Why Is Chicago Funny?

April 20, 2014

A bunch of psychologists at the Humor Research Lab (!), which itself sounds like a punchline, have produced a highly suspect ranking of America’s cities which ranked Chicago as America’s funniest city. Without looking closely at their methodology, just accepting their finding at face value, are there reasons we might believe they’re right? Chicago’s Second […]

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The Council Has Spoken!

April 20, 2014

The Watcher’s Council has announced its winners for last week. Council Winners *First place with 3 1/3 votes!– Joshuapundit-An Honor Killing On Campus Second place with 2 2/3 votes –The Independent Sentinel – Barack Obama’s Ideological Assault on Traditional America Third place with 2 votes –The Right Planet – The Soviet Anschluss Fourth place with […]

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The End of Political Campaigning As We Know It

April 19, 2014

You know, I think that those who are dismayed over the case before the Supreme Court, Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, over whether state laws banning false statements about candidates’ voting records meet Constitutional muster, which George Will kvetches about here have the wrong end of the stick. Here’s a snippet of the Ohio […]

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Why Don’t People Cook?

April 18, 2014

Last night my wife had an early dog-training class, so I threw together a quick early dinner for us. I poached a chicken breast, cooked some pasta, and made a sauce of caramelized onions, mushrooms, chicken breast, olive oil, garlic, a splash of sherry, a little parsley, freshly-ground black pepper, and a sprinkling of parmesan […]

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The Astonishing Rate

April 18, 2014

I’m glad to see that somebody besides me sees Google’s moves of the last couple of years as I do: You could see these adventures in future-making as visionary, or as folly. But there’s another motive that could be driving Google: quiet desperation. Google hasn’t figured out how to make its mobile ads valuable enough, […]

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What’s an Adult?

April 18, 2014

and what’s a child? The notions have changed over the years. My grandfather ran away from home at age 12 and went into show business. Given what I know of my Great-grandfather Schuler, there is no doubt whatever in my mind that my Grandfather Schuler was working from age 12 as well. Neither of them […]

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How Americans Die

April 17, 2014

As I watched this presentation at Bloomberg on how Americans die, something occurred to me that I hadn’t thought about before. I wonder what the long-term economic implications of the significant number of men aged 25-44 who died of AIDS between about 1980 and 1994 will be? Something sobering but not particularly surprising from the […]

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It’s in the Bag!

April 17, 2014

If you’re convinced that searching for metrics for the performance of the PPACA is a sure sign of a concern-trolling Republican hack, you might want to take a look at this post from Lambert Strether at naked capitalism: When you force people to purchase a crapified product under penalty of IRS enforcement, it’s entirely natural […]

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How Could Democrats Gain Seats in the Senate? (Updated)

April 17, 2014

Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics considers what it would take for Democrats to win seats in the Senate in the fall, rather than losing seats and, possibly, the house as analysts including himself and Nate Silver expect: For Democrats to gain seats this cycle would be the equivalent of drawing a straight flush. With that said, […]

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The Ancient Melting Pot

April 16, 2014

Examination of the chemical composition of the teeth of people interred in ancient Cahokia has determined that a considerable portion of the population grew up elsewhere: Teeth that form in infancy, for example, like the first permanent molars, will reveal a person’s location as a newborn, while those that form in the early teens, like […]

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