What’s harmful is when you misunderstand the way evolution works and end up worried that because humans didn’t use to do X, we shouldn’t do X now. Almost all traits are a trade-off. Individuals with longer legs might survive better because they can run away from predators. But they might also get colder faster, because they lose more heat through their legs. The advantage or disadvantage depends on the environment you’re in now.
April 2013
Geoffrey Pullum charges George Orwell’s famous essay on language with silliness and intellectual dishonesty.
Police said Monday an unknown number of culprits made off with 5 metric tons (5.5 tons) of Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread from a parked trailer in the central German town of Bad Hersfeld over the weekend. The gooey loot is worth an estimated 16,000 euros ($20,710).
Born of the worst intentions, Super Mario Bros. was the toxic product of greed, hubris, incompetence, and total condescension to the audience; it was the black swan of early ’90s blockbuster engineering.
Regional differences + electoral math:
“There’s just very regional differences in this country when it comes to guns, whether they make you a safer person or a more dangerous person, or a safer community or more dangerous community,” [Jim Kessler, former legislative director for Chuck Schumer] told me. “In January of this year there were 44 murders in the city of Chicago. In North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, there were 40 gun homicides combined. So there’s a very, very different conception of how safe it is where we are and how dangerous it is where we are.”
Universal background checks may enjoy overwhelming support across the country, but gun owners and sympathizers in rural states with little gun crime are less animated by the idea—which means politicians can’t count on them to offset the backlash from high-intensity pro-gun voters.
These six rural states have 12 senators between them. Illinois has two.
Gays, God, But Not Guns — How Culture War Politics Has Changed And How It Hasn’t — TPM
Roger Ebert loved movies.
Except for those he hated.
For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.
“No good film is too long,” he once wrote, a sentiment he felt strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. “No bad movie is short enough.”
Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.
The Hill reports on a new PAC with an important mission:
A Political Action Committee (PAC) launched this week to support bearded candidates, according to paperwork filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy (BEARD) was founded by 30-year-old Jonathan Sessions, who sits on the Columbia, Mo., Board of Education, according to his website.
“With the resurgence of beards in popular culture and among today’s younger generation, we believe the time is now to bring facial hair back into politics,” Sessions said in a statement. “We haven’t had a bearded major party candidate run for president since Charles Evans Hughes ran and lost in 1916, and there has been a recent wave of retirements amongst bearded Congressmen, including David Obey and Steve LaTourette. Our hope is that we can start to reverse this disturbing trend.”
via the Dish
See also: Lincoln Had One. So Did Uncle Sam. Why don’t politicians today grow beards? Slate
Ever since last week’s frustrating Supreme Court argument in the Defense of Marriage Act case, I’ve been wondering whether the attack on DOMA will turn out to be a constitutional Trojan horse. It may bring victory: the demise of a spiteful federal statute, enacted by an opportunistic Congress and signed into law 17 years ago by a cowardly Bill Clinton. But at what price?
Striking down DOMA on federalism grounds is a truly bad idea, and the campaign for marriage equality would be worse off for it. To explain the argument is to reveal its dangers. A ruling that left the states to their own devices when it comes to marriage would take the equal protection guarantee out of the picture.