Solutions to the GLAT

Turns out that one of the founders of Google was an intern at Wolfram Research, the company that does Mathematica. So Wolfram posted the solutions to the Google Labs Aptitute Test.

More on why Jesusland is so wrong

More on why Jesusland is a stupid, irrelevant concept that says more about liberals than it says about reality:

David Brooks points out correctly that "evangelicals" make up the same proportion of the electorate that they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.

[T]he same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?

Amen.

No guns in NYC?

Lots of people are reporting on that guy who committed suicide at Ground Zero, apparently distraught over the Kerry defeat.

But wait a second: don't they believe in gun control in NYC? Obviously not if he was able to bring one into lower Manhattan. I would have thought in one of the bluest states of all, they would have passed a law by now that makes it a crime to carry a gun.

see Paul Lewis

MarryAnAmerican - No good American will be left behind!

Hey, what a great idea: MarryAnAmerican - Homepage - No good American will be left behind!

Now that George W. Bush has been officially elected, single, sexy, American liberals - already a threatened species - will be desperate to escape. These lonely, afraid (did we mention really hot?) progressives will need a safe haven.

You can help. Open your heart, and your home. Marry an American. Legions of Canadians have already pledged to sacrifice their singlehood to save our southern neighbours from four more years of cowboy conservatism.

What is "moral values' and how did it decide the election?

Slate's Paul Freedman offers a convincing case that Terrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election.

Similarly, the New York Times notes that the exit poll question causing the "moral values" buzz was confusing: it should have been asked as a "personal characteristic", not as an "issue" like terrorism or Iraq.

Personally, I agree with the Economist :

When asked directly about their attitudes to abortion, the responses this time were no different from 2000: 55% said it should be always or mostly legal. On gay marriage, 26% approved and 35% supported civil unions. So it is possible that “moral values” are not just a matter of social conservatism but also code for trust in the candidate, or respect for a man's willingness to take a stand—where Mr Bush won easily. Mr Kerry never quite managed to persuade voters of his leadership qualities.

Michael Moore's response to the election

Michael Moore has posted 17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists, and once again the Blogosphere fights back with a point-by-point rebuttal.

One of the classic Moore misleading statements is about Kerry getting more votes than Reagan. Yes, technically true (55M for Kerry, 54M for Reagan in 1984), but doesn't take into account the 20 years of population growth. Comparing electorate sizes, Reagan got today's equivalent of 67M votes.

John Cross points out that, as a percentage, Kerry did worse than the following presidential losers:

Richard Nixon (1960)
Gerald Ford (1976)
Winfield Hancock (1880)
James Blaine (1884)

More about Ethan Zuckerman

Stuart Berman says exactly what I mean and some things many anti-Bush people can't understand. He responded to Ethan Zuckerman's recent post from a super-blue part of Massachusetts with several thoughtful reasons why an intelligent person might still vote for Bush.

I'm an intelligent person too, educated at name-brand schools. I read the New Yorker, listen to NPR, interact regularly with Kerry supporters. But the arguments of the Left do not persuade me. And part of the reason they lost, I believe, is that very few people on the Left really understand "normal" America.

Update: Ethan Zuckerman saw my post where I dismissively suggested that he was out of touch with the rest of America. He sent me an email, taking some offense at my claim that he had never met a real live Republican. Turns out I was wrong and that he appears to be a sincere and self-critical kind of guy.

Here’s my reply to him:

Sorry for my incorrect characterization of you as someone who has never met a Republican. I know too many well-educated Democrats and “liberals” who were literally stunned by the election results and somehow I pictured you like them, supposedly well-read, open-minded and self-critical, but now completely unable to comprehend the majority of your countrymen.

I spent much of my twenties and thirties living and traveling outside the U.S., and I came away with the belief that you really don’t understand another culture until you learn to enjoy, and in some sense, agree with it.

I don’t know too many Democrats who are up to that. It’s too easy to dismiss the Red State people as under-educated hicks living in “Jesusland”—the sort of caricatures that completely miss the point of why Bush won. Of course, most Republicans have their own equally misguided dogmas, but at least they’ve got political power.


> To: Richard Sprague
> Sender: Ethan Zuckerman

> I think you've slightly mischaracterised my post and offer. I certainly know
> a number of Bush supporters. Until recently, I worked closely with the
> National Security Council and USAID, where many of my associates were Bush
> appointees and supporters. My circle of friends includes the former chief of
> staff for a Republican senator.
>
> It's not that I've never met a Bush voter, as you dismissively suggest. It's
> that I'd like to see more dialogue between blue-state progressives like
> myself and open-minded red-state conservatives. It's my sense that this sort
> of dialogue is necessary if we're all going to live together and face
> challenges, collectively, as a nation.
>
> I'm sorry that you appear to feel differently.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Ethan