A fine mess

Mehdi Hasan talks with Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency.



"Which...you have to really ask the President what is it that he actually IS doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very confusing...I'm sitting here today, Mehdi, and I don't, I can't tell you exactly what that is. And I've been at this for a long time."

Background:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/04/confirmed-u-s-armed-al-qaeda-topple-gaddaffi.html

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/newly-declassified-u-s-government-documents-the-west-supported-the-creation-of-isis.html

And then the refugees come here:
http://para-rigger.posthaven.com/while-you-sleep-america

Updates:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/08/unofficial-war-isis-nothing-to-show-for
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentary/565703-bedlam-in-washington


August 6, 1945 ... The Decision to Drop the Bomb

This was filmed twenty years ago in 1995.  It since has come to light that Russia's invasion of Manchuria on the day of Nagasaki was an even greater factor in the surrender of Japan than the bombs themselves, and that the Japanese had already exploded a small uranium bomb in Manchuria.

Googlemandering

How Google could select the next president

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/googles-search-algorithm-steal-presidency/

Imagine an election—a close one. You’re undecided. So you type the name of one of the candidates into your search engine of choice. (Actually, let’s not be coy here. In most of the world, one search engine dominates; in Europe and North America, it’s Google.) And Google coughs up, in fractions of a second, articles and facts about that candidate. Great! Now you are an informed voter, right? But a study published this week says that the order of those results, the ranking of positive or negative stories on the screen, can have an enormous influence on the way you vote. And if the election is close enough, the effect could be profound enough to change the outcome.
…

One group saw positive articles about one candidate first; the other saw positive articles about the other candidate. (A control group saw a random assortment.) The result: Whichever side people saw the positive results for, they were more likely to vote for—by more than 48 percent. The team calls that number the “vote manipulation power,” or VMP. The effect held—strengthened, even—when the researchers swapped in a single negative story into the number-four and number-three spots. Apparently it made the results seem even more neutral and therefore more trustworthy.

...

In other words: Google’s ranking algorithm for search results could accidentally steal the presidency.





Math education from a female perspective

Why did I give up on math? Ask my mom
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/04/why-did-i-give-up-on-math-ask-my-mom/

But it’s unfair to pin all the blame on my mother. There were other factors, such as indifferent or incompetent teachers and my growing sense that girls who like math are suspect to boys — and at 12, what boys thought was suddenly very important.


Girls Get Higher Math Scores When Taught By Female Teachers
http://www.ischoolguide.com/articles/20763/20150804/higher-math-scores-female-teachers-researchers.htm

This new study also found that when female students switched from a male to a female teacher, their math test scores increased by 8.5 percent of the standard deviation than the boys.
Meer said he felt that the increased performance in mathematics is due to the girls feeling more comfortable when taught by a female instructor.