26 reasons to keep church and state seperate.

Oh and, by the way, you’ll never be able to truly gauge any of the biases you might be operating under since it’s not possible to accurately observe a system you’re part of. Now, get out there and delude yourself!

1 Bandwagon effect - the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias. Carl Jung pioneered the idea of the collective unconscious which is considered by Jungian psychologists to be responsible for this cognitive bias.

2 Bias blind spot - the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.

3 Choice-supportive bias - the tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.

4 Confirmation bias - the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

5 Congruence bias - the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing.

6 Contrast effect - the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.

7 Déformation professionnelle - the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.

8 Disconfirmation bias - the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and uncritically accept information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.

9 Endowment effect - the tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.

10 Focusing effect - prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.

11 Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.

12 Illusion of control - the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.

13 Impact bias - the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

14 Information bias - the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

15 Loss aversion - the tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains (see also sunk cost effects)

16 Neglect of probability - the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

17 Mere exposure effect - the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.

18 Omission bias - The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

19 Outcome bias - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

20 Planning fallacy - the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

21 Post-purchase rationalization - the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.

22 Pseudocertainty effect - the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

23 Selective perception - the tendency for expectations to affect perception.

24 Status quo bias - the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same.

25 Von Restorff effect - the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.

26 Zero-risk bias - preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Fuck the "sally army"

The greedy charity.

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 292

...even Wilkes drew a line on what he would do for the congressman. For one thing, Wilkes was totally disgusted by the hot tub Cunningham put on the boat's deck during the autumn and winter. What repelled Wilkes -- and others invited to the parties -- was both the water Cunningham put in the hot tub and the congressman's penchant for using it while naked, even if everybody else at the party was clothed. Cunningham used water siphoned directly from the polluted Potomac River and never changed it out during the season. "Wilkes thought it was unbelievably dirty and joked if you got in there it would leave a dark water line on your chest," said one person familiar with the parties. "The water was so gross that very few people were willing to get into the hot tub other than Duke and his paramour."

ridicule republicans now, loudly and often

When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

Iraq Quagmire Chess Set

Venezuelan artist Hermann Mejía made this "Iraqi Quagmire Chess Set" for MAD Magazine.

“A new hummingbird species was discovered in a cloud forest in Colombia, though still nothing on bin Laden.”

Happy Memorial Day, aWol.

Deaf and Dumb

Bush: "If [the Iraqi government] were to say, leave, we would leave."

Iraqi government: Leave.

Deaf and Dumb

Bird Shits On Chimpy During Rose Garden Press Conference

No, that does not mean good luck. Crappy effort as usual.

Ted Rall is under US Goverment surveillence - for some reason

Ted Rall. The guy who writes comics in the newspaper. Here is the tag line from his column. What a waste.

The domestic surveillance campaign--against comedy troupes like Billionaires for Bush and bicycling evangelists Critical Mass and a certain editorial cartoonist--should prompt revulsion among anyone who cherishes free speech. And it should worry every American. While the government wastes its time and resources spying on demonstrators and journalists, after all, it's ignoring our real enemies--those who are planning the next big attack.

The 'implication'? Girl, get a grip. You got Punked & Owned.

Wolfowitz loses his job…and his girlfriend.

Outgoing World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and his love interest, Shaha Riza, have split up. Riza was reportedly “upset by all the publicity and the implication that she was getting ahead with the help of a powerful man.”

The French: Who knew?

They have better health care (than the US),
They are thinner (than the US),
They have sex in the day time,
and!
They have less poverty (than the US)

Single (Newly!) White Female looking for SWM to spend inheritance...

How about the Dems simply stand on principle and put forward a bill with meaningful metrics and let the GOPers vote it down?

Yea, how about it? How about letting REPUBLICAN shit for brains bush veto another tremendously popular Democratic bill bringing American children home from a REPUBLICAN MISERABLE FAILURE OF A WAR. Yea, that's a bad strategy. Now's the time to fuck G aWol Bush.

There's a third choice that doesn't seem to occur to our legislators. The Dems big concern in this political gamesmanship that passes for governance is to avoid the appearance that the Republicans were the "bi-partisan" brokers of a meaningless deal. Well here's a thought, how about the Dems simply stand on principle and put forward a bill with meaningful metrics and let the GOPers vote it down?

How would you like your foster kids to be raped by this republican, 8 times?

Ted Klaudt, 49, a Republican rancher from Walker, faces a long list of charges: eight counts of rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of witness tampering, sexual contact with a person under 16, and stalking.

Court documents mention five possible victims. Three were foster children between the ages of 15 and 19 who lived with Klaudt's family. One is a cousin of one of those girls, and the fifth is a friend of Klaudt's daughter.

In the most disturbing accusation, the girls say Klaudt had them convinced they could earn up to $20,000 by donating their eggs to a fertility clinic. And even though he has no medical training, the girls say Klaudt did all the supposed "exams" and "procedures" himself.