Delusions of various kinds...

Workout notes: East Peoria 10; 1:38:06 (40:34/37:29)(50:39/47:26). Breezy, overcast, 30 F. I did ok but didn’t really get after it.

I still have slight fatigue from this weekend.
Note: I still felt good about it and wondered if this was a recent best. Nope; I was 30-40 seconds faster on this course once this November (albeit when I was racing my best). But it was one of my better runs over the past 2-3 years.

Posts
Academia: sometimes the offspring of faculty are the worst snowflakes. Here is a case in which a student is suing over a C+ received in 2009:

A graduate of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. has sued the school for $1.3 million because she is unhappy that she got a C+ in a class in 2009.
Megan Thode, 27, says the grade ruined her dream of becoming a licensed professional counselor, reports The Morning Call, an Allentown-based newspaper. Her civil suit alleges breach of contract and sexual discrimination. It contends that the grade was part of a broader attempt to force her to abandon the graduate degree she was pursuing.

Hmmm, wanting a credential is the basis for being awarded the said credential? Oh boy..

Women in tiny spandex bunhuggers: Yes, they look pretty good, but if you are faculty or staff, you have to LEAVE THEM ALONE!

Hey, when you get to be our age, this is plenty good enough!

STAY AWAY FROM THE STUDENTS!!!!!!

Darwin Day
Take recursivity’s Darwin Day quiz, without using google. I think that I got 5 of 10.

Economy
Gee, Joe Scarborough hasn’t learned from his mistakes; “his gut” and the conventional wisdom from non-experts isn’t evidence!

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Scarborough invited Paul Krugman onto his MSNBC show. The meeting of the brilliant but prickly Krugman with the dopey but genial Scarborough held the promise of a cataclysmic matter-touches-antimatter collision of an unpredictable and frightening scale. Instead, they passed right through each other. Krugman has been arguing for years that the political elite has been in the grips of a dangerous fallacy that immediate budget austerity is necessary and even helpful to economic growth, a fallacy, he points out, that has powerful adherents but flies in the face of actual economics. Scarborough attempted to discredit Krugman by pointing out that such figures as Admiral Michael Mullen, Council of Foreign Relations President Richard Haas, and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles all disagree with him. It never seemed to occur to him that touting the support of influential noneconomists would confirm rather than refute Krugman’s analysis.
This morning, Scarborough again found himself face-to-face with some completely anodyne statements about the budget deficit, which so offended his beliefs — culled from Green Room bonhomie and homespun common sense rather than facts and figures — that he launched into an incredulous diatribe. Scarborough plays clips of Nancy Pelosi and Eric Cantor answering questions about the deficit and then sputters with indignation…

Maybe I’m a little too surprised here because I don’t watch much Joe Scarborough. He’s indicative of elite opinion in that he understands budget deficits in moralistic terms and has little grasp of economic or budgeting concepts. Exposing him to contextualized analysis only seems to make him angrier.

Exactly. This is what it is like trying to have a discussion with numerically illiterate people; they trust “their COMMON SENSE” more than rigorous analysis. You know…math is hard.

Paul Krugman seems amused by all of this:

Jonathan Chait is boggled by Joe Scarborough’s latest rant. (Dear Jon: I am not “prickly”: I’m aggressive and annoying. But that’s by design, and I only do it when the situation calls for it.) [...]

How do JoScar and others like him come by such misconceptions?

Well, I’ve gradually come to the realization that most of the commentariat doesn’t do what, say Martin Wolf or I do — grub around in published data, read reports, and all that. Instead, they rely on what they heard somebody say the facts are; hearsay economics. Of course, they don’t listen to any old bum on the street; they listen to people of repute, people in their circle. But the repute in question has nothing to do with technical expertise; hey, Admiral Mullen is a serious person, so if he says something on any subject, such as economics, it must be solid.

And where do the reputable people get their information? Why, it’s what they heard somebody in their circle say. It’s hearsay economics all the way down.

You can see how this leads to the incestuous amplification I’ve written about. Everyone they know — tous le monde, as Tom Wolfe used to say — says that we have exploding spending and the deficit is a crucial problem. How could it not be true?

Krugman goes on to present a chart showing that spending has NOT taken off…but then…that is a chart…math is hard and, well, you know, THEY SAY that you can PROVE ANYTHING with those-there-statistics. So it is best to ignore the bearded pointed headed hippies and go by your COMMON SENSE, which in the past….well,…..hasn’t worked so well.

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