8 April 2011 pm

Who is this fat old man?????

Science I love the title of this piece: “Science is Hard”. The article itself basically asks the following question: does this data present strong evidence that a new subatomic particle has been discovered?

The 3-sigma bump reported by Fermilab on Wednesday has garnered a lot of attention. Understandable, since it might be a precious sign of particle physics beyond the Standard Model — but it’s also just a 3-sigma bump, and usually those go away.

For the uninitiated: “3 sigma” means that there is a 1 percent chance (or less) that this bump occurred due to random background. But think of it this way: if you have 100 such time periods, there is a good chance that you’ll see at least one of these “bumps” in the data due to random chance.

Still, read the article. This shows how scientists use data and reveals the kinds of debates that take place.

Politics and Economics
Ryan’s plan includes…yes, more tax breaks for the rich. And no, they haven’t worked before and they won’t work now…unless by working you mean:

(a) the Ryan plan would actually increase the deficit and (b) the whole goal is not to reduce the deficit, but to transfer income upward. In fact, it so happens that the estimated cost of those tax cuts is almost exactly equal to the proposed cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs helping lower-income Americans.

And as for those who consider Mr. Ryan a serious economic player, please read this awesome smackdown of a Ryan backer. You see, any plan with footnotes must be serious. Or so say Republican pundits.