Well, the hard-core bunch, yeah, who aren't going to give up no matter how badly they lose. I have some acquaintances who will go to their graves believing it's possible to roll things back to 1890.
And that's despite the half-century since Goldwater which the progressives have clearly won. Even the last 15 years: Medicare Part D, Obamacare, a bigger federal role in K-12 education, gay marriage, and CO2 emissions regulation (years of bickering over the details remain, but the SCOTUS has blessed it unless the CAA is amended).
There was also the fiber bubble in the later 1990s, where 20 different companies were borrowing money from all sorts of sources, each with the claim that they would capture 20% of the long-haul data market. That Lucent was having to make loans itself would be a very bad sign -- those companies must have been even worse than the crap companies that were attracting the investment bankers. When the bubble burst, on the order of $2T in market value disappeared. A good deal of that fiber will never be lit, as it either goes to the wrong places, or is incompatible with new laser technology.
The consensus in the telecom industry is that Lucent's great financial performance on her watch was due to the late 1990s fiber bubble and a batch of very questionable accounting. She got out before the bubble burst. When it did, the company cratered.
Impact. To pick an example that's near me, the Colorado Gold Rush starting in 1859 and the Silver Boom twenty years later shaped the state in ways that are still important today (the claim that turned into the Gold King mine of recent orange river fame was filed in 1887). The fur trappers before that, almost nothing. Even the near-extinction of the bison didn't happen until the railroads arrived and made it practical to ship a million hides per year.
Speaking to the (very large) region that contemporary historians refer to as "the American West", which runs from roughly the center of the Great Plains to the Pacific... (1) Most of the common historical memes are myths in the sense of having been blown out of proportion. Eg, Texas cattle drives were a thing for all of 20 years, from the period when eastern-financed railroads got close enough to make them practical to the time when eastern-financed railroads were extended far enough to make the drives unnecessary. (2) If one were to pick the plucky individualist who made a difference, it's the prospector, not the cowboy or rancher or farmer. Of course, prospectors are a terrible role model for many different reasons. (3) The American West's population has, for almost its entire history, been very non-rural*. Today, the West is the second least-rural region after the Northeast. Four of the ten least-rural states are western (in recent censuses, California and New Jersey go back and forth as the leader).
* Census Bureau's definition of non-rural, the details of which have changed often over the years, but the statement is true for all of the definitions. Certainly from 1880 or so, if you lived in "the West" chances were good you lived in town, relatively close to one of the few cities.
I've seen versions of fonts that include one glyph but not the other. To some extent, fonts can be the kind of DLL hell that some of us used to suffer through -- no version numbers, upgrades break as much as they fix, etc. This is the kind of problem that has led to abominations like Font Awesome.
The clickable buttons are showing a thin rectangle instead of an arrow. Maybe an invalid character reference?
It renders properly on my screen. This does raise the philosophical question as to what makes an invalid character reference. The character code is a valid Unicode glyph; OTOH, lots of fonts fail to define the arrow glyphs. This is part of why I've made the Noto fonts my default -- Google has committed to defining every glyph at least up through Unicode 6.2 for them. The other reason is that with some spacing tweaks, the Noto Serif font is quite attractive.
Among the other complications is that the category is "Physiology and Medicine". Early winners were largely for medicine -- treatment of various diseases. Looking at the list you provided, it's almost exclusively physiology these days, with a heavy emphasis on protein chemistry and cell-level biology.
Maybe, if there was even one other club in the country that ran a tournament in this format. As it is, this is "sympathy software" that I wrote after watching the club coaches struggle through the scoring by hand.
Bout committee for our club's annual fencing tournament on Saturday afternoon. It's the longest continuously running tournament in Colorado. It's also an archaic team format that none of the standard tournament software will handle. This will be the second year I've used a piece of my own Python code to run the tournament.
I went to high school seven miles off the end of the runway at SAC headquarters. No one had ever bothered with civil defense drills because, well, there were so many Soviet nukes targeted that it wasn't going to matter. Everyone recognized the Looking Glass planes when they went overhead on their way up.
Just speculating, but I think the country-club Republican meme misses the mark these days -- there simply aren't enough of them to put up the kinds of numbers that do go up in the urban and inner-ring suburban areas. I think there's a broad swath that economically run from the working poor up through the bottom half of the middle class that have very traditional expectations from government -- good affordable schools, good roads, care for their aging relatives, reasonable regulation, no drugs on the streets. They don't want to go back to the kind of air that the LA Times highlighted in a flashback this week, but they don't care about the Preble's jumping mouse. Lots of them think their kids ought to go to State U to study business or engineering. They look at their pay stubs, or the company books for those who are small* business people, and think "lower taxes" is a good idea**. They live in the small detached single-family homes that make up much of the housing in most cities that was the source of much debate in the comments over at Lawyers, Guns and Money this week. They don't want to hear a "if only we all went back to living in imaginary small towns" message, because many of them (or their parents) fled the real small towns.
* Small small businesses -- the one-plumber plumbing company who uses a one-accountant accounting firm, etc.
** I'll admit that when I've done the one-person consulting bit, that 15% FICA tax starting on dollar one certainly tempts one to take a "taxes are too damned high" attitude.
When I was on the legislative staff, I spent the session being told regularly that I was ignorant and incompetent. Politicians just have a peculiar way of motivating the hired help...
What the articles missed is that it's not just blue states, but blue-ish areas even in red states. Across the South from Arkansas/Louisiana to the Carolinas, in states where the primaries were early enough that Romney didn't have things locked up, he won in the blue-ish areas: Mississippi along the river, Atlanta, etc. I haven't been through the exercise, but I would not be surprised if Romney got as many delegates out of those states in total as any of the more-conservative candidates.
Back injuries are the most common. Also the one injury that it's pretty much impossible to play with. Eg, Tiger Woods has withdrawn from tournaments he started eight times in his career -- five of them for spine-related problems.
I think Andy Carnegie had it right when he deliberately crafted a golf course where he could completely crush his opponents...
I occasionally played a small nine-hole municipal course in southern Iowa that had been laid out by a local with an apparently incurable slice. Fading off to the right never got you in serious trouble, but there were nightmares if you missed to the left :^)
A golf swing that allows reproducible results is perhaps the most unnatural overall motion in sports. I quit playing because it was too frustrating that my aging joints wouldn't allow me to do it properly.
You're quitting on it and trying to hit the the ball on the upswing to get it up into the air. Head down, extend your right hand/arm all the way through impact, and the club face will take care of getting the ball up.
Well, I was thinking in terms of not responding to idiocy for 60 days. Some time back, I made a somewhat less public oath not to do something here on the site. That lasted about 30 days (a period which changed my perspective on at least one thing for the better). This is a good time to do it, too: football has just started, the SCOTUS hasn't come back to town yet, etc.
I should keep a paraphrase of Grandpa Cain in mind more often: think twice, post once.
On “Sunday!”
Recently, I am trying hard to use the time that I would otherwise spend reading to write.
On “Carly vs the Demon Sheep, the Sequel, or: Second (or Third and Fourth) Republican Debate(s) Reactions”
Well, the hard-core bunch, yeah, who aren't going to give up no matter how badly they lose. I have some acquaintances who will go to their graves believing it's possible to roll things back to 1890.
And that's despite the half-century since Goldwater which the progressives have clearly won. Even the last 15 years: Medicare Part D, Obamacare, a bigger federal role in K-12 education, gay marriage, and CO2 emissions regulation (years of bickering over the details remain, but the SCOTUS has blessed it unless the CAA is amended).
"
There was also the fiber bubble in the later 1990s, where 20 different companies were borrowing money from all sorts of sources, each with the claim that they would capture 20% of the long-haul data market. That Lucent was having to make loans itself would be a very bad sign -- those companies must have been even worse than the crap companies that were attracting the investment bankers. When the bubble burst, on the order of $2T in market value disappeared. A good deal of that fiber will never be lit, as it either goes to the wrong places, or is incompatible with new laser technology.
"
The consensus in the telecom industry is that Lucent's great financial performance on her watch was due to the late 1990s fiber bubble and a batch of very questionable accounting. She got out before the bubble burst. When it did, the company cratered.
On “Idiocy, Week One”
Impact. To pick an example that's near me, the Colorado Gold Rush starting in 1859 and the Silver Boom twenty years later shaped the state in ways that are still important today (the claim that turned into the Gold King mine of recent orange river fame was filed in 1887). The fur trappers before that, almost nothing. Even the near-extinction of the bison didn't happen until the railroads arrived and made it practical to ship a million hides per year.
"
Speaking to the (very large) region that contemporary historians refer to as "the American West", which runs from roughly the center of the Great Plains to the Pacific... (1) Most of the common historical memes are myths in the sense of having been blown out of proportion. Eg, Texas cattle drives were a thing for all of 20 years, from the period when eastern-financed railroads got close enough to make them practical to the time when eastern-financed railroads were extended far enough to make the drives unnecessary. (2) If one were to pick the plucky individualist who made a difference, it's the prospector, not the cowboy or rancher or farmer. Of course, prospectors are a terrible role model for many different reasons. (3) The American West's population has, for almost its entire history, been very non-rural*. Today, the West is the second least-rural region after the Northeast. Four of the ten least-rural states are western (in recent censuses, California and New Jersey go back and forth as the leader).
* Census Bureau's definition of non-rural, the details of which have changed often over the years, but the statement is true for all of the definitions. Certainly from 1880 or so, if you lived in "the West" chances were good you lived in town, relatively close to one of the few cities.
On “Culinary History, Not So Obscure After All”
Very nice. One of the "hidden" take-aways is a reminder of just how new the current version of the American West is.
On “Comments Since Last Visit, Reloaded, Augmented, Installed, In Two Steps”
I've seen versions of fonts that include one glyph but not the other. To some extent, fonts can be the kind of DLL hell that some of us used to suffer through -- no version numbers, upgrades break as much as they fix, etc. This is the kind of problem that has led to abominations like Font Awesome.
"
Need another new comment to look at something.
"
The clickable buttons are showing a thin rectangle instead of an arrow. Maybe an invalid character reference?
It renders properly on my screen. This does raise the philosophical question as to what makes an invalid character reference. The character code is a valid Unicode glyph; OTOH, lots of fonts fail to define the arrow glyphs. This is part of why I've made the Noto fonts my default -- Google has committed to defining every glyph at least up through Unicode 6.2 for them. The other reason is that with some spacing tweaks, the Noto Serif font is quite attractive.
On “The Saga of the Fighter”
Among the other complications is that the category is "Physiology and Medicine". Early winners were largely for medicine -- treatment of various diseases. Looking at the list you provided, it's almost exclusively physiology these days, with a heavy emphasis on protein chemistry and cell-level biology.
On “Weekend!”
Maybe, if there was even one other club in the country that ran a tournament in this format. As it is, this is "sympathy software" that I wrote after watching the club coaches struggle through the scoring by hand.
"
Bout committee for our club's annual fencing tournament on Saturday afternoon. It's the longest continuously running tournament in Colorado. It's also an archaic team format that none of the standard tournament software will handle. This will be the second year I've used a piece of my own Python code to run the tournament.
On “Linky Friday #130: Martyrs & Migrants”
I went to high school seven miles off the end of the runway at SAC headquarters. No one had ever bothered with civil defense drills because, well, there were so many Soviet nukes targeted that it wasn't going to matter. Everyone recognized the Looking Glass planes when they went overhead on their way up.
"
Just speculating, but I think the country-club Republican meme misses the mark these days -- there simply aren't enough of them to put up the kinds of numbers that do go up in the urban and inner-ring suburban areas. I think there's a broad swath that economically run from the working poor up through the bottom half of the middle class that have very traditional expectations from government -- good affordable schools, good roads, care for their aging relatives, reasonable regulation, no drugs on the streets. They don't want to go back to the kind of air that the LA Times highlighted in a flashback this week, but they don't care about the Preble's jumping mouse. Lots of them think their kids ought to go to State U to study business or engineering. They look at their pay stubs, or the company books for those who are small* business people, and think "lower taxes" is a good idea**. They live in the small detached single-family homes that make up much of the housing in most cities that was the source of much debate in the comments over at Lawyers, Guns and Money this week. They don't want to hear a "if only we all went back to living in imaginary small towns" message, because many of them (or their parents) fled the real small towns.
* Small small businesses -- the one-plumber plumbing company who uses a one-accountant accounting firm, etc.
** I'll admit that when I've done the one-person consulting bit, that 15% FICA tax starting on dollar one certainly tempts one to take a "taxes are too damned high" attitude.
"
Plus a zillion.
When I was on the legislative staff, I spent the session being told regularly that I was ignorant and incompetent. Politicians just have a peculiar way of motivating the hired help...
"
What the articles missed is that it's not just blue states, but blue-ish areas even in red states. Across the South from Arkansas/Louisiana to the Carolinas, in states where the primaries were early enough that Romney didn't have things locked up, he won in the blue-ish areas: Mississippi along the river, Atlanta, etc. I haven't been through the exercise, but I would not be surprised if Romney got as many delegates out of those states in total as any of the more-conservative candidates.
"
E3: Both links point to a Bloomberg story about Syran refugees.
On “How To: Hit Yourself In The Face With A Golf Ball”
Back injuries are the most common. Also the one injury that it's pretty much impossible to play with. Eg, Tiger Woods has withdrawn from tournaments he started eight times in his career -- five of them for spine-related problems.
"
I think Andy Carnegie had it right when he deliberately crafted a golf course where he could completely crush his opponents...
I occasionally played a small nine-hole municipal course in southern Iowa that had been laid out by a local with an apparently incurable slice. Fading off to the right never got you in serious trouble, but there were nightmares if you missed to the left :^)
On “An Idiocy Sabbatical”
R.E.M. are all over Trump and Cruz for using "It's the End of the World as We Know It" at their Stop the Iran Deal rally yesterday.
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A golf swing that allows reproducible results is perhaps the most unnatural overall motion in sports. I quit playing because it was too frustrating that my aging joints wouldn't allow me to do it properly.
"
You're quitting on it and trying to hit the the ball on the upswing to get it up into the air. Head down, extend your right hand/arm all the way through impact, and the club face will take care of getting the ball up.
"
Well, I was thinking in terms of not responding to idiocy for 60 days. Some time back, I made a somewhat less public oath not to do something here on the site. That lasted about 30 days (a period which changed my perspective on at least one thing for the better). This is a good time to do it, too: football has just started, the SCOTUS hasn't come back to town yet, etc.
I should keep a paraphrase of Grandpa Cain in mind more often: think twice, post once.
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Are you a betting man, counselor?
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.