The unimportant news thread

[North Star]

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1852142/gan-bei-chinese-woman-chugs-180-euro-bottle-cognac-boarding-gate

[Karl Henning]

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1852142/gan-bei-chinese-woman-chugs-180-euro-bottle-cognac-boarding-gate

That's one way to show the TSA the bottle is not weaponized!

[North Star]

That's one way to show the TSA the bottle is not weaponized!

You haven't tried the famous Finnish cocktail, then. 

[Karl Henning]

Never at an airport! 

[North Star]

Never at an airport! 

And not in apartments or restaurants either, I hope.  0:)

[Karl Henning]

Not to my recollection . . . .

[Ken B]

Not to my recollection . . . .

Proves nothing; no-one ever remembers a Finnish cocktail.

[Karl Henning]

I sought accuracy of expression, rather than to prove aught 

[North Star]

Proves nothing; no-one ever remembers a Finnish cocktail.

I'm sure that if you consumed the cocktail in question, you wouldn't remember it, or anything else, for that matter.

[Ken B]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/science/many-social-science-findings-not-as-strong-as-claimed-study-says.html?_r=1

Some call this the "replication crisis". It's really a bogus results crisis. Many of these are studies based on surveys. Survey science is bogus through and through. 

[Jo498]

I can't give a source but I am pretty sure that in the last few years there was a meta-study that found out that a lot of medical/health/pharmaceutical studies do not fare much better. (Which I find quite disturbing while I cannot be bothered to care too much about the psycho/sociological survey stuff either way.)
Here also some problems are methodological but it is also publication bias: unwelcome or undecisive result are not published at all.

[Ken B]

Support for police reform, yet no action.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/california-police-reform/402511/

[Todd]

Obama takes decisive, bold, unilateral action to finally match Alaska's forty year old action. 

(My avatar is outraged.)

[Ken B]

Eye contact.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/30/us/eye-contact-traffic-stop-ohio-police-officer/index.html

[Karl Henning]

No comment. No, none.

Texas teen fatally shoots himself while taking selfie

[Ken B]

No comment. No, none.

Texas teen fatally shoots himself while taking selfie

Darwin also declined to comment.

[Karl Henning]

Michael Derrick Hudson says that his poem was rejected 40 times under his given name but accepted when he used the pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou.

[Karl Henning]

Michael Derrick Hudson says that his poem was rejected 40 times under his given name but accepted when he used the pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou.

"I paid more initial attention to his poem because of my perception and misperception of the poet's identity. Bluntly stated, I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese-American," Mr. Alexie [guest editor for 2015's Best American Poetry] writes. "In paying more initial attention to Yi-Fen Chou's poem, I was also practicing a form of nepotism."

[Ken B]

"I paid more initial attention to his poem because of my perception and misperception of the poet's identity. Bluntly stated, I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese-American," Mr. Alexie [guest editor for 2015's Best American Poetry] writes. "In paying more initial attention to Yi-Fen Chou's poem, I was also practicing a form of nepotism."

I saw that. Nepotism is not the word I'd choose.

TD http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/female-cartoonist-could-have-12-year-prison-term-extended-for-shaking-her-lawyers-hand-10492837.html

[Karl Henning]

I saw that. Nepotism is not the word I'd choose.

The wrong word, which is distressing to see an editor use, whose judgment has already been called into question.  Chauvinism is closer, but still not quite right, perhaps?