Over at Confirm or Disconfirm, there’s some disgruntlement about my re-sequencing of Born to Run. Which we have to take seriously, because John’s from northern Jersey and owns more Springsteen bootlegs than anyone I know. To wit: Continue reading
A friend of mine asked me a thought-provoking question this weekend: What is the single skill one can have (or lack) that most strongly affects success (or failure) at poker? Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
So I’m starting a podcast, as a companion to my newsletter. I’m not really sure how this is going to go, but here’s what I’m envisioning: something that is between 10 and 20 minutes long, and gives you a bunch of short, informed takes at the intersection of political science and current politics. You know, like my newsletter.
The RSS feed is available now, and the podcast will be on Itunes, Spotify, and all the all rest shortly.
Please take a listen, and I’d love to get your feedback on everything: content, structure, sound quality, and all the rest.
Driving to the grocery store yesterday, I heard Smokin’ by Boston on the radio. Which got me thinking — how many rock albums can you name in which every single song on the album gets regular radio airplay?
I can only come up with two, and they are both arguably not legitimate. The first, of course, is Boston’s first album, Boston. It is unquestionable that, of the eights songs on the record, six of them (More than a Feeling, Piece of Mind, Foreplay/Longtime, Rock n’ Roll Band, Hitch a Ride, and Let Me Take You Home Tonight) get regular radio airplay. The other two songs (Something About You and Smokin’) might not qualify for “regular” airplay, but you definitely hear them once in a while.
The other record I came up with is Continue reading
I love The Price is Right (henceforth, TPIR). Always have. I love contestant’s row. I love(d) Barker. I love his skinny little mic. I love his scandals with Barker’s beauties. I love the pricing games (Plinko is best, I will not entertain arguments to the contrary, especially not arguments involving Hole-in-one-or-two). I love how the crowd can help you. I love how you don’t know you’ll be on the show until they call your name from the live studio audience. I love(d) Roddy. I love how people wear ridiculous t-shirts and get way too excited about his and hers exercise bicycles. I love it all.
I can remember racing into my house each day at 11:30 after I got home from kindergarten so that I could see the second half of the show. I can remember being home sick from school, feeling awful, and thinking, “well, at least I get to watch TPIR today.” I can remember scheduling my summer days as a kid around it. When Barker left, I was sad. The show has lost something without him, but it’s not unwatchable with Carey.
So maybe you haven’t seen the video below before. Continue reading
There are very few things in politics that can be said with certainty or even near-certainty, but here’s one that I’m close to 100% sure about: there’s a whole host of staffers in the White House praying that California doesn’t legalize pot this Fall.
If you haven’t been following, the odds of legal pot next year on the west coast are about even money. There’s both a bill in the Assembly and, more importantly, a referendum on the November ballot that is polling above 50% right now. And we’re not talking Massachusetts-style decriminalization, or even Amsterdam-style psuedo-legalization. We’re talking totally legal, commercial production, distribution, sale, and consumption. Five points: Continue reading
So since I last reported on saving 80% at Safeway, I’ve done some coupon maven-ing here and there. I bought five tubes of high-end toothpaste (Colgate with baking soda peroxide) for zero cents; I paid 72 cents for two bottles of shampoo, two Old Spice deodorants, a fancy new Schick Quattro razor and a refill pack of titanium blades, bringing to mind my favorite Onion article that actually came true; I learned that my Safeway has an unadvertised policy of doubling any manufacturer’s coupon under $1, making every 75 cent coupon quite vaulable; and I got a teenage girl working the register at Safeway to blurt out “Jesus fucking Christ” in awe after I paid less than $20 for a mostly-full cart of groceries.
But I’ve also learned that Safeway is not the best place to execute these tricks. It’s CVS. Hands down. For three reasons: Continue reading
Several times in the last few weeks, I’ve seen claims made about “the south.” Things like polling data that reported regional cross-tabs, political analysts claiming something distinctive about the region and the 2010 election, or just a friend conjecturing about some regional cultural phenomenon. And, as usual, none of the sources defined what they meant by “the south.” Which makes it pretty hard to assess the claim. Of course, part of the problem is that’s there’s not really any utterly stable definition; it depends what you are talking about it.
This is more extreme than it first appears. Continue reading