Archive for August 17, 2011

Mystery In Alaska

26
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

Because of his pas­sion­ate ado­ra­tion of Sarah Palin, our pet polit­i­cal platy­pus is fas­ci­nated by any­thing to do with Alaska (even though he is bet­ter suited bio­log­i­cally to some­what warmer climes.) So Pauly was intrigued to hear this bit of news about a gen­uine Alaskan mys­tery. As you can see from the link, it appears that a remote Inuit vil­lage (that’s “Eskimo” to you) has been inun­dated with acres of a strange orange goo. Nobody knows where it came from or what it’s made of, though sam­ples have now been taken and sub­mit­ted for analysis.

Pauly is anx­ious to know what you think the weird stuff might be. It’s neon orange and seems quite oily, but turns out when gath­ered to be light and pow­dery. Pauly’s own­ers, hav­ing taken a peek at Going Rogue, con­jec­ture that per­haps Alaskan book­store own­ers have dumped their thou­sands of remain­dered copies into the ocean, where they have dis­solved into this oily, pow­dery, brightly-​​colored goo.

But your the­o­ries may dif­fer. We’re eager to hear them.

Related arti­cles

That Not So Fresh Feeling

40
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

I was pointed to a recent Salon arti­cle about the “fresh­ness” of can­di­dates for Pres­i­dent. It made for an inter­est­ing read, indeed. Here’s the basic gist: since 1900, if you got elected to your first major office over 14 years ago, you won’t be elected Pres­i­dent unless you’re already Pres­i­dent. Years as Vice Pres­i­dent don’t count toward the 14 years.

The one excep­tion, Lyn­don John­son, became Pres­i­dent with­out being elected Pres­i­dent, which per­haps had some­thing to do with him being an excep­tion. Every other gen­eral elec­tion can­di­date with more than 14 years lost. We haven’t had an elec­tion since 1844 in which both can­di­dates would count as “stale”.

The idea behind the the­o­rem makes sense if you think about it. Fresh means excit­ing, and excite­ment is a valu­able tool to get peo­ple into the polling booths. It’s hard to see what’s mag­i­cal about 14 years, though, so I fig­ured I’d do a lit­tle sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis on the the­o­rem to see if, in fact, there’s a cor­re­la­tion between length of time in major office and vote margins.

(more…)

Go to Top