Twelve drowned in two weeks on Panhandle beaches! Quite a few of them because, apparently, they ignored big red flags/shouted instructions to stay away from rip tides.

Rescue crews probably don’t want any more drownings, so lifeguards will, I guess, double down on the shouting, leading beachgoers, in irritated response, to pack heat. (Useful tips here.)

The Onion weighs in.

There's little to say for its forthcoming plume

In fact I'll admit to a feeling of gloom
When I think of its flowers and cloying perfume

The recent remarks of Wisconsin State Representative Chuck Wichgers, during a debate in the state house, have gone viral.

Wichgers’ statement in opposition to birth control points to the failure of Wisconsin’s schools to educate its citizens in even rudimentary literacy, oral expression, and thinking skills.

“Nature has an intention and when you have that act—when pregnancy naturally occurs, that’s nature doing what nature does. The woman then has to counter nature by taking something that is highly systemic and highly invasive, according to the documents and the books that people that are pro the pill stated in their books. That’s a science. We would begin to see ourselves as the ultimate masters of nature, so when nature does something it’s supposed to do and then we say, ‘Let’s not do that’—we’re talking not about getting a pimple if you eat Doritos and eat chocolate; that would be contrary to a health movement or nature.”

It is hard to think of a more poignant demonstration of the importance of quality, universal education than this public statement by a high-ranking official of the state of Wisconsin. Surely with all of America’s wealth and resources we can do better.

If the California bar court finds [John] Eastman culpable of the alleged violations, it can then recommend to the California Supreme Court that Eastman’s law license be suspended or revoked. The outcome of this proceeding is surely of less importance to Eastman than his likely forthcoming indictments in Atlanta and Washington as a Trump co-conspirator.

Women’s rights. Democrats seem rather fired up about them. That’s because the Supreme Court took important women’s rights away.

We’ve already seen this fervency play out in various states. We’ll see much, much more.

********************

According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 62 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, [which represents] the high-water mark for legal abortion in Pew’s polling, which dates back to 2007.

… Gallup — which has some of the longest trendlines when it comes to issues like abortion — asked Americans to choose between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” after asking about views on the legality of abortion. They found these numbers to be higher than any other annual recording dating back to 1996: 52 percent picked “pro-choice” this May and 55 percent picked “pro-choice” last May…

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month found that nearly three-in-four Americans, 72 percent, think abortion pills should be legal in all or most cases. 

****************

Of course, none of this bothers the Catho-Falangists (‘Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.’) or the Pencerian Evangelicals, since these sects possess divine moral truth and will happily shove no abortion/no porn/no contraception/forced reproduction onto the American population whether we like it or not. But it turns out that Americans are pretty ornery about people trying to destroy their basic liberties; and since current attacks blatantly go after American women‘s liberties, we can now watch in real time as American women rear up to become a most fearsome voting bloc.

*****************

Another poll.

Via her reader, Seelye, UD learns of the latest iteration of way-bogus psychology scholarship.

She’s named Francesca Giro and she has a really cool website.

We’re all looking for easy steps to a better brighter you, and Happiness + Efficiency experts oblige us with studies showing that, like, thinking of eating meat makes you more boorish and less social. (I read this particular result, from world-famous Diederik Stapel, to Mr UD, who laughed merrily.) H+E experts (Dan Ariely – a co-author of Francesca Giro’s! – Marc Hauser – who shares with Giro the Harvard affiliation – Jens Förster, etc.) are always flooring us with amazing whodathunkits, and we fall for this shit every single time cuz it comes out of Harvard or cuz we just want to believe it or because we’re thrilled by the weird.

But Uri Simonsohn (a name known to readers of this blog) doesn’t fall for it. At all. He finds discipline-destroying lies enraging, and sets about, with a couple of colleagues, to keep the field reasonably clean through exposure of research fraud. The miscreants make stuff up and manipulate numbers in order to keep generating attention-grabbing amazements and giving amazing TED talks re: the amazements and Uri’s right behind them, running the numbers.

How can we protect ourselves from marauding high-profile psych frauds?

Step One: If something sounds bogus, it’s probably bogus.

…ever rings in that Wagnerian manner.’

Vlad hears Prigozhin at the door.

… to see the Pride March. She’s all over Europe, for a month, for business and pleasure.

Background here.

If Huggins or the institutions of higher learning that employed and enabled him gave a rat’s rectum about “student-athletics,” he wouldn’t have spent 16 years coaching Cincinnati as it and he became nationally known for winning by recruiting “high social risk” players and academic non-achievers who had no legitimate reason to be enrolled in any college. Only 28 percent of his Cincinnati players, including walk-ons, reportedly graduated.

And he wouldn’t have spent another 16 years coaching his alma mater, WVU, paid up to $5 million per year to do so, apparently because WVU fully approved of his winning ways and means honed at Cincinnati.

So the national con of college sports — student-athletics — proceeds, no education, and in many cases fundamental illiteracy, in exchange for full scholarships, often on taxpayer funding.

[Book banning group Moms for Liberty] released a newsletter called The Parent Brigade on Wednesday, which included a quote from Hitler on the front page …

Details here.

A debris field has been found.

Some experts have speculated that it could have suffered a catastrophic implosion as a result of a hull failure. The minivan-sized submersible was owned and operated by the private company OceanGate Expeditions.

The firm’s co-founder, Guillermo Söhnlein, told the BBC that he believes there may have been an “instantaneous implosion” of the craft.

And yet when you look for anyone calling Jack Jones a thug, what comes up is one of Boston’s preeminent African-American newspapers, which in one opinion piece calls him a thug nine times.

It’s the rare academic who sees his research implemented on a grand scale right in front of his eyes; and on Jan. 6 John Eastman’s mind must have been racing – as a mob enabled by his, er, bullshit attacked the Capitol – at the thought of the massive raise his university would be giving him to reward his remarkable research productivity. He imagined the school’s admiring pr write-up: “The John Eastman Theory of Vice-Presidential Powers is now routinely taught in jurisprudence classes across the nation, and indeed across the world.” Jacob could call it bullshit all he liked, but the shattered windows and bloodied police just down the street signaled a hugely important turn in human history, and he, John Eastman, had single-handedly made it happen. Forget his dinky academic gig – we’re looking at Attorney General… Supreme Court Justice…