Hand it to the boys at Diary of Daedalus. They busted him yet again. They noticed Charles’s boast that his “Patterico is an idiot” post had supposedly received 21,600 page views — which he dishonestly characterized as “21,600 people” laughing at me. Put aside for the moment Charles’s obviously false claim that every page view represents a separate person (as well as the deluded claim that every person who viewed his post agreed with him about me.) The DoD boys decided to research whether the stat counter was at least properly recording the correct number of page views. The answer was no.

First, they found a comment from Charles showing that he registers a separate “page view” for every post on the front page, every time you access his front page. So, you hit his main page once, he gives himself 10 page views (because he keeps 10 posts on the main page). If you click on the post itself, to read comments, that’s another view for the page. Back to the main page again? Another ten page views. You actually viewed three pages, but Charles credits himself with 21. (That’s 21 people laughing at you, Patterico!! Bwa-ha!!)

It gets weirder. To see why, you’ll have to go to the DoD entry to see the experiment they did, which appears to show jumps in the counter even beyond the artificial numbers obtained by giving 10 page views for every 1. Here is a video that shows it graphically, although I admit I was unable to replicate the results shown in the video:

This doesn’t surprise me much. Dishonesty now pervades everything this guy does. Why should his reporting of his traffic be any different?

UPDATE: 21, not 23. Duh. Thanks to Newtons.Bit.

UPDATE x2: Diary of Daedalus dude ChenZhen informs me that the jumping effect demonstrated in the video happens using IE but not Firefox. I tried it in Firefox and could not replicate their results. Tell me if you try it in IE.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Wait, why is that picture there?

Well, anyway, there is a study that purports to show that when men retain less information when it comes from woman dressed in a “sexy” fashion.  The study has all kinds of problems, not the least of which is low sample size.  But I think what is interesting is that they say that the problem is that when you are paying attention to the visual, you get less of the verbal.

Which begs a question for me.  What if you are not a very “verbal” thinker?  What if you are mainly a visual thinker?  What effect would it have?

Anyway, read the whole thing.  I think the data qualifies as interesting, but contrary to what anyone says, it’s bad science to call it proof of anything.

H/t: Hot Air.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: The reporter takes it back.  So clearly they got to him, right?  Right?  (Note, for those who have trouble getting jokes or whom are just in the smear business, that was a joke.)

The original post follows in its original form.

——————-

I still don’t buy birtherism, but you can bet they are going to be hooping it up over this:

Now, bluntly, I don’t know who this radio host is.  But this is what the youtuber says on it:

Abercrombie Admits There Are No Obama Birth Records In Hawaii. Neil Abercombie, new Govenor of Hawaii, has admitted to his close friend Mike Evans, a reporter, that there are no records of Obama’s birth in Hawaii.

Clip is from the morning show on KQRS-FM from 1/20/2011.

I will note something else.  Yes, you have to be a natural born citizen.  And yes, I think as a matter of correct process Presidential candidates should have to prove it.  Like a lot of lawyers, I follow the maxim of “trust but verify.”  But then again, we haven’t required it of any president before, so it strikes me as sounding dangerously political to apply this rule for the first time in decades (if ever), now.  So I would like to see a rule that whoever is the next president has to prove his (or her) status as a natural born citizen.

But proof doesn’t have to be a birth certificate.  It can be any credible evidence that satisfies the burden of proof (which I would tend to assume is preponderance of the evidence).  The idea that you have to have a birth certificate strikes me as similar to the myth that you have to have the dead body to prove murder (and worse, the myth that this is what habeas corpus is all about).*  Obviously having that kind of evidence helps, but it is not the case that if there is a fire and your birth certificate is destroyed, that you are suddenly ineligible to be President.

And that is assuming the governor even said such a thing.  And of course it might be hard for Governor Abercrombie to even dispute this claim, given that Hawaii law doesn’t allow a person to reveal a person’s birth certificate without their consent.

Anyway, I suggest it is time to clear this up.  So let me make a suggestion.  If you would like I will take time away from my lovely city and make the ultimate sacrifice and weather the conditions in Obama’s (alleged) home state and investigate the matter.

I am willing to do this for you if you help pay for the trip. And room and board. And plenty of suntan lotion, for me and my wife.  I know, I know, it is a Christ-like sacrifice.  So okay, I am passing the plate around for your donations…

Wait, um, a nickel and pocket lint? That is all you are giving me?  Do you want to know the truth or not?

——————

* I say that about habeas corpus recognizing that much in our media positively misinforms people about the law.  For instance, a few years back in the movie The Player, there was a running joke about a movie called Habeas Corpus, involving this false premise that the law requires the state to produce the body before they can charge you with murder.  The actual meaning of the term is that it is a form of judicial review of confinement, broadly written.  That means if the state or federal government holds you prisoner, the court can use this process to review whether you are being lawfully held or not.  Its means literally “you have the body”—meaning the (living) body of the prisoner.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg.  Don’t even get me started with the drooling stupidity of Double Jeopardy.

—————

Exit question: I haven’t watched the new Hawaii 5-0 but on that show, is Grace Park, a Korean, supposed to be a native Hawaiian or something? Not that I really get hung up on ethnicity matching in acting roles (like personally I didn’t care when Sean Connery was cast as a Russian Sub Captain), but you get the creepy feeling that they assumed we would think she actually was Native Hawaiian.

Hat tip: Eric Johnson.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Consider this a follow up to my angry post last night.

Did you know that there was a cartoon based on the Beatles?  I actually remembered watching it as a kid, and not thinking much of it.  And now looking back, um, wow, this is pretty badly done.  Still it gives you the Beatles complaining about how high their taxes are, getting high getting hit in the head and hallucinating that they are in the days of Robin Hood.  And this results in them singing their classic song “Taxman:”

Of course if you want a more straightforward performance, there is this:

By the way, those lines in the song are not hyperbole, if Wikipedia is to be believed:

The Beatles’ large earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, liable to a 95% supertax introduced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government.

So when he says “[t]here’s one for you, nineteen for me,” well, do the math.  One twentieth is 5%, so saying you only get one out of twenty is another way of specifically describing the tax rate they were subject to.  And as if that isn’t obvious enough, there is the line I quoted in the title.

(The wiki article also explains who Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath are.  I admit to always being curious.)

Anyway, remember folks.  You’re working for no one but me (the government).

Mr. President, if you ever wondered why there is a Tea Party, well there it is.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]