I found this bit of political mail that I got recently to be particularly annoying, because I fundamentally agree with the point being made, but it bothers me that the authors of the mailer feel the need to distort the… Continue Reading
In a comment a few days ago, a Reader asked if my observation about Black voters causing Prop. 8 to pass can legitimately be expanded to say that such people are actually socially conservative. The metric, it was suggested, was… Continue Reading
Okay, the title of this post is deliberately provocative. But, the third big suggestion I have for repeal of Prop. 8 is patience. No less a SSM advocate than Andrew Sullivan joins me in this counsel. And that’s because he… Continue Reading
I wrote a while back that I thought there was a realistic chance that Barack Obama could throw the Prop. 8 election over to the “yes” side. That post, by the way, has become the most popular post I’ve ever… Continue Reading
Lots of talk this morning about “Joe The Plumber,” an imaginary, “average” American who John McCain started speaking to in the debate last night. Obama picked up the trope and now Joe The Plumber is in every house across this… Continue Reading
At fivethirtyeight.com,* the spot-polling report is that women are more critical of McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin than men. This is no particular surprise to me. My experience in front of juries leads me to believe that women tend to… Continue Reading
This week’s poll reveals a taxonomic problem — there is nothing resembling a consensus about what the “middle age” of one’s life might be. Some warn that as I look at age 40, middle age is staring me right in… Continue Reading
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
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
One of my previous posts led me down an interesting mental rabbit hole. How many gay people are there, compared to straight people? It seems to me that the answer may be smaller than I’d ever thought. Particularly because some… Continue Reading