[Mike Tyson]

Crazy shit.

[Oldmanmatt]

Boston etc. What the fuck.

Who knows.

Does it ever make any sense?

Moronic, credulous, deluded bastards; will be responsible.

Again.

[tommytwotone]

Have had to sack it off - kind of hate it when the news goes into its "rolling news" manifestation, endlessly repeating the same couple of things they do know, putting words into bystanders' mouths etc.

The overt hunger (on one news network at least) when they were able to quote someone as saying these were "bombs" was pretty off-key.

[dave]

Its a cockout

[Oldmanmatt]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/boston-marathon-bombing-heroes-tragedy-1835400

'Nuff said.

[DaveC]

The U.S. is not having a good week. The YouTube footage on the ABC link is a touch un-nerving.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fertilizer-plant-explosion-leaves-more-than-100-wounded-in-central-texas/2013/04/18/14fa7cb2-a7ef-11e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-18/explosion-at-fertiliser-plant-near-waco-texas/4636860

[Jaspersharpe]

Fuck! 

[slackline]

From a different perspective...



Reportedly registered 2.1 on the richter scale...over 40 miles away!

Some sites are reporting that there may have been around 20 tonnes of anhydrous ammonium on site which could be the cause of the explosion.

[slackline]

Rubber Dinghy Rapids

[Jaspersharpe]

Heard this on the radio the other day and immediately thought the same thing. Life imitating art imitating life, innit bro.

[crimp]

From radio.

Justin bieber wrote in Anne Frank museum guestbook

"she was a great girl, hopefully she would have been a belieber"

[slackline]

Don't know how many people have picked up on this article today...

url=http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/publication/566/]Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff[/url]

The original paper they are critiquing has been the basis for worldwide "austerity" measures in many countries, including the UK.

Unfortunately the critique shows that Reinhart and Rogoff made three important errors...

a) They excluded three instances of high-debt high-growth (Australia, New Zealand and Canada in the 40s).

b) The weighting method used has been questioned.

c) They made an error in their Excel  spreadsheet and excluded Belgium and four other countries from their analysis


The reanalysis shows that the public-debt:GDP ratio is irrelevant to the growth of an economy, thus "austerity" will not stimulate the economy!!!

Some overviews are at...

Techdirt : 'Intellectual Bulwark' Of Austerity Economics Collapses Because Of Three Major Errors
Washington Post : Is the evidence for austerity based on an Excel spreadsheet error?

[tomtom]

I tweeted about it a couple of days ago... osbournes policy based on an excel error...

It's (academically) a interesting example as to why you should always publish important results somewhere where they are reviewed before publication....

[slackline]

Missed your tweet on it.

It's (academically) a interesting example as to why you should always publish important results somewhere where they are reviewed before publication....

More importantly to me its not just having your results peer reviewed, but in this instance sharing the data and code you have used would have revealed the error (although I abhor doing analysis in Excel which isn't a database nor is it numerical analysis software, it tries to be both but fails).  Such transparency is related to the principle of Reproducible Research and it continues amaze me how many people are meticulous about recording their lab conditions or collecting data, and yet when they then start analysing it the same principles go out of the window and they blindly click around their dataset in Excel (best example I cam up with was a guy who had a p-value of 1 x 10^-56 or there abouts because he'd sorted his data on one column and unlinked the genotypes of individuals from their true disease status  ).

Places like the BMJ are starting to expect data is submitted along side the papers otherwise they won't even review it.  Hopefully this will spread wider and wider.

[tomtom]

Interesting.. Though a related point is that some argue that you shouldn't release your data until it has been reviewed - else folk can use/interpret your data incorrectly (not understanding the full context of it etc..)

[Falling Down]

From radio.

Justin bieber wrote in Anne Frank museum guestbook

"she was a great girl, hopefully she would have been a belieber"

I laughed when I first heard this but on further reflection it's not such an error of judgement.  Anne Frank was an ordinary teenager who suffered tragically and that's why her story resonates so powerfully with all of us.  If she was around today, she _probably_ would have been a Belieber and that's not a bad thing for a teenage girl.

[crimp]

The bieber would be sick enough.

Unfortunately, we don't rock harder than you

[Falling Down]

 

[crimp]

 
 

[Oldmanmatt]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-22224205

Be careful what you tweet, Plebs!

[SA Chris]

A joke becomes reality

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-22308165

[slackline]

From the Adam Smith Institute The Minimal Evidence for Minimum Pricing : The fatal flaws in the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model by John C Duffy and Christopher Snowdon.

Basically the model and its claims are flawed and therefore the idea that minimal pricing of alcohol will bring about the claimed benefits is wrong.

It'll no doubt upset some of the people where I work who developed the model, but they often tell me "well health economics, its hard to get accurate estimates as there are so many variables" and yet in their model they claim to be able to put an exact number on the lives saved by introducing a given minimal pricing!

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Everest base camp is a dangerous place to be...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22336540

[Jaspersharpe]

YYFY

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22335520

[mrjonathanr]

How did Owen Paterson vote, do you know?