Month: July 2013

[Nate Silver’s] entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion writing, or “punditry,” as he put it, famously describing it as “fundamentally useless.”

Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor of the New York Times and quoted on Political Animal by Ed Kilgore, helpfully points out just how fetid a swamp modern “journalism” has become. If you’re not a stenographer, specializing in “horse race […] or ‘punditry’” you need not apply and your brand of, uh, being right and pointing out just how wrong our gang of Wise Serious People are is entirely inconvenient and works against our business model, such as it is. Sad.

The-Awesomest-7-Year-Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty-life

I’d quibble with one or two minor items (primarily around the importance of befriending and/or becoming indispensable to a few key members of the senior faculty) in this otherwise fully superb article on academia and the insane work hours your “mentors” will advise you to undertake even though they, uh, didn’t actually. I will excerpt none of it in the hopes you actually go read it.

The-Awesomest-7-Year-Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty-life

It’s not so easy to see Perry’s path to the GOP nomination in 2016. He may have to deal with an intrastate rival, Ted Cruz, who excites conservatives at home and everywhere else immensely more than the Perry. Cruz and Chris Christie can outdo Perry at macho bluster; Rand Paul has a far more devoted following; there’s no obvious “Establishment front-runner” to which Perry could pose as an alternative; and virtually everyone on the Mentioned list of 2016 candidates looks a lot smarter than the Texas governor (i.e., there’s no parade of clown-car candidates like Bachmann, Cain and Gingrich to lend Perry some comparative gravitas).

Ed Kilgore on Governor Rick “Good Hair” Perry’s relative chances. Agree completely. Should he run, I think 2016 will make Perry long for his superlative performance of 2012.

Also, points for credibly working “Perry” and “some comparative gravitas” into a single phrase. Kilgore showing us how it’s done, yet again.

Nothing Like this Will Be Built Again

It’s a weird experience, crawling over the guts of one of the marvels of the atomic age, smelling the thing […] all the while knowing that although it’s one of the safest and most energy-efficient civilian power reactors ever built it’s a a technological dead-end, that there won’t be any more of them, and that when it shuts down in thirty or forty years’ time this colossal collision between space age physics and victorian plumbing will be relegated to a footnote in the history books. “Energy too cheap to meter” it ain’t, but as a symbol of what we can achieve through engineering it’s hard to beat.

Great article on an Advanced Gas cooled Reactor (AGR), the Concorde of nuclear reactors, located at Torness on the Scottish coast

Nothing Like this Will Be Built Again

Fire, meet fire.

COLUMBUS [OHIO] – Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.

The Cleveland Democrat introduced Senate Bill 307 this week.

A critic of efforts to restrict abortion and contraception for women, Turner says she is concerned about men’s reproductive health.

This is probably the surest way forward. Sad, but true. In every state with restrictive abortion legislation in the works or already in the books, do this. And then, assuming you get one passed, tighten it up some more every legislative session after that. Only one hospital in the state is certified for analyzing prospective prescriptions. Tie repeal to abortion and birth control rights. At least you’ll have their attention.

Fire, meet fire.

I do not know what helps or does not help the terrorists. And I’m certainly not saying that Barbara Starr helped the terrorists by publishing her report. I don’t think she did. Anymore than Glenn Greenwald did. And more importantly, I don’t think the vast majority of people you see opining on “what helps the terrorists" have any clue what does or doesn’t. But it is a problem for this country, and for the functioning of our democracy, when Glenn Greenwald’s leak reporting is treated so differently than the Barbara Starr leak reporting. When, as with Glenn Greenwald’s reporting, the leaks are not specifically designed to advance the Pentagon’s agenda, then we have shock and controversy, and calls for prosecution. But when they are [designed to advance the Pentagon’s agenda], as with the Barbara Starr reporting…radio silence.

There is a vast and growing web of secret government in this country. And simply cannot be the case, it is not acceptable, that the only things we know about it, are the things that the members of that secret government want us to know. Because at the end of the day, it is on us, it is on all of us, what our government does in our name.

 Chris Hayes (via letterstomycountry)
Source: govtoversight-blog