That _is_ rich, sadly, no!

I followed the link and was pleased to see that every single comment on this post was…how shall I put this…correcting her and suggesting that if she teaches perhaps she shouldn’t quit her day job.

I tend to leave the CFD blogger correction to folks like you. But tryingtogrok looks like a potentially rich source for idiocy. Take, for example, this post:

When my husband goes into the field, he leaves behind his wedding ring and I wear it on a chain around my neck.
I guess that makes me a Hobbit for Halloween this year…

And I guess that makes her husband Sauron…it kind of figures, I guess.

Here’s another tryingtogrok gem. This quote used to appear prominently on the top of her page:

If someone invades your house, you call the cops. Who do you call if someone invades your country? You dial Washington. — Krauthammer

Guess that doesn’t apply to Iraqis. Perhaps tryingtogrok’s Sarah removed it when she remembered that irony died on 9/11.

Teehee

Heh…heh, heh… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (Via Sadly, No.)…

How stupid are these people?

Looks like Atrios and tryingbutfailingtogrok are getting the lion’s share of the comments on this. Mad props to you for giving us this entertaining glimpse of vacuous idiocy, Sadly.

Thanks loser for sending some comments love our way.

Hahah nice catch. Good job!

[Personal information removed –Sadly, No!]

Uh … she may be Cluesless Fucktard Dumb, but it was entirely inappropriate to post her home address and telephone number.

Well, now, I don’t think we should be calling her parents/in-laws, but I did send an e-mail to her explaining the importance of weapons testing and inferential statistics in preventing her husband from being killed while deployed.

(I’m glad I went the e-mail route. She just disabled comments on her statistics post.)

I got a great laugh out of this and posted about it as well — but I would definitely take her phone number and address out of the comments.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had some high-profile blogger/site whose sole purpose was to go back to some of the more prominent rah-rah Bushie sites from the beginning of his administration/the war and cull some of the stupidest predictions and statements.

tryingtogrok posted in Oct. of last year how livid she was that a professor was telling soldiers it wasn’t going well in Iraq, and she used American Forces Network to support her argument that it was getting better all the time. Of course that was her springboard to rail against “liberal, anti-American professors.”

Bleah. These people have a big fat goose egg for predictions, and they still think they’re right.

Please remove her personal information, she is a first rate twit but she is also dealing with having a husband in Iraq and he is dealing with Bush’s mess. That won’t make his life any easier and (regardless of his political bent) we shouldn’t be adding any more stress to his daily life (at the very least imagine the ripple effect on his company).

If more people took the time to personally contact such people with reason and the facts, maybe they would stop making such terrible mistakes.

And, she’s a teacher who only just registered to vote?

I say leave her contact info. If Bush appointed a judge in return for a memo saying he can torture then we ought to at least have the ability to phone the inlaws or whomever of the idiots supporting him.

OK, I just read some more of dimwitted rants. She is a fucktard or CFD or worse and should be prosecuted to the fullest. Send her some steaming poo.

Sarah’s post was, frankly, pretty damn ignorant. She has clearly never taken a statistics course, nor a journalism course. She lists a link to the fascist (and in this case, I do not throw the term out lightly) Little Green Footballs, and uses the empty word “Idiotarian” (ie, anyone who disagrees with you is an “Idiot” and that is his ideology).

Having said that, most of the comments listed were below the belt.

There are certain standards on whom one bases and how one bashes. And those vary from target to target. It’s one thing to take the words of George Will and call him a total fucking idiot. George Will IS a total fucking idiot, but one who has reached a spot in his life where he does not give a shit what we think about him. He is not just a cheerleader — he is a cog in an immoral machine.

But Sarah? She is person FOR whom we are fighting. She is just another schmuck trying to make her way, just like you or me. She does this by cheerleading a system that, to her, has made her who she is. What she needs to hear is how this viewpoint is wrong, which it sine rogatione is.

Calling her a “fucktard” will not help. I do not blame her for shutting down comments — I have been savaged online myself, and it hurts to read folks writing just how fucking stupid you are when you know that you are not, and could show that asshole this in about five minutes in person. She does not want to hear that she is a “fucktard,” nor does she NEED to hear that she is a “fucktard.” She needs to hear that she is wrong, and how. Calling her a “fucktard” keeps her from hearing what she needs to hear.

I have no idea what sort of teacher Sarah is, and nor do you. Stop harping on that, either.

As for leaving her personal info and whatever precedent Stimpy McFuckstick, er, Gov. George Bush Jr. gave for some memo. Sarah is not a person in any person of power. She is on the receiving end — indeed, as her husband is now in a place which Gov. Bush has made a living hell and thus his life is in danger every day, she is, in some way, a victim of the boy king. We need — NEED — the families of the military to line up with us, because they have some voice, and can use it.

Besides, she reads Heinlein. She can’t be all bad.

Sarah’s post is of course very wrong, but why bully her? Politely point out that she’s wrong. Does Sarah now think more highly of liberals? Leaving her personal contact info in the comments section is plain meanness, and fodder for conservatives: “Look how rabid those deranged liberals are….” Let’s win with facts, etc.

What the hell? Why did someone post her info.? And why did someone email her?

Whoever did that might as well go to LGF or Free Republic–you’d fit in much better over there, asshole.

We’ve deleted her personal information. Whatever we think of her statistical analysis, there is no justification whatsoever for posting her (and her parents’) name and address here. We only wish we’d been able to delete the post sooner. (Her email address, however, is posted on her web site.)

What the hell is the deal with posting her personal info? Are you proud of yourself? That is so wrong.

If TTG really wants to be taken seriously, she should stop using the term “idiotarian” in a non-ironic manner. It’s a pointless bit of insider jargon that says far more about the speaker than the subject.

OTOH, it does serve as a useful way to recognize online content that is guaranteed to be both unoriginal and unreadable. It’s the online equivalent of a “Jesus fish eating Darwin fish” sticker.

I saw all of this via cruel.com, and really don’t get why everyone piled on. It didn’t seem to me that she was doing a stat analysis so much as making a (not very carefully worded) point about reporting bias highlighting certain aspects of a poll already suffering from several questions that presented insufficient response choices to options that begged other questions.

I was not under the impression that she literally thought that only 615 people in the entire United States responded in a certain way to question quoted above. In fact, it was obvious to me that she wasn’t. To think that’s what she meant, you’d have to assume an almost non-functional level of stupidity. I guess the assumption of simple-mindedness was in place because of the general trend for lefties to view righties as intellectually inferior, for the simple thought crime of not being lefties.

Coming from cruel.com, I’m used to good quality links of people making asses of themselves. I’m still waiting for the punchline on this one, and I can’t tell if the intended stupidity was supposed to be the original blog entry on tryingtogrok or all of this odd, over-the-top follow up.

I guess the assumption of simple-mindedness was in place because of the general trend for lefties to view righties as intellectually inferior, for the simple thought crime of not being lefties.

Read any introductory textbook on statistics, polling methods and sampling (say the Wonacott brothers’ book.) Re-read TTG’s post. Get back to us once you’ve then pondered this gem:

The U.S. population is estimated at close to 300 million right now, and we’re supposed to get worked up over what 1,230 people who are registered voters have to say?

The sample size of the poll, btw, wasn’t even 1,230.

Right. I thought she went on to question the randomness of the sample and whether or not mapping that sample onto general census data and extrapolating results was a truthful use of the numbers. The quote you pulled is a colloquial presentation of that question. Phrased another way, it would be “If your sampling sucks, and you’re mapping your data into a non-relvant space, why should we care what your sample of x people has to say?”

And thanks for the condescension. I was just showing up a bit puzzled and asking for an explanation.

It’s (obviously) true that the results of a poll with a non-random sample (however it’s conducted) are crap. Her follow up post (as well as an earlier April one) show in our opinion a serious misunderstanding of polling. The sample was random — the results were weighted (as is standard practice.) This too can introduce bias, but it’s not a “shock” or proof that results are invalid. The closeness of a poll doesn’t mean (as she suggests) that its results “don’t matter.”

Raising standard methodological issues with a poll whose results you don’t care for (contrast her April post about a different poll) is an easy (and lazy) way of offering a critique that doesn’t speak much to the specific content of the poll. (Much as calling someone names or sending them to Wonacott-squared is an easy and lazy way to answer comments.)

Understood. Thanks.

This is the dumbest shit I have ever read in my life. Sadly, this moron has shut down the comments so I can’t tell her how stupid she is. And this cretin purports to teach someone??? Unbelievable.

So it’s idiots like these who believe we shouldn’t care what the rest of the world thinks.

What’s really funny is that these same idiots will formulate their opinions about foreigners based on their impressions from the handful of foreigners they’ve actully met, along with a few prevalent stereotypes. Apparently, extrapolating from a few individuals to an entire population is fine as long as one doesn’t use any type of statistical analysis.

Read her comment on Muslims…

“It’s no lie that everywhere in the world that there’s conflict, Muslims are somehow involved.”

Someone called LGF a fascist site. I believe this woman is a fellow-traveller who would be happy to wear a red white and black armband if the opportunity arose.

Be sure to read the post by “a conservative student of history” (ahem). I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s the 13th one down.

He takes off his wedding ring because it’s easier to get laid that way.

Out of curiosity, how many of you who are posting messages on here and sharing your infinite wisdom, are actually in Iraq? How many of you know firsthand what it’s like to meet people who are experiencing freedom for the first time? Freedom to be a woman and not get beaten or killed for it. Freedom to see the internet for the first time. Freedom to buy a satellite dish and not spend 4 months in prison getting tortured. Freedom to purchase a car newer than 1991 as an ordinary citizen now. The list goes on and on. Anyone out there?

Freedom to be a woman and not get beaten or killed for it.

Iraq had the highest female literacy rate in the world and the women walked around in mini-skirts if they felt like it pre-invasion.

Now they have religious militias that might beat them down if they aren’t covered up properly.

If your knowledge on Iraq is limited to some cartoon world made of mean Arabs you should get out of discussions about killing people. It’s sort of important and something you shouldn’t just feel your way through.

Red 6–

In addition to absynthe’s comment, I would add the point that the people of Iraq haven’t been liberated in any meaningful sense of the word, nor was that ever the intent of the Bush administration.

An Iraqi government that represented the Iraqi people would probably align itself with “Old Europe” and the Arabic community, both politically and economically. They’d also be likely to nationalize the oil industry. Can anyone believe that Bush would allow that?

BTW, I thought the funniest “Trying to Grok” post was the one about her husband leaving his wedding ring behind when he goes into the field. It’s so he doesn’t risk leaving it in some lounge lizard’s hotel room, but she won’t catch on to that for another few years.

A random bunch of nothing!

Because a single long post about something would be too hard. First, this: Every day people write to us and say: “Sadly, your blog is totally popular and has all the hot chicks from the internets chasing you. Rumors of…

WTF I had to read it twice

GREAT post. Adding this to my bookmark collection. Thanks.

Last weekend world indoor record-holder in the triple jump Teddy Tamgho improved his own world-leading mark with a 17.59m jump in Eaubonne. French team-mate Leslie Djhone also jumped to the top of the world rankings in the 400m, clocking 46.24 in Luxembourg.