Phil, your comment about the third-order polynomial reminds me of something I learned as an undergrad – that, if you want to make a straight-line graph, just use logarithmic scales for both axes. A log-log plot is almost always a straight line, and almost never proves anything (e.g. take a log-log plot of, say, the GDP of Sweden versus world pole-vaulting records – it will be, near as makes no difference, a straight line).

I mean people who adhere to a rigid ideology (left, right or whatever) and see the bogeymen of the other side (ie everyone else) in every shadow, but you backed off on the oppression rhetoric, so never mind.

There is no modern ideology that has has a majority lock on the truth or intelligence. This is a big problem because too many continuously quaff their selected ideological poison.

Saying “liberal = smart” is just about as meaningful to me as someone saying “Evangelical = more moral”. It’s also a fallacious way of shutting down debate. The problem with conservatism in this country right now is its infection by religion. Barry Goldwater, a classical conservative (which was much was closer to libertarianism), warned against this very thing decades ago. My hate for the GOP probably transcends that of most “liberals” because they have completely polluted the debate about the balance between the public and the private sectors. Conservatism has forever been shackled to religious idiocy by these pious a**clowns.

But overall I’ve seen too many liberals and conservatives (and all the other ideologues) who espouse the same “solutions” over and over despite there being a lot (in some cases *centuries*) of evidence that it DOES NOT WORK. The fact that a large number of my fellow skeptics cannot apply their skepticism to their [golem voice]precious[/golem voice] political ideologies concerns me a great deal.

And… why would you use a polynomial fit to data that’s periodic (insofar as it’s sequential at all — it’s more catagoric than anything)?

Wow. So much bad math out there.

@CanadianLeigh: if Bolt is not from this planet, how do we determine his star sign? Oh noes!!one!

Oh hum.

Incredible games.

Surely you meant to write “The American collegiate sports system has made great use of raw West Indian talent to boost the strength of its track and field programs”.

Larry

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html

The US system of pumping billions into college sports ensures that the less popular Olympic sports get a nice chunk of change to keep churning the next generation of stars out (at least in sports like track & field and swimming). No other country has the same resources to compete with that except when centralized systems like the USSR, East Germany, and now China decide that it’s in the nation’s interest to pump millions of dollars into buying sporting success.

With more funding in the next 4 years, the British team will likely peak in 2012 in a moment of undoubted patriotic pride (not really that dissimilar to what the Chinese government is looking for this year) and then they will suffer the same slow decline as Spain and Australia had once the funding disappears and the Olympic stars pass their peak.

The point is that the best can compete whether they are multimillionaires or NOT.

Perhaps “oppression” is too harsh a word, but certainly the upper class folks who created the modern Olympics in 1896 stacked the deck against working class folks. That system fell apart post WWII when the communist nations fielded “amateur” teams of full time athletes that were professional in all but name.

p.s. If by “you people” you mean “well educated and therefore liberal people” then I gladly accept the label.
;^)

Cheers!