopoly given to ULA and allowing SpaceX to compete is because the monopoly feeds a lot of pork to the districts of certain but powerful legislators like Shelby.

ULA and Shelby are losing the argument however. The cost differences are too high, and SpaceX has proven that it can do the job efficiently and effectively. Eventually the monopoly will die, and the sooner the better.

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A look at the President’s overall budget for science, which finds spending levels remain flat.

9:54 am

A look at the President’s overall budget for science, which finds spending levels remain flat.

What makes this story significant is that the budget is really flat. Some agencies will get more money, others less, with the total spent about the same as the year before. They are not discussing, as had been typical in the past, the rate of increase in spending, where a reduction in that rate would be reported falsely as a “cut.”

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The Obama administration released its 2015 proposed federal budget today, including its proposals for NASA.

10:00 pm

The Obama administration released its 2015 proposed federal budget today, including its budget proposal for NASA.

The spending plan supports the Obama administration’s decision to extend U.S. operations of the International Space Station to 2024 with about $3 billion, funds NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule with nearly $2.8 billion, and requests $848 million for development of commercial spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from low Earth orbit and end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz vehicles.

The budget proposal of $17.5 billion is essential flat, with a 1 percent cut from last year. It also includes proposals for several Earth science missions as well as a mission to Europa. In addition, it grounds the SOFIA airborne telescope, which has turned out to be as expensive to operate as Hubble while being far less productive.

The $848 for the commercial program is approximately the same number the Obama administration has requested every year. Congress has routinely cut this number, but has cut it less each year as time has passed. I suspect that they will cut even less this year, considering the tensions with Russia right now over the Ukraine. We need our own vehicles to ferry astronauts into space, and commercial space is right now the only way it is going to get done.

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“What happens if Russia refuses to fly U.S. astronauts?”

7:58 am

“What happens if Russia refuses to fly U.S. astronauts?”

The problem: the situation in the Ukraine. If tension between the U.S. and Russia worsens then Russia might suspend carrying American astronauts to and from ISS.

The fault here belongs with Congress and George Bush, who decided in the 2000s to let the shuttle retire before its replacement was ready. In addition we can blame Congress in the 2010s for forcing NASA to spend billions on the unaffordable Space Launch System rather than focus on getting humans into space cheaply and quickly.

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After six months of trying and failing to cancel an unwanted Obamacare health insurance plan, a Florida man is now considering shutting his bank account to prevent the plan from automatically withdrawing money from his account.

3:43 am

Finding out what’s in it: After six months of trying and failing to cancel an unwanted Obamacare health insurance plan, a Florida man is now considering shutting his bank account to prevent the plan from automatically withdrawing money from his account.

Remember, the Democrats in Congress and President Obama refused to negotiate any changes to Obamacare in October, thereby forcing the government shutdown. They also were the only ones to vote for Obamacare. These facts must not be forgotten come November.

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One of the publishers who had published fake peer-reviewed papers generated by a computer program has responded aggressively to fix the problem.

12:15 am

One of the publishers who had published numerous fake peer-reviewed papers generated by a computer program has responded aggressively to fix the problem.

And by aggressive I mean positively. They have removed the fake papers and are reviewing everything they’ve published, with the help of the guy who exposed the fakes, to make sure there aren’t any other fakes not yet identified. They also say they are reviewing their procedures to figure out how this happened and to prevent it from happening again.

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Just hours before she was scheduled to testify about IRS harassment of conservatives, the head of a conservative organization was called by an IRS official, telling her that her organization’s tax exempt status had finally been approved, after waiting more than 3 years.

12:06 am

Working for the Democratic Party: Just hours before she was scheduled to testify about IRS harassment of conservatives at a House hearing, the head of a conservative organization was called by an IRS official, telling her that her organization’s tax exempt status had finally been approved, after waiting more than 3 years.

As she noted, “And this is not political?”

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A federal appeals court has ruled that schools can ban the American flag in order to prevent violence.

11:40 pm

Bad news for free speech: A federal appeals court has ruled that schools can ban the American flag in order to prevent violence.

The court’s ruling: School administrators can force you to remove your American-flag tee if the alternative is a classmate punching you in the face. That’s because, per the Supreme Court, students don’t have the same free speech rights at school that adults do on other public grounds. At school, the name of the game is order and instruction; you’re entitled to free expression to the extent you don’t interfere with those goals, but once you do, the school’s entitled to limit your expression accordingly.

In other words, a bully can get the principal’s office to silence you by promising to beat your ass if they don’t.

This is, as Eugene Volokh notes, a classic “heckler’s veto” in that it rewards a violent actor by suppressing the speech that’s irritated him instead of punishing him for being violent.

So, according to this ruling, the only people who will have free speech will be those willing to threaten, and even use violence. A foolish and mindless ruling, if I ever saw one.

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Even as the IRS was admitting last year that its harassment of conservatives was a mistake, the agency was working up its new rules to make the harassment official policy, under pressure from Democratic elected officials.

11:32 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: Even as the IRS was admitting last year that its harassment of conservatives was a mistake, the agency was working up its new rules to make the harassment official policy, under pressure from Democratic elected officials.

And what about the new official policy?

The tax agency has floated an outline of new rules that would limit those groups’ ability to host candidates, distribute voter guides or conduct voter registration or get-out-the-vote drives. A three-month period for public comments closed on Thursday, and the IRS had posted more than 115,000 comments. They were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposed rules, with both conservative and liberal-leaning groups saying the rules would stifle their ability to participate in important public debates.

One joint comment, filed by a dozen groups ranging from the immigration advocacy America’s Voice and the liberal American Civil Liberties Union to the right-leaning American Conservative Union and tea party-aligned FreedomWorks, asked the Obama administration go back and start over on the rules.

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The harassment of conservatives by the IRS was instigated by Democratic elected officials in plain sight for all to see.

9:26 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The harassment of conservatives by the IRS was instigated by Democratic elected officials in Congress and the White House, in plain sight for all to see.

Read it. The author documents numerous examples of Democrats from 2010 to 2013 demanding the IRS do exactly what it ended up doing, harass and shut down the activities of their opponents. And they did it publicly, with pride. And they are still doing it.

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An image of North Korea taken from ISS illustrates starkly the failure of a state-run top-down dictatorial society.

12:48 am

An image of North Korea taken from ISS illustrates starkly the failure of a state-run top-down dictatorial society.

As is typical for today’s leftwing political correct journalism, this reality is attributed not to communism but to vague generalities. North Korea is a “rogue state” or “North Korea stands alone as an unusually isolated nation, where residents live under a familial dictatorship,” statements that embarrassingly avoid the truth. The rulers of North Korea, like Cuba, refused to reject communist when the Soviet bloc fell in 1991 and have thus left their countries and the people trapped within them poor and bankrupt.

Aren’t you glad that today’s Democratic Party here in the United States considers leftwing dogma the height of progress and a goal worthy of emulation?

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Two publishers of scientific journals have withdrawn 120 papers which they have discovered were nothing more than computer-generated gibberish.

10:56 am

Layers and layers of peer-review: Two publishers of scientific journals have withdrawn 120 papers which they have discovered were nothing more than computer-generated gibberish.

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers. …

Labbé developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement” (see ‘Computer conference welcomes gobbledegook paper’). A related program generates random physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv. SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people have done so, or for what purposes. SCIgen’s output has occasionally popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense papers and then revealed the trick.

The real story here is that many of these gibberish papers were peer-reviewed by actual scientists who are supposedly experts in their fields and should have spotted the fakery immediately. That they didn’t suggests another level of corruption. Either they don’t really bother to peer review the papers they are asked to peer review, or they knew what was going on and were part of the game.

That this kind of stuff happens repeatedly in many fields of science should make us all very skeptical of any controversial scientific claim that carries with it any political component. This doesn’t mean that all published material is fake, only that we must not take anything on faith. Controversial results had better be bomb-proof before we accept them willingly.

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Harry Reid insists that “all” of the Obamacare horror stories “are untrue.”

10:00 am

Modern American intellectualism: Harry Reid insists in a speech on the Senate floor that the Obamacare horror stories being reported daily “are all untrue.”

He then attacks the sick patients themselves for telling these stories, calling them liars.

I call this modern American intellectualism because it jibs with the typical level of open-mindedness seen in modern intellectuals when it comes to climate science and any data that throws doubt on the theory of global warming.

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A scientific study has found that name-calling and trolling on websites polarizes thought and blocks the ability of reasonable people to focus on the actual facts.

2:52 am

A scientific study has found that name-calling and trolling on websites polarizes thought and blocks the ability of reasonable people to focus on the actual facts.

This confirms my reasoning for banning such uncivil behavior here on Behind the Black. If we want to understand the issues the first thing we need to do is to make sure we are discussing the issues, reasonably, sanely, and politely. Strong words are okay, but they better be backed up with facts and solid reasoning.

Posted from Alon Shvut, West Bank, Israel, local time 1 pm.

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A district that the Democrats won by a big margin in 2013 voted as strongly for a Republican in a special local election on Monday.

1:57 am

I wonder if this means anything: A district that the Democrats won by a big margin in 2013 voted big for a Republican in a special local election on Monday.

The Democrat in this district loudly ran in support of Obamacare. He not only lost bad, the Republican came with a hair of winning the most liberal urban areas in Norfolk City.

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A Florida judge has ruled that it is illegal to live completely off the grid.

11:39 pm

Freedom dies: A Florida judge has ruled that it is illegal to live completely off the grid.

The judge stated that a woman, who has been trying to live without using any utilities, has to reconnect her water line, though she won’t be forced to use it. He also admitted that the law is outdated and should be changed. This quote however is revealing.

The widow and former real estate agent now has two choices. She can either restore her hookup to the water system by the end of March or appeal Eskin’s ruling to the courts. It is not known what action the city will take but city officials told Fernandez that they would be willing to let Speronis stay in her home if conditions are “sanitary.” At the hearing, Eskin noted that city officials have not actually been in Speronis’s home to make that determination.

It is so nice the government is “willing to let her stay in her home.”

Thugs.

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Eric Holder describes his belief that district attorneys don’t have to enforce any laws they disagree with.

10:35 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: Eric Holder describes his belief that district attorneys don’t have to enforce any laws they disagree with.

Holder’s real goal? Make the law less inconvenient so he and others in power can wield more power over everyone else. That goal is also shared by Obama as well as a large percentage of the politicians in DC from both parties. See for example this article about a man I disagree with strongly on many issues but who I know is totally on my side on this issue.

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The student who was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day has won a settlement from the college that tried to stop him.

2:08 pm

The student who was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day has won a $50,000 settlement from the college that tried to stop him.

At the first link I had posted the video the student had taken of the event. It is worth watching again because it is so egregious. That he won so handily is a wonderful outcome.

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A report released by the Obama administration on Monday estimates that health insurance premiums for small and medium business will rise significantly in 2014 because of Obamacare.

1:53 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A report released by the Obama administration on Monday estimates that health insurance premiums for small and medium business will rise significantly in 2014 because of Obamacare.

The report claims that about one third of these businesses will see a decrease in cost, but the article points out that this is likely a very big overstatement and that the increases will likely be much higher than predicted. Based on history, we have every reason to believe this pessimistic prediction and dismiss the hopeful prediction of the Obama administration.

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The cop who shot and killed an already restrained 90 lb teen, saying “We don’t have time for this,” as he fired, has now been indicted for voluntary manslaughter.

2:18 pm

More good news: The cop who shot and killed an already restrained 90 lb teen, saying “We don’t have time for this,” as he fired, has now been indicted for voluntary manslaughter.

Too often the actual cops and government officials who commit acts of oppression get off scot free while their government has to pay the bills. This time, the punishment is being applied to the person who did the deed, a much better approach as it imposes personal responsibility from the individuals involved.

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