... once referred to gym class as "studies in state-sponsored terrorism," which is the most accurate description I've ever heard. Unless the bullying atmosphere of the typical gym class changes, it's not going to do much good for students of either sex except the most athletically talented.

Whoever wins the nomination will have to play dirty, and I'll cheer them on. Jeremiah Wright? Check out what Glenn Greenwald's been writing about some of the wacko preachers whose support McCain says he's proud to have. Inexperience? Point out exactly what kind of corrupt, old-politics record McCain's "experience" consists of -- and particularly, show what a "flip-flopper" he is when comparing what he said in the 2000 campaign to what he's saying now. Toughness? I'm sure some of McCain's fellow former POW's will be happy to do a Swift Boat number.

McCain may be a pretty decent guy for a Republican, but he's still a Republican, and he has tied himself irrevocably to Bush's policies. In so doing, he's sacrificed any claim to integrity or courage he ever had. Either Obama or Clinton will have to have the guts to go after him on this, or they'll lose. People love to claim they don't like dirty politics, but their votes generally go to the candidate with the best attacks.

You're right about some things, wrong about others. You're right that everyone signs an eight-year contract upon first enlistment, and that they can be called back at any time during that period. But that's not all stop-loss encompasses; under stop-loss, the service can keep personnel from ETS'ing even after the eight-year period is up.

And you're right that back-to-back combat tours seriously degrade effectiveness. But it doesn't keep the Pentagon from doing exactly that to its people.

I have two very good friends who were sent on back-to-back tours, one who doubled up in Afghanistan, another in Iraq. The first one went back for her second tour with pieces of shrapnel already embedded in her kidney. In the second one's case, he was also stop-lossed even though he'd already put twelve years in. He was one of the most dedicated soldiers I've ever known, someone who loved the Army with all his heart and soul and had never wanted to be anything but a career soldier. Now he's so disgusted with the way he and everybody he serves with have been treated that he just wants to get the hell out.

And they're finally letting him out ... after using him up, leaving him with a host of combat-related medical conditions, and threatening him that if he doesn't keep jumping through hoops right up until his ETS date, he won't be eligible for any VA medical care or service-connected disability. Fortunately for him, he's smart enough that he knew what to do -- he found a friendly Congressman who would take him on as a pet project, and apparently enough threatening phone calls were made that now he's in the clear and getting the benefits he deserves.

So that's at least two good, dedicated soldiers who loved their country and their service who have been used by the Pentagon in ways that you claim don't happen. What you describe is the way things are supposed to work. What I'm describing (and what the film describes, to tie this back to the subject at hand) is the way things actually are.

Allegedly the reason for the filing was a sudden increase in credit card processing fees; obviously this is a problem, but it's not related to their core business. They're not (for now) grounding any planes and will continue to fly their regular schedule.

That's the PR, anyway. Of course it's impossible to know how bad things really are. That being said, I'll take the risk and continue to book flights on Frontier anyway; their customer service is so much better than any other airline I've ever flown with that it's worth it.

Tina, the actual article is at:

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/w260687441pp64w5/

They go into great detail about their analysis of the data and show that their findings are, in fact, highly significant. You can read the article and the supplementary material and see exactly what they did and how they did it; you probably shouldn't throw around phrases like "statistically insignificant" until you've done so. Unless of course you don't have the knowledge to understand their procedure -- in which case, frankly, you shouldn't use such phrases at all.

No. He's notable for presenting himself as unorthodox and moderate, while in fact following the Party line almost to the letter. Please don't let yourself be fooled by the "straight talk" propaganda.

Did you read the article? Not the Broadsheet report, not the BCC report, not the abstract, but the article?

If so, do you have a specific problem with the statistical procedure they used? Can you explain precisely what they did wrong, instead of throwing around generalities?

...

Assuming the sample was reasonably evenly divided into two groups, the sample size is more than sufficient to detect a significant difference in proportions on the order of 0.55 vs. 0.45. If you don't believe me, fire up your copy of R or SAS and run the test yourself. Here's the R code for a simple simulation test:

n = 740

s1 = rbinom(n/2, 1, 0.45)

s2 = rbinom(n/2, 1, 0.55)

t.test(s1, s2)

The p-values on this are usually on the order of 10^-5, and are almost never greater than the traditional p > 0.05 cutoff.

...

You either understand what I wrote above, or you don't. If you do, then it's easy to verify that I'm right. If you don't, then you have no businesses critiquing the researchers' use of statistics.

Cheryl S. Rosenfeld and Michael Roberts. "Maternal Diet and Other Factors Affecting Offspring Sex Ratio: A Review". Biology of Reproduction, 71(4):1063-1070. October 2004.

http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1095%2Fbiolreprod.104.030890

Discusses exactly the kind of experiments in rats (and other animals) you were calling for, and results which nicely correspond with those of the study.

Mice, not rats.