It’s True – You Can Write An Article About Anything

For once this isn’t a rant about scholarly publishing and the fact that you can get published on any subject, such as:

Author, N.E. (2013). So I came in to work today and opened my office door – A longitudinal study of early-morning academic library work habits focusing on first-five-minute

behaviors. Journal of WastingMyTimeButItsPublishOrPerish Research (100)100, 100-575. doi: 10.blah.blahblah.blah

Yes, that’s a correctly APA-formatted citation to a made-up but not implausible article.

Instead it’s about a recent tech article regarding cell phone form factors from Engadget: “The brutal, exaggerated death of the form factor phone“.

While entertaining enough (“* 2011 — Grizzled old men gathered round the fire to lament the death of consumer choice. Their whispers were occasionally interrupted by the calls of increasingly rare animals like the Xperia Play and HTC Surround. * 2012 — The grizzled old men died.”) and containing some interesting information, the conclusion left something to be desired (“Either the slab will persist, like the technological equivalent of the crocodile, so perfectly adapted to its environment that it barely needs to change. Or things will go the opposite way: the technical expertise that has built up during the ultra-competitive era of the slab will lead to an explosion of new species.”).

Is it just me or does that parse as “Either things will stay the same, or they will change – we just don’t know which”? I think I may have been able to figure that much out on my own *g*.

Oh, and the only thing more entertaining than a comments thread on Engadget or Gizmodo is a comments thread on ANY gun control article. Greatest microcosms of the human race you will find.

I Called It

Ronda Rousey via armbar in the first round. For the seventh time.

It is pretty hard to think you might lose when you have Judo Gene Lebell in your corner, you train under Gokor Chivichyan, you are the daughter of Ann Maria Rousey DeMars (whom my wife, a fellow education PhD and statistician, evidently knows) and your training partners are Manny Gamburyan and Karo Parisyan.

Good for her.

I Like It

It implies a story, and I like dogs better than people. What’s not to like?

H/T to Miss K.

Another Politician Fails At The Internet

“I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” Salazar said in the statement. ”That was absolutely not my intention. We were having a public policy debate on whether or not guns makes people safer on campus. I don’t believe they do. That was the point I was trying to make. If anyone thinks I’m not sensitive to the dangers women face, they’re wrong. I am a husband and father of two beautiful girls, and I’ve spent the last decade defending women’s rights as a civil rights attorney. Again, I’m deeply sorry if I offended anyone with my comments.”

If there is a camera present – and there ALWAYS is unless you are in your own home – it can wind up on the internet, which is an archive. Never say anything in the presence of a recording device, or in an electronic medium, that you aren’t willing to have read out loud in court  or reviewed by HR. Oh, and politicians – we’re paying attention. If you say it in a legislative session (see camera remarks above) we’re going to hear about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut

appears to be wrong.

“We do know that historically in these instances, amateurs have trouble switching magazines,” Mr. Murphy said, referring to the high-capacity ammunition feeding device used by Mr. Lanza to shoot scores of bullets in seconds. “I believe, and many of the parents there believe, that if Lanza had to switch cartridges nine times versus two times there would likely still be little boys and girls alive in Newtown today.”

Supporting data, please.

Oh – wait.

Lanza changed magazines frequently as he fired his way through the first-grade classrooms of Lauren Rousseau and Victoria Soto, sometimes shooting as few as 15 shots from a 30-round magazine, sources said.

More than a week after the shooting, investigators were still finding bullets under doors and in carpets and walls in the school as they tried to match the casings to the magazines.

Investigators are aware that frequent reloading is common in violent video games because an experienced player knows never to enter a new building or room without a full magazine so as not to risk running out of bullets. This has led them to speculate privately that this might be a reason that he replaced magazines frequently.

Investigators have not said how many shots Lanza fired with the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle after he entered the school by firing half a dozen rounds through the glass at the school entrance. Sources said that he fired approximately 150 rounds during the shooting spree.

So it seems that, well, fools rush in to make uneducated pronouncements. Especially when they are politicians. Why, oh why, are so many members of Congress freakin’ idiots?

 

H/T to wizardpc

How Sad Is It

when I can provide better tech support on a Microsoft product than a Microsoft Tech Support Specialist?

Yup

Pretty much sums it up

 

H/T to Wirecutter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Short And To The Point

I like it.

Words To Live By

From a county sheriff in WA:

“About the only thing I can say that the victim could have done differently (is that) he could have fired sooner, he could have fired more often, and he could have used a better brand of ammunition,” Mansfield said Monday at a news conference.

Hard to argue with that.

 

H/T to Dave Codrea.

I Don’t Care Who You Are

That’s funny.

Sheila Jackson Lee might think her constituency is ill-informed on some issues (hard to argue with her there — after all, they keep electing Sheila Jackson Lee)

Via Michelle Malkin