“Mad Men”

Good show.  I’m almost through with the first episode.

Trade-offs

The question is whether increased economic viability in, say, Mali, is worth the increased pollution it would bring.  The thinking is that the development would bring up health care far faster than the pollution would drag down people’s health. 
All kinds of other practical matters — such as to whom the real [...]

The stories are the same

 
This week a Midwestern black man in his mid 40s pulled off a big move.  I’m talking about Joe Dumars, of course, trading Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson.  It might not be a good move for this year but almost certainly it helps the Pistons over time.  And Dumars has a lengthy track record by [...]

President Barack Hussein Obama

Even if you didn’t know his face, his name would stand out.
Here’s how the electoral map looked the moment it was called on MSNBC: 

Poetic that Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” has become a theme song of sorts… precocious Stevie’s first major hit, “Fingertips (Pt. 2)” was in 1963, the year Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his ”I Have [...]

The Ron Clark Academy shows well

Never heard of it before a few minutes ago.  But the publicity machine is going full-tilt.

White girls named Ashley

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight with a gem.

Brandon McClelland and hate crime

 

Takes five weeks or so for the national news media to pick up the story of a man whose body was discovered torn apart by the side of a road.   The man was Brandon McClelland, 24, of Paris, Texas. 
That’s the same Paris where Shaquanda Cotton received a seven-year sentence for pushing a hall monitor in high [...]

Let’s quantify blackness

No, not really.  Ta-Nehisi Coates, unsurprisingly, with a great shutdown of a ridiculous conversation.

“Formulated by scared children”

“We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don’t generally mutilate someone’s face like that… They just take the money and run.”
Ashley Todd is a child.  That was my first thought on seeing her face.  My second thought was that the “backwards B” she carved could have stood for Boston, as in the city where [...]

Rice for Secretary of State

Susan Rice, that is.  I like the straightforward way she talks in this interview.  First in a series here where Barack Obama’s policy stances, especially where they differ from John McCain’s, are laid clear.   Why do I think that almost everyone who sees this will already have their mind made up?  The trick is reaching people who don’t know what’s [...]