GOING TO ASIA FOR THE WINTER

I hope to update from time to time anyway but we'll see :o

(WARNING: FRENCH ARTICLE) LE DEVOIR : TELLEMENT DE MAUVAISE FOI QU'ILS EN SONT MALHONNETES

Plus de deux mois après les élections américaines, nos prétentieux amis du Devoir sont encore en mode salissage. Difficile pour eux de passer une journée complète sans réitérer pour la millionième fois le discours acrimonieux de la gauche défaite.

Sérieusement sans niaiser, au Québec on a vraiment besoin d'un journal moins à gauche parce que ca prend quelqu'un pour leur répondre et les critiquer ces fraichiers-la. Encore hier, après la conférence de presse de Trump, on lui saute dessus à bras raccourcis et on le fait paraitre le plus mal possible. Suite à de nombreuses et interminables élucubrations sans le moindre fondement à propos de prétendu "hacking" (peut-on être plus vague?) et maintenant de rumeurs idiotes de réseau de prostitutions, le Président a cru bon remettre les pendules à l'heure. Il a répondu sèchement à quelques questions redondantes basées sur rien et a renvoyé à la face de certains médias leurs insultes bas de gamme. (Comment CNN et la ont-ils pu inventer un mot-clé aussi ridicule que celui de "fake news" pour justifier la défaite de leur candidate, et ensuite ne pas voir venir que ce mot-clé allait leur être resservi en pleine face?) Il a traité Buzzfeed de "failing pile of garbage" parce que c'est ce qu'ils sont.

Certains extraits de l'article http://www.ledevoir.com/international/etats-unis/488949/une-conference-de-presse-a-la-maniere-trump-qui-donne-le-ton suivi de mes critiques. Encore une fois, il y a beaucoup trop de propos déformés pour tout gérer. J'ai mis juste les grandes lignes.
"une attitude méprisante à l’égard de plusieurs médias." Un prêté pour un rendu?Plusieurs médias, meme pami les majeurs, font tellement tout pour le faire mal paraitre qu'il ne serait pas raisonnable pour eux d'espérer un autre traitement.
"la presse américaine a révélé que la Russie pourrait détenir des informations «compromettantes » contre lui" C'est toujours ca: des oui-dire, des informations de 3ieme et 4ieme main, des il parait que peut-etre que la CIA a dit que le FBI penserait que. Pure spéculation partisanne jusqu'à preve du contraire. Dans la plus pure tradition des techniques journalistiques déshonnêtes, le Devoir attend le 3ieme ou le 4ieme paragraphe avant de mentionner que les accusations sont basées sur rien.
"Les propos vulgaires et dégradants envers les femmes qu’il a tenus à l’animateur de Access Hollywood dans une vidéo auraient pourtant ruiné la carrière de n’importe quel candidat présidentiel." Pure spéculation basée sur rien. Opinion personelle de l'auteur, rien de plus. Next!
"Il essaie toujours d’en mettre plus que le client en demande, comme pour se justifier" Opinion personelle de l'auteur. On pourrait aussi facilement dire qu'il utilise a répétition l'hyperbole pour obtenir l'attention et mieux communiquer son message.

Mais bref. Si vous croyez sincèrement que Trump a un "'tempérament colérique" ou est "un clown", méfiez-vous! Il se pourrait que vous soyez victime d'une surdose de médias de gauche. Faites-vous une faveur : plutôt que de vous contenter de l'interprétation malhonnête et partisanne du seul "vrai" journal au Québec, consacrez donc une poignée d'heures à écouter les discours, les entrevues et les conférences de presse de Trump au premier degré, dans leur intégralité, sans distortion. (www.youtube.com) Il y a d'excellentes chances que votre opinion du personnage sera plus favorable par la suite.  Ce serait simplement dommage de trop détester quelqu'un qui a aussi plein de belles qualités parce qu'on n'entend que ses ennemis.

ANTI-TROLLING

Have you ever tried doing it? It's so much fun.

I'm not talking about trying to stop an internet troll by banning him, reasoning with him, ignoring or ganging up on him.That's just standard procedure by now.

Let me define the word "trolling" with more precision to make my point.

Trolling : coming up in a perfectly reasonable internet conversation, on a forum or social media, and acting volunitarily crazy or stupid in order to derail said conversation; creating  mayhem with fake silliness to get attention.

I like to do the exact opposite of that, which is

Anti-trolling : coming up in a stupid, vacuous conversation, where no one is actually bothering to make any point at all and everyone is just virtue-signaling to each other and trying to sound clever, and acting voluntarily reasonable and rational in order to derail said social posturing; bringing up actual points and offering real debate opportunities against stupid jokes and references to shut everyone up.

Let me give you an example.
Guy A : Ohnoes we elected Trump wut R wee gunna do wur al daed lulz.
Guy B : We could always go back and fix the timeline continuum harhar amirite.
Guy A :  *additional Back to the Future reference* im so funnay.
Guy C : Yeah Trump sux so hard even his vaccuum is jealous of him XD
(etc)
Me : Hello gentlemen. If you would like me to explain to you why electing Trump was actually a positive thing for several reasons, I will be happy to oblige.
*Crickets*
*Thread dies*

Works every time.

MyDilbert 4

Scott Adams invented all of this. I just wrote new gags :)

www.dilbert.com

Is it normal that when I hear the name "George Clooney"...

...the first thing I think is not "Hey! He's gonna talk about his new movie! Sweet!" but "Ah crap, he's gonna take a predictable and unnecessary shit on Trump once again"?

INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN SHKRELI

Interviewer : Today we have Martin Shkreli, founder of Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company that brought severe criticism upon itself when it raised the price of a vital pill by a factor of 56 overnight. Martin, how would you like to address those critics?

MS: I did it to please the shareholders.

I : Aren't you concerned about the people who depend on the affordability of the drug to get treated?

MS : We made more money.

I : I understand that. However, are you not also accountable to the public and the insurance companies that have to actually provide care for their customer base?

MS : Our stock went up.

I : Sure, but there is also the munaitarian aspect to it. You can't expect sick people to have to fork 50 times more cash for their care from one day to the next, right?

MS : Millions in my bank account.

I : Okay, but human beings actually suffering from...

MS : $$$.

I : Aw, come on now. You're not even trying. It's not even possible to actually say "$$$" out loud.

MS : Sure it is. It's pronounced *makes strange whitlsing/rattling sound with his lips*

I : I hate my job.

MyDilbert batch 03

Credit to Scott Adams for creating characters and settings.

Srsly folks, dilbert rocks :)

This is just my take on it.

GENERATING IDEAS VS BEING A MERE VEHICLE OF IDEAS

People these days spend their days with their face glued to their screen. Which means more time spent reading and viewing external content, and less time alone with one's thought. Which could explain in part why no matter how much information is out there, people sound more and more like parrots with each passing day. Because any given individual lacks sufficient time to process and treat information (as he is constantly taking in new info), you don't actually get more new ideas than you did before, only more iterations of the same ideas.

This is only a draft. Comments would be helpful as to how I should develop this piece and others. Thanks in advance.

SOMETIMES CHERRYPICKING DATA CAN BE USEFUL : THE CASE FOR PAVEL DATSYUK

"Cherrypicking data" is a colloquial way of saying "mining subsets of data for desired information". It is a procedure that is used in scientific studies or interpretations of said studies, in order to show or hide a tendency that is present in the data.

For example, I could do a study that purports to demonstrate the existence of ESP by having a subject guess the outcome of a coin flip. Let's say that after one thousand experiments, I have exactly the amount of positive results predicted by chance (my subjects got the right answer 500 times out of 1000). That's kind of a boring result, and pretty hard to get it published and draw attention to it (and to myself). But within that dataset of 1000, let's say my sybjects got a "lucky streak" and guessed right 12 times in a row. There's the data I want to cherrypick : when I present my study, I can title my article "Subjects guess coinflip 12 times in a row!" and go on to rant about there's only one chance in 2048 of that ever happening and so on and so forth.

I have just manufactured a positive result out of absolutely nothing by cherrypicking within my sample, and now every science reporter is after me for an interview. That's why cherrypicking is generally frowned upon in a scientific context.

But in other contexts, I want to argue that cherrypicking of a certain type is actually the more honest way of presenting statistics.

Let me tell you about Pavel Datsyuk, a former star player of the Detroit Red Wings. Datsyuk was an insanely talented player that entered the league as a rookie in 2002 and retired in 2016. Now, because the league media hates everything that is both elite and non-Crosby, the prevailing narrative was always that Datsyuk was a poor player performer because (and this is the key stat) he had a low points-per-game average. In 2008 for example, commentators were going on and on and on about how he "only had 11 goals in his last 59 games". It was virtually impossible to read or hear anything about Datsuyk without having that "fact" regurgitated in your face. But let's look at his actual stats. 
        GP    G    A    Pts   
2001-02     21     3     3     6    
2002-03     4     0     0     0    
2003-04     12     0     6     6    
2005-06     5     0     3     3    
2006-07     18     8     8     16    
2007-08     22     10     13     23    

From that data, you can see that he had 3 very slow years and then he took off. Now, it's important to understand that "games played" does not specify "minutes per game played". And that the Red Wings have a philosophy of bringing in new players very slowly into the game. Rookies only play a few shifts a game, if any, during the playoffs, because the pressure is so high. They're there mostly to learn the ropes and watch how the old guys do it. Later on, in their 4th or 5th seasons, rookies becomes the new major players and get lots more ice time.

So the "fact" that Datsyuk only scored 3 goals in his first 37 playoff games does not show that he is a choker or has limited talent: it's all due to the fact that while he was on the scoresheet for those games, he saw almost no time on ice. He had a 3-year learning period from the bench. When he got promoted to the first line in 2006, he immediatley started producing at an elite pace, around a point per game.

Put in front of all these facts, you can either choose to be a dishonest analyst (which all of the league's talking heads decided to do) and push the easy narrative of "Datsyuk sucks because he only has X points in Y games"...or you can choose to be more thorough and explain at length that "Datsyuk had a long mentoring period as an observator, after which he hopped on the ice and became a major contributor overnight". Cherrypicking your data to consider only his time as a first-liner actually gives you a better idea of his general ability.

Addendum : the opposite narrative was applied to Alexei Kovalev, another russian star. He had the reputation of a playoff beast, even though his numbers showed he had one crazy rookie year and was quite mediocre after that.

MyDilbert batch 2

Couldn't have done any of this without the awesome work of Scott Adams. Visit www.dilbert.com for a laugh and valuable life lessons all at the same time :)

MyDilbert batch 001

Characters and concept belong to the most excellent Scott Adams at www.dilbert.com

I'm just writing a few of my own gags over his drawings.

DEMYSTIFYING THOSE ICELANDIC NAMES

You might be under the impression that Icelandic is a "complicated" and "unintuitive" language after hearing about it a few times. Apparently, they like to name their places with super-long, impossible-to-pronounce words. I suggest you take a look at a map of Iceland for a few minutes and see for yourself: lots of random, unpronounceable letter combinations like Eyjufjällajökull and Kirkjubæjarklaustur.

*waits for the reader to return*

What a mess, right? How do these people manage to even get around in their own country?

Well, in reality it's very simple. Almost all of their place names are actually combinations of a relatively small number of common nouns describing the geography of the area. If you're in the mood, take 10 to 15 minutes to study the following list of icelandic to english translations. Hint: several words share a distant root with English. It's not super obvious, but the similarities are there. For example, the work "kirk" can be translated to "kerk" in Dutch, to "kirch" in German and then to "church" in English.

Baer : farm

Dal/ur : valley

Eyja : island

Eyri : sandbank

Fjälla : mountain

Fjörður : Fjord

Haf/höf : sea, ocean

Jökull : glacier

Kirk/ju : church

Klaust : monastery

Nes : cape, promontory, headland

Reyk : smoke

Stað/ir/ur : place, location

Vatna : water

Vik : bay, cove, or inlet

*comes back 15 minutes later*

Now go browse around the same map one more time. It's not so mysterious at all now is it? With only a very limited number of key words, you can translate basically 90% of the place names. Reykjavik is just a smokey bay. That legendary Eyjufjällajökull is just a glacier on a mountain on an island. If I gave you another list of 15, you'd be pretty much at 100%. Here's a bonus 16th word : Hval = whale. Maybe you had already guessed that right?

Not only are Icelandic names not mystical, they are almost boring :D

Note: if the skeptic in you ever decides to verify some of the translations I propose here, remember that Google Translate is not a very good tool for minor nordic languages. I used https://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/IcelOnline/ as my main source.

THE RIGHT AND ITS MEMENTO-LIKE AMNESIA

(Early morning)
The Right : Hey! I'm in top shape today! I'm gonna go and do the two things I'm great for : creating wealth, and redistributing it!
*goes out and starts creating wealth*

(A few hours later)
The Right (alongside a moderate-sized pile of dollar bills): Doing good! What was the other thing I had to do today? Aw anyway, I'll just keep doing this for now.
*goes back to making money*

(That evening)
The Right (sitting on a mountain of cash): Wow, I got plenty here! But for the life of me I can't remember what I was supposed to do with it. I'll just keep making more until that other thing comes back to me.
*resumes collecting wads of cash*

People on the side who are not billionaires : *SIGH*

THE MAGIC OF EDITING

Unedited interview

Interviewer : Mr X, do you have any respect at all for human life?

Mr X: Yes, of course.

Interviewer: So...have you ever killed anyone?

Mr X: What? No! Why would you ever think that!


Edited version seen on Colbert

Interviewer : Mr X, do you have any respect at all for human life?

Mr X: What? No! Why would you ever think that!

Interviewer: So...have you ever killed anyone?

Mr X: Yes, of course.

Audience : *gasp* What an evil man!

FUCK 1556

What a crap year that was man, with that catastrophic earthquake on January 23rd. 830000 people died on one day. Let me repeat that.

EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE DIED IN ONE DAY IN A CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE.

Several villages were entirely destroyed, The entire town of Huaxian was razed. Every single building and house collapsed to the ground, crushing everyone beneath them, People died as far as 300 miles away from the epicenter. If you managed to survive the earthquake itself, you probably got buried alive in a landslide soon after. Entire families living in artificial caves lost their lives in a handful of minutes. The rare survivors were killed by rolling boulders or falling trees. In several regions surrounding Shannxi, as much as 60% of the population was killed...and the remaining 40% had nothing left to live in, no resources to survive, and no roads to flee the disaster. It took a lot more than the rest of that cursed year to bring back a semblant of livability to the area.

2016? Oh yeah. Some lady lost an election, the usual number of old musicians died, and something about a gorilla. Whatever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shaanxi_earthquake