Tree Planter

Wikipedia seems to always have terrible photos of living people

Why the hell is that? So much quality info and few quality pictures.

Like Tree Planter said, copyrights. People being protective of their image and not understanding the nature of wikipedia or photographers just being photographers. Heck the FBI even threatened to sue wiki for including its seal on the bureau's page. Stupid.

 

One would think that his photo from the university's official website, huskers.com, could be used as it's a public entity and such works are often open - for example works of the Federal Government enter the public domain upon their creation (so you can print as many copies of the 9/11 commission report as you want and sell them) but works of state governments are left to the states to release and it looks like they've copyrighted it.

 

Ameer could just take a photo of himself, email it to someone, grant open license and have them upload it.

Someone could also take a picture of him and upload it with an open copyright license.

Could use a better picture:

 

Maybe someone has copyrights to a good picture they can give to Wikipedia?

Ameer made to the front page of Wikipedia in the "Did you know...

• ... that Ameer Abdullah decided to return for his senior year at Nebraska because "life is bigger than football"?
  

Ameer made to the front page of Wikipedia in the "Did you know...

• ... that Ameer Abdullah decided to return for his senior year at Nebraska because "life is bigger than football"?
  

protesters angered over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad fired gunshots and burned down the US consulate in Benghazi. LINK

 

Here we go.

 

 

Any idea what film it is they're talking about?

This terrorist attack on 9/11/12 was likely an al Qaeda terrorist operation.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/12/13824089-us-wont-rule-out-islamist-militant-link-to-attack-on-us-consulate-in-libya?lite

I moved a bunch of posts from this thread. We cannot copy/paste entire articles onto the board. Fair usage rights allow an excerpt and a link, not the whole article.

 

It doesn't become fair usage if you post the whole article in two-paragraph segments.

Most people do not have access to scientific articles without paying a huge price. Psychological Science apparently made that article free, but that is not standard practice. I think that technically speaking, I didn't violate the fair usage rights, since I did break it up and I didn't post the whole article (99% yes).

Now, I will give my opinion of the article. Up front: I'm extremely liberal in my politics, but when it comes to science, politics go out the window.

To the main UK data (which is the date that really matters), the results are in Table 1. What you see is inferred correlations between latent variables and prejudicial attitudes. Path a is the correlation between g (general measure of intelligence) and right-wing ideology. For the four groups, it ranges from -.15 to -.4. What does this mean? Well, it means that there is a negative correlation between a measure of general intelligence and right-wing ideology. But, is this a meaningful correlation? It is statistically significant, but any deviation from chance is statistically significant if the sample size is large enough. Another way to address this question is to ask what the effect size is and in the case of correlation, we square the correlation to get an estimate of the amount of variation explained by the correlation. In this case, it ranges from 0.025 to .16. So, the correlation does not explain much. Moreover, IQ measure are relatively poor at measuring intelligence. They correlate with school and work performance in the range of about 25% to 50%, with a corresponding effect size of 0.0625 to .25. So, my conclusion is that while there may be a negative statistical relationship between the measure of intelligence and right-wing ideology, it is not meaningful. My conclusion is that being stupid or smart, you are probably just as likely to be a right-winger as not. The same reasoning holds for Path c.

Path b, is more troubling. The correlations are much higher ranging from .31 to .69, with corresponding effect sizes of about 0.09 to .48. This suggests that right-wing ideologies do play a meaningful role in prejudicial attitudes. However, I see no meaningful relationship between intelligence and right-wing ideology or prejudicial attitudes.

Thus, I have seen nothing to conclude that right-wingers are any stupider than anyone else.

Here is the article:

Abstract

Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

LINK

I wonder what his ancestors did to get the name Santorum?

After watching the housing bubble collapse, I've got to wonder how far behind Ag land is from doing the same thing. It's been a great few years lately for crop prices. High fuel prices also make ethanol more viable, thus keeping the demand for corn high. If you have been watching prices of Ag land the last five years, it's been pretty crazy. I recently read on an ad that a quarter of irrigated around Crete went for $8500 an acre. That's $1.36 million for a stinking quarter of land! What happens if one of the first cuts is ethanol subsidies? That could very likely happen. What if demand decreases for a couple of years. What's a farmer going to do with a $1.36 million quarter of land if corn drops to $2.25? His profit won't even pay the taxes on that.

 

When the housing bubble burst, it didn't surprise me at all. In two years time, a $175K house was selling for $200K not from increased construction costs but simply demand. Once the economy went sour that same house was now worth $165K and a lot of people were in big trouble. What's going on with Ag land prices is eerily similar. Hopefully demand stays were it is and we can keep prices high because right now the Ag economy is the best thing Nebraska has going for it.

It may come down some, but I doubt in the long run. With climate change, many places in the world will become less productive. Nebraska sits squarely on Ogallala aquifer, which make Nebraska land even more valuable in the long run when there is uncertainty in changing weather patterns.

How about let's just think this through (I know that is a lot to ask). If money and resources were unlimited, then we would all be happy and well off (at least a lot of us). They are not. The top 1% are accumulating wealth (percentage wise) must faster than the rest of the 99% of us. Since money and resources are limited, we are engaged in a type of zero-sum game. The increase in wealth of the top 1% comes at the expense of the other 99%. It doesn't require much thought to realize this is headed. Be sure and save your tin cans, may be the 1% will drop in a few coins.

Imagine that, it's near impossible to find a video of what lead up to incident. Here's one that shows about two and a half minutes of footage prior to what everyone else has seen. I wish there was another two minutes because I bet this would be even less of a story.

 

0:01 - Officer politely asks asks jobless student with 100K in student loans and Art History Degree to move.

0:07 - Jobless student with 100K in student loans and Art History Degree says 'You're shooting me for sitting here...Just making sure. That's fine.'

0:28 - A member of the group says 'Put your faces down' and they all follow.

0:48 - Officer gets out pepper spray

1:06 - Girl operating camera shouts to group 'Keep your eyes closed'

1:09 - Protester comes in and says 'All you guys might want to back of the walk'

1:12 - Repeats himself

1:21 - Camera girl again yells 'Close your eyes'

1:25 - She then starts ranting 'Protect Yourself'

1:41 - Members of the crowd start calling for a friend 'Alee' to get off the walk

2:12 - Officer reaches down and tries to remove a protestor by pulling on her. Didn't budge.

2:27 - Spraying starts and this is where nearly all the video on the internet start.

*****My favorite part.if you can stomach to go any further is when they become poor children in the eyes of the camera operator.

 

This is a big joke to these protestors. They think they are untouchable and don't have to follow any rules. They were asked to move, they didn't and paid a real small price for it. Their attempts at their protestor merit badge failed miserably. Go ahead and try to turn this into Tiananmen Square. I think everyone has done a pretty solid job of it so far.

 

If you and Pike need a Job, I'm sure Bashar al-Assad would like to hire you to shoot protesters in Syria.

As far as whether the students were breaking laws . . . well that is a trickier issue. They would be required to comply with lawful police commands. Therefore, one of the initial questions is whether the command to disperse was lawful. There are no quick and easy answers.

It is an easy answer. The tents were gone, which the police were sent into remove, when the students were pepper sprayed. The police had no lawful basis to move the students. Even if they did, it is illegal to use such brutal force when there is no resistance. They don't even do that in prisons when prisoners do not resist. The chancellor of UC Davis doesn't want to give up her $500,000.00+ year job, but she must go.

Right, back to heart of the article...should the chancellor step down because the police pepper sprayed students who refused to comply with police demands to vacate the area?

 

According to the English professor, she should. I admit I have my own preconceptions about university English 'professors', but I do not agree with that the chancellor should resign because one officer decided to season a small group of college kids. If anyone is to be punished, it should be those people who broke the law, either the officer who pepper sprayed the students and/or the students for violating some ordinance regarding squatting, unlawful assembly without a permit etc.

The 11 students (mostly girls) did not break any laws. The quad at UC Davis is a public area. No permits are required to sit anywhere. During nice weather, students sit everywhere, including where the students were pepper sprayed. By the time the students were pepper sprayed, the tents were gone. So, the students broke no law and did not resist an illegal assault. The videos give a true and accurate portrayal of what happened.

I miss the days when cops used batons and guns.

Actually, the police told the students as they were sitting down that they were going to shoot them all, but I guess they realized that they only brought along rubber bullets, so the pepper sprayed them instead. They almost killed one of them, but it looks like she is going to make it.

If he did decommit, maybe we should be happy about this. Check out

his stats this fall:

Tyler Gabbert Stat