Daily Archive: April 28, 2013

“You don’t ‘seize’ the center, you create the center”

When I learned it, I thought the motion for this month’s Intelligence Squared U.S. debate – “The GOP Must Seize the Center or Die” – was simply dreadful.  How could the opposing case possibly be made without fighting a losing battle with the proposition itself?  Of course the GOP needs to win more votes from the center; of course they’ve been successfully characterized as out-of-touch with centrists.  And indeed, the pre-debate poll showed a staggering 65% in favor of the […]

Judging FIRST

by Mad Rocket Scientist During the last weekend in March, I was able to once again participate as Judge in the Seattle Regional FIRST Robotics Competition.  This was my second year doing so, and...

In The First Circle Bookclub!

(Our kickoff post is here, and our discussion posts are here, here, and here.) Last week, we decided that we needed to take a week off to let everyone catch up to Chapter 48...

Taking Sides

A recent petition to stop using the terms “illegals” and “illegal immigrants” generated the following response from the New York Times (emphasis mine): On Tuesday, The New York Times updated its policies on how it...

Class War at the New York Times!

So Paul Krugman got a little pink in his latest column: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1...