I’ve written extensively in the past on why I think preseason tropical activity forecasts are generally fairly useless. And indeed, trying to specifically predict a particular number of storms is pretty silly. Although hurricane seasons are medium-period events, occupying the gray area between long-term weather and short-term climate, individual hurricanes are short-period events, influenced heavily by other short-period events, which… Read more »
[Kudos to Terry Corcoran for coming up with an alternative title for this blog post: Brendan’s Grand Unified Theory of PANIC!!!!!! Hahaha. Brilliant. -ed.] I had an interesting conversation with Melissa Clouthier (and, chiming in at one point, Doug Mataconis) on Twitter today. It started with me criticizing Melissa for, in my view, propagating patently unfair criticisms about President Obama,… Read more »
Over 72% of the people who voted in a Fox News online poll think private businesses should be allowed to discriminate however they wish. To say this is appalling is an understatement.
From the “I don’t know what I’m talking about, but look at this pretty chart” files… Those are stock prices — specifically, the Dow and the S&P 500 — over the last 20 years. Visually, it starts to look a bit like we had 7 or 8 years of genuine growth, followed by Bubble #1 (the tech bubble), then Bubble… Read more »
Law & Order, arguably the Val Kilmer of procedural TV shows, is apparently ending this year after, I don’t know, let’s say 349 seasons. And while that’s a shame for the middle aged and shut-ins who cannot tolerate watching anything but the same show over and over again, it got me to thinking about what else has had a good… Read more »
One of my favorite blog posts ever, back on the old Irish Trojan’s Blog in August 2006, was on the topic of my favorite songs of all-time. The post got 48 comments, and ’twas fascinating to hear my readers’ takes on my favorites, as well as their own favorites. Anyway, the post itself had four postscripts, and it occurred to… Read more »
I got my wisdom teeth out this morning. All four of ’em. The white thing on my face is an ice pack. And I’m loopy from being put under. I blame Obama. UPDATE, 7:38 PM: [Bumped. -ed.] So, I’m doing well. Lots of apple sauce and yogurt, and Becky’s yummy homemade carrot soup. I’m taking Percocet (or rather, a generic… Read more »
In honor of the recent political chaos in Connecticut — land of Richard “Misplaced Words” Blumenthal and Susan “Active Practice (NOT!)” Bysiewicz — I have, as you can see, put up a new blog masthead, above, showing the beautiful view of the State Capitol from the ninth-floor room at the Holiday Inn Express where Becky, the girls and I stayed… Read more »
Ross Douthat has solved America’s deficit problem: Good news, America: Using the online budget simulator created by the good people at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, I’ve successfully reduced our deficit to a relatively stable 60 percent of G.D.P. by the year 2018. All it took was means-testing Social Security and raising the retirement age to 68, keeping… Read more »
On the second day of Google’s I/O conference today, the search giant announced a new product, GoogleTV. The platform, which will be available built in to at least some Sony TVs, as well as available in stand-alone boxes (think TiVO or your cable DVR box), combines your DVR functionality (including program guide), web-based video sites like Hulu, and Netflix streaming…. Read more »
