So I was watching the news this week, and I have stumbled across what is, at least to my non-lawyer mind, a legal ethics puzzle.The Senate has been holding confirmation hearings on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. And in response to many questions, she has declined to answer on the grounds that the subject of the question -- climate change, … [Read more...] about What’s the difference between a confirmation hearing and dicta?
First 2020 Debate Review: Alternative Scenarios
I was thinking of reviewing tonight's debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but Michael Siegel has saved me the trouble by posting an anticipatory draft of his debate reaction piece ahead of time:Overall, neither candidate scored big nor did either candidate damage himself irreparably. Biden was competent in his answers and Trump was … well, whatever his supporters … [Read more...] about First 2020 Debate Review: Alternative Scenarios
Trump campaign déjà vu
I haven't been writing much about Trump lately, in part for reasons I detailed in an earlier post, but I figure now that we're in the final runup to the election, I should say something about why I believe it would be a bad idea to give him another four years in office. I started by reviewing my earlier posts about him, and I was surprised to discover that pretty much … [Read more...] about Trump campaign déjà vu
The difference between data and a model
I saw that Donald Trump retweeted this and -- after getting over the fact that the President of the United States was retweeting pandemic analysis from an anonymous dude calling himself "bad cat" -- I wanted to respond to some of the things in the thread:In general, he's talking about charts of confirmed U.S. Covid-19 case counts per day, like this one that I posted on … [Read more...] about The difference between data and a model
Building the Model is the Easy Part
Apparently when the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign made their plans to return to live classes this fall, they based some of their planning on epidemiological models constructed especially for the purpose. This included a test, trace, and isolation plan which the models indicated would be effective at preventing community spread of Covid-19 on campus.UIUC had … [Read more...] about Building the Model is the Easy Part