Month: February 2016

A Brokered Convention

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by wj Yes, it is still way early, and the Republican convention a long time away. However, the question that is arising is whether it is still possible to stop Trump — and if so, for how much longer will this be true? Let us suppose, for the sake of discussion, that nobody actually “stops” … Read more

Trump vs. The Pope!

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by Ugh The top headline in the dead recycled tree version of the WSJ:  Pope, Trump Spar on Immigration.  Ahem. As Josh Marshall says, maybe it's time to call it a wrap as a country. More broadly, it's amazing to me how the Pope has become a kind of persona non-grata among political U.S. evangelicals … Read more

Gun safety

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by Doctor Science Unless you were blessedly offline yesterday, you probably saw Jeb! Bush’s tweet: Image of tweet in context from Betty Cracker of Balloon Juice which became an instant meme. As someone who has never held a gun, I have some questions for those of you with actual knowledge. Via commenters at Balloon Juice, … Read more

Money can’t buy love, but why doesn’t it buy competence?

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by Doctor Science The most startling revelation of the past week in the US Presidential race was in Buzzfeed, where McKay Coppins wrote: But to those who have known him longest, Rubio’s flustered performance Saturday night fit perfectly with an all-too-familiar strain of his personality, one that his handlers and image-makers have labored for years … Read more

Trump, New Hampshire, Tigerblood and Winning!

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by liberal japonicus

I can't be the only one who thought of this, but seeing the various manifestations of the internet stream by me screaming that Trump has won New Hampshire, I think of Charlie Sheen. I strongly suspect that whoever is creating the reality I inhabit is running out of ideas, and is just phoning it in. If you are not on the road to solipsism like me, this article and this article may be of interest, for what I hope is a tiny tiny minority who are thinking like me, video below the fold.

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Reading the Past

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by Doctor Science

The largest project we have to do, to become actually moved in, is to unpack and then cull our book collection. Yesterday I opened a box containing a set of old hardcover books, the Complete Stories of O. Henry, stamped as having belonged to Mr. Dr. Science’s grandfather. “I wonder if these are worth anything,” I said to myself, and opened up a random volume to find publishing details to put into abebooks.

The volume was Roads of Destiny, and this is the frontispiece, the first thing I saw:

Cut for racial epithets that were, apparently, quality humor in 1917.

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Where “the Heartland” comes from

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by Doctor Science One of the topics that’s come up in several recent conversations around here is the term “Heartland”: what parts of the US are the Heartland? How loaded is the term? Who uses it and why? … etc. A quest! First, I went over to Google ngrams to see how the word has … Read more

The Meaning(lessness) of Iowa

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by wj The Iowa caucuses being past, we are now being treated to a flood of stories on What It All Means. As usual, not much really. Certainly just winning in Iowa means very little — except in cases where the winner seemed enormously unlikely. That’s why winners like Huckabee get little from it; they … Read more

Where the first presidential primaries should be

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by Doctor Science The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary have been the first two contests of the Presidential campaign season for more than 50 years, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best possible choices. I’ve done a data-driven analysis, and conclude that the first test should still be one from the Midwest and one … Read more