Them Dem Kickers

Them Dem Kickers


How 'bout Them Dem Kickers,
Ain't they fun?
Kickin' them Dems,
Right in they buns.
Kickin' them snowflakes,
Kickin' them sluts,
Kickin' them feminists,
In they butts
Look at Them Dem Kickers,
Ain't they cute?
Some use a shower-shoe,
Some use a boot.
Kickin' them yuuge
Kickin' them tiny
Kickin' them hipsters
In they hiney
Them dadgum Dem Kickers,
Ain't they a scream?
Runnin' 'round kickin',
Ever Dem what's seen.
How to be a Dem Kicker?
Don't need a ticket.
Find a dirty old hippie,
Haul off and kick it!

More (real) "them poems" here

How To Read News Like A Search Warrant Application | Popehat

How To Read News Like A Search Warrant Application | Popehat

Recently it hit me: what if I reviewed news stories with the skeptical eye I turn towards search warrant applications?

If you're not familiar with them, search warrant applications include a declaration under penalty of perjury from the investigating officer or agent. The declaration and supporting paperwork are supposed to identify the location to be searched, the items to be seized, and the specific facts providing probable cause that those items are evidence of a crime. Federal courts scrutinize search warrants more closely than state courts. That's not the law; that's just reality.

When I was a prosecutor, my job was to review proposed warrant applications from federal agents and make sure that they complied with legal requirements before submitting them for approval to federal magistrate judges. As a criminal defense attorney, my job is to analyze warrant applications that have yielded searches of my clients and scrutinize them for flaws and constitutional failures that I can present carefully and forthrightly to a judge so that the judge can then ignore or rationalize them. The critical eye that prosecutors and judges are supposed to use when reviewing a warrant application — and that defense lawyers use in evaluating whether they can be challenged — comes in handy in assessing the trustworthiness of news. Three doctrines in particular come to mind.

Attribution: Around the time I became a federal prosecutor, thanks to a series of unfavorable Ninth Circuit decisions (which, naturally, I resented at the time as unfairly anti-government), the U.S. Attorney's Office began emphasizing attribution in reviewing search warrant applications and prosecutor training. Put simply, attribution means this: for each fact asserted in the warrant application, how does the affiant know it? if the affiant learned the fact from someone else, how did that person know it?

A good search warrant establishes clean attribution for each fact, even if that attribution involves second, third, or fourth-hand knowledge. For example, a good search warrant would say something like this: "I spoke with Officer Jones of my department on January 15th, 2017. Officer Jones told me the following: she interviewed Mary Smith earlier that day. Smith stated that she was present at the corner of Elm and Oak and saw the car accident. Smith told Officer Jones that she was walking north on Oak when she saw a red SUV travelling at a high rate of speed run a stop sign and crash into the side of a green sedan." A well-drafted affidavit also identifies its factual inferences and its basis for them. "I obtained electricity usage records with an administrative subpoena to Southern California Edison for the subject address. I noted that, starting the month that suspect ROBERTS occupied the residence, energy usage spiked 350%, to a level that was consistently more than three times what the energy usage had been for the same time of year over the last five years at the residence. In my training and experience, I know that indoor marijuana grows often result in substantial spikes in energy usage because of the lights and other equipment used"

Thanks to thorough attribution, the reader knows the ultimate source of the fact and the ultimate source's basis for asserting the fact. A bad search warrant application, by contrast, makes assertions about what happened without any indication of how the affiant knows those facts.

A well-attributed news story might be less stilted. But it would still make clear the basis for the facts asserted in the story. Partial or unclear attribution obscures this. Take yesterday's extremely popular New York Times story about Rick Perry's gig as Energy Secretary. I certainly wanted to believe it. I deplore Donald Trump and, to a lesser extent (mostly thanks to his criminal justice stance) Rick Perry. The slams on Perry were artful and viscerally satisfying. The picture it painted confirmed what I wanted to believe about the administration. But notice how the story's main assertion — that Perry thought he was signing up to lead energy industry policy, when in reality his job would be primarily about nuclear security — comes in the first three paragraphs without any attribution. The fourth paragraph has a quote from a (former) insider, but the paragraphs are structured so it's impossible to determine if that source told the Times what's in the previous three paragraphs, or if he endorses that content (he says he doesn't), or whether he's simply provided a pull quote that the Times can present as consistent with their theme. Is the point of the story the Times' characterization or interpretation of facts, or is it based on something that a source specifically told the Times? If it came from the source, was it all based on direct knowledge or based on the source's own gloss? (Notice how the source switches from "I asked him" to describe one sentiment and the vague and unattributed "now he would say" for the second). We're left to guess.

Particularity: My debut as a prosecutor also coincided with a Ninth Circuit push for more particularity in warrants. That is, the Court pushed back against the habit of general warrants that sought permission to seize whatever the investigating agents felt like seizing.1 Instead, the Court demanded that warrant affidavits not only specify with reasonable particularity what is to be seized, but support the proposition that each thing to be seized is somehow evidence of a crime. "There are things that are evidence of a crime, some of those things are in this house, therefore all things in this house should be seized" doesn't cut it.

Particularly is useful in evaluating news stories too. If a story attributes a stance, or a goal, or a motive to a public figure, does it give specific examples of conduct consistent with stance? If the story offers examples of conduct — specific facts — does it connect them to the thesis of the article? Does it show how those specific examples actually support its thesis, or does it simply regurgitate them and rely on proximity to persuade the reader to assume they are connected? So, for instance, the New York Times' Rick Perry story has a number of paragraphs questioning Perry's qualifications, comparing the better qualifications of a prior Energy Secretary, and discussing Trump's likely energy policy. Are those paragraphs proof of the article's thesis? Does Perry's lack of qualification — if that's what it is — support the thesis that he thought he was going to be controlling energy use policy instead of nuclear security?

Corroboration: Anonymous or obscure sources are not inherently impermissible in search warrants or in journalism. A search warrant may rely in part on an anonymous source if the affiant corroborates that source — that is, offers other facts supporting what the source says. In theory a warrant application should corroborate facts only an insider could know. "My source told me that methamphetamine is being cooked at a green house at 123 Elm. I traveled to 123 Elm and observed that the house is, in fact, green" is not meaningful corroboration. "My source told me that suspect ROBERT is cooking methamphetamine at 123 Elm, that he began cooking in March 2016, and that he had precursor chemicals delivered there beginning in April. Based on my review of the Southern California Edison records described above, I noted that there was a 300% spike in energy usage at 123 Elm beginning in March 2016. My review of the UPS records described in paragraph 17 above showed a series of deliveries from an online chemical supply company beginning in April of 2016" is good corroboration.

I can't critique the New York Times Perry story on source corroboration because it's not clear what parts of it come from sources, anonymous or otherwise. But it's now routine for the media to offer sources — anonymous and named — with no corroboration and very little indication of the source's basis for knowledge (which is also an attribution problem). I recognize that journalists have an interest in protecting their sources, but that protection has a cost, and that cost ought to include a higher level of skepticism with readers. A reliable story based on an anonymous source would corroborate elements of the source's story in a meaningful way for the reader. Otherwise it's just the reporter's appeal to his or her own authority — I trust this person so you should as well — and that's no different than an agent's "trust my skeevy anonymous informer because I'm a cop so you can trust me."

If you're reading this to suggest that I think one "team" or another is more guilty of this or more or less credible, you're reading it wrong. Skepticism and critical reading are good. The fact that we'll certainly fall short is not a reason not to try. And gosh, what if a habit of critical reading of the news could even translate to critical evaluation of law enforcement claims? Nah. One improbable goal at a time.

Search Results - Springer

Search Results - Springer

Free books for download

f 2 tool for Wikipedia

f 2

whoCOLOR (alpha).

whoCOLOR creates an on-demand color-markup of the original authors of the text of any article on the (english) wikipedia.

whoVIS (alpha).

whoVIS is a graph visualization of editor disagreements in articles over time, based on the accurate authorship mining of WikiWho.

Awesomeness: Millions Of Public Domain Images Being Put Online | Techdirt

Awesomeness: Millions Of Public Domain Images Being Put Online | Techdirt

Here's some nice news. Kalev Leetaru has been liberating a ton of public domain images from books and putting them all on Flickr. He's been going through Internet Archive scans of old, public domain books, isolating the images, and turning them into individual images. Because, while the books and images are all public domain, very few of the images have been separated from the books and released in a digital format.

How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen - Dennis Hollier - The Atlantic

How to Write 225 Words Per Minute With a Pen - Dennis Hollier - The Atlantic

Shorthand -- a lost art

A Very Darwinian Halloween - The Panda's Thumb

Link: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/10/a-very-darwinia.html (via shareaholic.com)

Including a discussion on the evolution of the Venus Flytrap

MP3s

Link: http://www.aprilwinchell.com/audio/ (via shareaholic.com)

A collection of odd and offbeat MP3 tracks

Department of spurious correlations?

Looks like some neat links buried in here...

Department of spurious correlations?

via Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen on 3/6/13

Here is the abstract of a forthcoming AER piece, written by M. Keith Chen:

Languages differ widely in the ways they encode time. I test the hypothesis that languages that grammatically associate the future and the present, foster future-oriented behavior. This prediction arises naturally when well-documented effects of language structure are merged with models of intertemporal choice. Empirically, I find that speakers of such languages: save more, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese. This holds both across countries and within countries when comparing demographically similar native households. The evidence does not support the most obvious forms of common causation. I discuss implications for theories of intertemporal choice.

Here is from a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, by Geoffrey Pullum:

Chen's data on languages comes from the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS), and his evidence on prudence from the World Values Survey (WVS). Both are fully Web-accessible. Sean Roberts, who studies language evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, decided to investigate the other linguistic factors treated in WALS to see how they related to prudence. He compared the goodness of fit for linear regressions on each of a long list of properties of languages (the independent variables), using as the dependent variable the answers that speakers gave to the WVS question "Did you save money last year?"
The results (see this blog post for an informal account) were jaw-dropping. He found that dozens of linguistic variables were better predictors of prudence than future marking: whether the language has uvular consonants; verbal agreement of particular types; relative clauses following nouns; double-accusative constructions; preposed interrogative phrases; and so on—a motley collection of factors that no one could plausibly connect to 401(k) contributions or junk-food consumption.

There is a bit more here.
For the pointer I thank Mike T.  And I would gladly run a response from Chen, if he has interest in drafting one.
Addendum: Here is an important update from the critic, after improving the specification of his alternative fits:

The results showed that there was only one other linguistic variable that improved the fit of the model more than future tense.  That is, future tense was a better predictor than 99% of the linguistic variables.  For comparison, Dediu & Ladd's test of the link between linguistic tone and Microcephalin/ASPM found that the hypothesised link was stronger than 98.5% of many thousands of links between genetic and linguistic factors.

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day double blunder | Watts Up With That?

Link: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/04/nasas-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-double-blunder/ (via shareaholic.com)

Ship locations map

Link: http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml (via shareaholic.com)

Just plain cool.

Enigma/Paper Enigma - Franklin Heath Ltd Wiki

Link: http://wiki.franklinheath.co.uk/index.php/Enigma/Paper_Enigma (via shareaholic.com)

Although the Enigma cipher as a whole is quite complex (it's complexity is comparable to modern cryptographic algorithms) the individual transformations within it are relatively simple. In fact, they are simple enough that you can decipher an Enigma message with just a paper model.
Our model is three-dimensional, to illustrate the wiring of a real Enigma machine. It needs only common household items to construct, and is completely compatible with all settings of a real Enigma machine (models I, M1, M2 and M3).

Online Textbooks for Free

Online Textbooks for Free

Bookboon: They have some neat books. Thoroughly peppered with ads, but still quite useful.

How To Plot A Coordinate Dataset In Google Maps [Aardvarchaeology]

How To Plot A Coordinate Dataset In Google Maps [Aardvarchaeology]

via ScienceBlogs Select by Martin R none@example.com on 12/14/11

As an archaeologist I often need to plot coordinates on maps and plans. At every scale, really: from individual finds on the plan of an excavation trench to the distribution of something across Europe. Just dots of varying shapes and colours on various background maps. Most often, it's GPS data from field walking and metal detecting. My colleagues in contract archaeology and academe use ArcInfo for these things, but I've never had incentive or opportunity to learn to use it. Also, once you know the software, you still need a map to plot stuff on, and those are expensive. So I've been wondering if I could somehow plot my coordinate data via Google Docs in Google Maps. Free software, free maps, free updated aerial photographs.
Turns out, you can. And today I figured out how. I believe it was David Petts who nudged me in the direction of Google's "Fusion Tables". And Hans Persson (who is an inveterate geocacher) asked me to write my findings up on Aard.
1. Data formatting
Convert your coordinate data to decimal lat & long after the WGS84 datum and with a decimal dot, not the Swedish decimal comma. For instance, my house is at lat 59.289576 long 18.258234. Call the northings column "Latitude" and the eastings column "Longitude". (There are Excel macros to do coordinate conversions. For the Swedish systems, I find Robert Larsson's on-line conversion utility handy, though it doesn't do batch jobs.)
You may also want to add a "Text" column to describe what each point marks, and an "Icon" column that takes entries like "small_red" and "large_blue".
(The Map function is pretty smart and also happily works with street addresses or place names if you put them in a "Location" column.)
2. Where to put the data
Stick this data into a spreadsheet in Google Docs. Save and close the spreadsheet.
3. Plot your dots
Now click the Create button on the start page of Docs and select "Table (beta)". Tell the software to grab the data from the Docs spreadsheet you just created. (At this stage you can also tell it to disregard any extraneous data columns.) I don't quite know how to conceptualise the distinction between these tables and standard Docs spreadsheets. But for practical purposes, tables are useful because (unlike spreadsheets) they have a Visualize menu including a Map alternative. Use it and zoom in on your area of interest.
4. Colour your dots
At first, all of your dots will be small and red. To get the software to use the data you entered into the "Icon" column, (such as "large_blue"), click "Configure styles", change the "Marker icon" settings to "Column", and select "Icon".
Tell me how you're doing with this, Dear Reader, and I'll update the entry as I learn more. The first thing I want to find out now is how to create a dynamic link between my spreadsheet and the map, so that any changes to the data appear automatically on my maps. At the moment I have to make a new table every time I change the spreadsheet. Also, the only way I currently know of to get maps out of the software is screen grab, which doesn't make for great resolution.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ancient Cookery

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ancient Cookery

http://www.aspiringluddite.com/

http://www.godecookery.com/

A list of medieval cookery sites...

The Old Astronomer

The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.

Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,
And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles!

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Sarah Williams

(from _Best Loved Poems of the American People_, Hazel Felleman, ed.
Garden City Publishing Co., Garden City NY: 1936, pp. 613-614)

Khan Academy

Khan Academy

100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads

100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads

via Largehearted Boy by david on 10/17/11

Every day I offer 10 free and legal mp3 downloads and bonus live recordings in this blog's Daily Downloads feature. In almost 10 years of music blogging, I have gathered quite a collection of bookmarks to repositories of free and legal music downloads.
These sites range from the huge (the Free Music Archive and Live Music Archive each hosts tens of thousands of mp3s) to the tiny (They Might Be Giants offers a single track a week), but all are free and legal sources, and great places to discover new music and beef up your music library.
Do you have a favorite site for free and legal music downloads? What sites have I missed? Feel free to leave a comment.

The list of 100 online sources for free and legal music downloads:

3hive - music blog
Alina Simone - singer-songwriter
Amazon MP3 - online store with albums and singles
Aquarium Drunkard - live sessions
Barsuk Records - record label
The Bay Bridged - live sessions
Beat the Indie Drum - record label
Better Looking Records - record label
Better Propaganda - music site
Big Ugly Yellow Couch - live sessions
Boompa Records - record label
Bradley's Almanac - live concerts
Caught in the Carousel - music site
Cloud Chapel Records - record label
Daytrotter - live sessions
Deep Elm Records - record label
Donewaiting - live sessions
Drag City - record label
EardrumsPop - record label
Epitonic - music site
Fat Wreck Chords - record label
Fingertips - music blog
Free Albums Galore - music blog
Free Music Archive - music site
Free Music Is Awesome!!! - music site
Fuel/Friends - live sessions
Green Label Sound - music site
Guided By Voices - band
Halfway House Music - live sessions
Hallelujah the Hills - band
HearYa - live sessions
Hometapes - record label
Hush Records - record label
Indiecater Records - record label
Insound - music store with free mp3s
Insubordination Records - record label
Jagjaguwar - record label
Jane Siberry - singer-songwriter
Jealous Butcher Records - record label
John Vanderslice - singer-songwriter
Josh Ritter - singer-songwriter
The Key - live sessions
Kill Rock Stars - record label
La Societe Expeditionnaire - record label
Labrador Records - record label
Lapdance Academy - music collective
Largehearted Boy - music blog
Last.fm - social music community
LaundroMatinee - live sessions
Live Music Archive - live concerts
Lujo Records - record label
Lullabyes - live concerts
Magnet Magazine - music magazine
Mashable - technology blog
Matablog - record label blog
McGuinn's Folk Den - Roger McGuinn's folk covers
Misra Records - record label
MountainGoats.net - Mountain Goats fansite
Nels Cline - guitarist
New Weird Australia - record label
No Idea Records - record label
No Sleep Records - record label
NoiseTrade - music site
nyctaper - live concerts
The Occasional Archivist - live concerts
Old 97's - band
Pitchfork - music site
Planet Claire - live sessions
Radiohead Not for Profit - live Radiohead downloads
RCRD LBL - music blog
Recording LA - live concert downloads
Records on Ribs - record label
Robert Pollard - singer-songwriter
Rock Proper - record label
Secretly Canadian - record label
Serious Business Records - record label
Sigur Ros - band
Silber Records - record label
Sinewave - record label
Song, by Toad - in-studio sessions
Song, by Toad Records - record label
Sound as Language - music blog
Southern Shelter - live concert downloads
SPIN - music magazine
Spinner - music blog
Stereogum - music blog
Strange Attractors - record label
SubPop - record label
Sweet Adeline - Elliott Smith official website
The Switchboard Sessions - live sessions
Team Love - record label
They Might Be Giants - band
Thrill Jockey - record label
Tim Fite - singer-songwriter
Triple J - Australian indie rock radio station
True North Records - record label
Urban Outfitters - free indie rock compilations
Violitionist - live sessions
Visible Voice - live concert downloads
XO Publicity - indie rock publicity firm

also at Largehearted Boy:
other lists at Largehearted Boy
Daily Downloads (free and legal daily mp3 downloads)
Book Notes (authors create music playlists for their book)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

NAS makes 4000 science books free for download

NAS makes 4000 science books free for download: "The press release … FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The National Academies Press Makes All PDF Books Free to Download; More Than 4,000 Titles Now Available Free to All Readers WASHINGTON — As of today all PDF versions of books published by … Continue reading →"

Instapundit » Blog Archive » LIST: Some bug-out bag recommendations. Related: A bug-in bag. “Basically a bag to get you hom…

Instapundit » Blog Archive » LIST: Some bug-out bag recommendations. Related: A bug-in bag. “Basically a bag to get you home…

LIST: Some bug-out bag recommendations.Related: A bug-in bag. “Basically a bag to get you home should SHTF while you’re away from your house.”
Plus, survival on the cheap. Still more here.