I still have no landline after Hurricane Sandy brought down the tree and with it the phone line. So that means I will not have DSL and will have to follow the election results the old-fashioned way, on TV. I suspect that they will use a lot of gee-whiz technology. [Read more…]
As is my custom, I voted before coming in to work. There was quite a crowd but the polling place was well organized and efficient. The ballot was long, what with judges and referenda that had to be decided. Our precinct uses optical scanning machines so the ballot has those bubbles that have to be filled in to indicate your vote. Since I am the kind of person who likes to fill in the little ovals very neatly, staying carefully within the lines, that took some time but I was still out in about 20 minutes. [Read more…]
It is at times like this that I am so glad that I don’t watch TV. [Read more…]
David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is supposed to be one of the ‘sane Republicans’, a breed that is on the verge of extinction. Kevin Drum points to his strange argument as to why it is better for Mitt Romney to win.
Frum says:
The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won’t reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP – and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013. Added bonus: a Romney presidency likely means that the congressional GOP will lose seats in 2014, as they deserve.
Basically he is saying that although the Republican congress is nuts, if Obama is re-elected, they will go even more nuts and completely blow up the country. So vote Republican!
Yes, even the sane Republicans have gone nuts.
Mitt Romney has been quite circumspect when it comes to talking about his beliefs during this campaign. Via Pharyngula, this video shows Mitt Romney very aggressively defending his Mormon religious beliefs. [Read more…]
Some years ago, I attended a seminar at our university on the ethics of genetic engineering. The panel of experts spoke about the new ability to modify the genes of people with genetic disorders in order to remove the cause of their ailments. Even when they successfully cured the child of an inherited disease, the treatment did not prevent the child from passing on the defective gene to their offspring. [Read more…]
A little Shih-Tzu dog found itself somehow stranded on a remote small land bank about to be engulfed by the rising tide. Fortunately, an endurance rower who was training for an event spotted the dog and even though he was already exhausted was able to row over to the bank and rescue the frightened dog and take it ashore. [Read more…]
I have been hammering away at cases of cheating in science, trying to make them more widely known. I feel that this is a really important issue for a crucial reason. [Read more…]
Do you remember the time when you were an adolescent? That was the time when you could roughly split people into three groups: the trendsetters, the trend followers, and those who deliberatively chose to go against prevailing trends, irrespective of whether they were good or bad. Most people fell into the second category, people who would usually look around to see what the ‘correct’ thing was to say or do, for fear of being out on a limb and thus open to scorn from their peers. [Read more…]
As the campaign winds down and feeling start running high, people tend to be more unguarded in what they say. We thus witness high levels of irrational hatred of Barack Obama that would be truly a wonder to behold if it were not also scary to see that some people live in an alternate reality where manifestly self-contradictory views can be held in the same mind with complete lack of awareness. [Read more…]