Wonderland or Not

The Church of Scien­to­logy is on trial in France, accu­sed of “tar­ge­ting vul­ne­ra­ble peo­ple for com­mer­cial gain”. I’m not an expert on Scien­to­logy, know little of it except that Greta Van Sus­te­ren — FOX news semi talking-head for­merly of CNN — is one, as is her hus­band John Coale, a high ran­king Scien­tio­lo­gist and trial law­yer, was appoin­ted by my Gover­nor to the Board of Direc­tors of UMMS (Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land­Me­di­cal Sys­tem). I’ve read the appoint­ment is pos­si­ble pay­back of a cam­paign debt dona­tion. I have no way of kno­wing if this is true of course. I am inte­res­ted in how this plays out in France though.

I flip­ped over to the Scien­to­logy web­site site and took a test. I can get the results when I go to my appoint­ment at their place off of Dupont Circle in D.C..

Spea­king of Spa­ceships, I now know I am one, thanks to Quilly, who sent me on this trans­por­ta­tion quiz.

You may won­der why I am taking trans­por­ta­tion quiz­zes. I’ve come to the conc­lu­sion that beco­ming a sound­bite online pre­vents one from beco­ming a sound­bite in real life.

Pesky anno­yan­ces:

I don’t know if the NYT assig­ned this dude this piece, or if he viciously grab­bed at it with both of his little new wave con­ser­va­tive man hands, but Libe­ra­ted and Unhappy, where Ross Douthat calls for a need to stig­ma­tize sin­gle mothers, and other com­men­tary as likely to have come from my grand­fathers bar­ber as anywhere else, is a sur­pri­singly shitty piece even for an op-ed. It’s based on this piece of work…The Para­dox of Dec­li­ning Female Hap­pi­ness by Whar­ton School eco­no­mists Betsey Ste­ven­son and Jus­tin Wolfers.

A sub­jec­tive study, when pos­sibly objec­tive data, such as over the last 35 years female sui­cide rates have dec­li­ned, while male sui­cide rates have inc­rea­sed, is not inc­lu­ded, and there is no way to know that the vast­ness of the line the “hap­pi­ness scale” in on these days, as oppo­sed to 35 years ago, , makes it most likely…not much of a change after all. Douthat notes that the authors “avoid floa­ting an easy expla­na­tion for their data”. Obli­vious to the fact that they avoi­ded floa­ting an easy expla­na­tion because there isn’t one, he makes up one that works for him, and the NYT actually published it.

Soto­ma­yor:

Ah, someone who wants to never for­get there are real world con­se­quen­ces to her decisions…novel. My life bud G is pulling for her.

G:“Finally someone with Type 1 (immune media­ted) dia­be­tes on the Supreme Court”.

PEACE

Before someone gets a bug up their bot­tom, although he was being sar­cas­tic, G has had JD since he was 12.