Archive for June 30, 2011

Thriller

1
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

In Chile, stu­dents protest­ing cuts to edu­ca­tion fund­ing took a unique tack, stag­ing a pub­lic per­for­mance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. They say they are protest­ing the “zombie-​​like state” of pub­lic edu­ca­tion fund­ing in Chile.

There are no reports on whether Ola Ray was in atten­dance, although I’m pretty cer­tain Michael Jack­son was not there. Or maybe…

watch?v=sVjqtxGr1nY

Rick Perry Superstar

39
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Perry is appar­ently con­sid­er­ing a run for the 2012 Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nomination.

The spec­u­la­tion regard­ing the Perry cam­paign was fueled, in large part, by the implo­sion of the Newt Gin­grich cam­paign on June 9. The advis­ers who left sud­denly all had close ties to Gov. Perry. At this writ­ing, he is in sec­ond place on Intrade with 16% prob­a­bil­ity of gar­ner­ing the nom­i­na­tion, accord­ing to traders. On the graph, you can see the “bump” in Perry’s num­bers on June 10: both the price of a Perry con­tract (line) and the trad­ing vol­ume (green bars) spiked after the defec­tions from Gingrich’s campaign.

Nate Sil­ver has writ­ten favor­able blog posts assess­ing Perry’s chances on May 18, June 9, June 14, (and, just in case you missed his point, June 15). Silver’s assess­ment is that Perry is a strong con­tender for the nom­i­na­tion, and has put Perry in his “top tier” of can­di­dates with a 1-​​in-​​8 chance of win­ning the nomination.

Who is Rick Perry? (more…)

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