Les Jones

Blogging > Notes from All Over

The winner of the World Series of Poker is from Knoxville. Chris Moneymaker attended Farragut high school and the U of T, and now lives in Spring Hill. He started playing poker just three years ago. He's welcome at my game any time. House rules are dime minimum ante, bet or raise. Fifty cent maximum ante, bet or raise. NO PENNIES!

MacMerc shows how to use Photoshop to make Matrix code.

The director-general of the Al-Jazeera news network has been fired for allegedly taking bribes from Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency.

Al-Jazeera and Mr Ali have been accused by western media of collaborating with the former regime in Baghdad, which the ex-director general visited before the US-led war, interviewing the president for an hour.

Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the American-backed Iraqi National Congress, has accused several Al-Jazeera journalists of working for Iraqi agencies based on documents allegedly found in state archives in Baghdad.

Al-Jazeera enjoyed a special status in pre-war Iraq, being allowed to work independently of the information ministry which strictly controlled foreign media.

I have a bunch of links on the distortions and lies that came out of Iraq before and during the war that argue persuasively that you can't trust information coming out of a dictatorship. I hope to post them soon, with some commentary and context.

USA Today reports that Bill Clinton's legacy is making a comeback. A new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll finds Bill Clinton ranked as the third best U.S. president behind Lincoln and Kennedy. These polls are ridiculously short-sighted, of course. Many people can't remember more than four or five presidents. Still, the Clinton years are looking like the good old days to a lot of people. Once again, The Onion was right.

More evidence that polygraphs are unscientific:

Late last year the NAS [National Academy of Sciences] published its findings. It determined that the polygraph was not a worthless tool -- indeed, that it was much worse than worthless. The report said that "available evidence indicates that polygraph testing as currently used has extremely serious limitations . . . if the intent is both to identify security risks and protect valued employees." The NAS panel, made up of internationally respected psychologists and statisticians, further determined that the test was so nonspecific that even if the polygraphers managed to finally uncover their first spy, at least 100 innocent laboratory employees would have their clearances yanked because of the "false positives" inherent in the test. The NAS concluded: "Polygraph testing yields an unacceptable choice . . . between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many major security threats left undetected. Its accuracy . . . is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies." It doesn't get much clearer than that.

A good reference is the Skepdic.com Polygraph entry.