A few months ago, I missed Columbia University’s Andrew Gelman creation of a new, amusing, and astonishingly perceptive polimetric index: the Starbucks-Walmart Ratio. Take the number of Starbucks per capita in a state and compare that to the number of… Continue Reading
The change in description for Proposition 8 has been upheld by not one but two courts. Both a Superior Court in Sacramento County and the third DCA have agreed that it was properly within the Attorney General’s discretion to change… Continue Reading
It’s not real. But it’s not all that hard to imagine that it is.
Two big items of news today: Russia, a international military power with nuclear weapons at its disposal, went to war with its neighbor, Georgia, a candidate for NATO membership, in a fierce border conflict fueled by ethnic tensions. Russian tanks… Continue Reading
I’ve been kind of figuring that the front-runner for Governor in 2010 was Gavin Newsom. But it turns out that Dianne Feinstein has indicated interest in the job. She’s the 800-pound gorilla and if she wants it, it’s obviously hers.… Continue Reading
Justin Gardner at Donklephant is impressed with Barack Obama’s suggestion that people adequately maintain their cars and keep their tires properly inflated to increase their gas mileage. He is unimpressed with the proposal to increase offshore oil drilling (memo to… Continue Reading
Nearly fifty weeks ago, I wrote about how very, very strange and corrupt it looked when Hillary Clinton received nearly fifty thousand dollars in campaign donations from a single family in Daly City, California that reported an income that barely… Continue Reading
Global warming “scientists” are not necessarily wrong to suggest that large-scale industrialization is affecting climate patterns. They are guilty, though, of jumping to dramatic conclusions based on insufficient supporting data. It turns out that global weather and climate patterns are… Continue Reading
About two month ago, I mused that with available statistics, it appeared that gay couples were twenty times less likely to marry, now that they have been given the opportunity to do so. I pointed out that this did not… Continue Reading
It’s a strange thing when Republicans are openly and aggressively lobbying for offshore oil drilling. Not that they were ever opposed to it; it’s just that in the political environment I’ve been used to for my entire adult life, Republicans… Continue Reading