Doing an end-run around the Electoral College

Like most US presidential elections, the Electoral College structure means that those states that are seen as already sure to assign their electoral votes (EV) to one or other of the two major presidential candidates tend to be ignored, with all the attention focused on the so-called battleground states where the outcome is uncertain. In this election, those states are seen as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia. Mitt Romney is also throwing some money at Wisconsin since he hopes that since his running mate Paul Ryan is from that state, he might be able to nudge that from Democratic into battleground status. [Read more…]

Life in the pass lane

Brian Keith Dalton, whom most of us know Mr. Deity, takes on an issue that is close to my heart, and that is the proper etiquette for driving in the passing lane. I totally agree with him. It is so infuriating, especially when driving on a highway with just two lanes of traffic, to find the left lane occupied by a car that is cruising along in it with clearly no intention of moving to the right lane. [Read more…]

Checking your emails for tone

The internet age has spawned huge numbers of incidents where people have sent emails that have inadvertently offended the recipient because the sender was not sensitive enough to the absence in written messages of the important cues that accompany the spoken word, where facial expressions and tone of voice and inflexions can provide helpful clues to the speaker’s benign intent. [Read more…]

That dangerous radical Desmond Tutu

Many of us have argued that people Like George W. Bush and Tony Blair should be tried for war crimes. There was even a British TV film called The Trial of Tony Blair that had this as the plot. I saw that film and it was good but it was clearly fantasy. Since war crimes prosecutions are only for those whom the US government views as undesirable, it was unthinkable that this would ever occur. [Read more…]