Obama is still behind nationally but I am not sure that he is beaten. He looks like the future of the Democratic party to me and Hillary looks like the past. Her husband isn’t helping in that regard either. Jay Cost the HorseRace Blogger, the best analyst of polls I have ever encountered, isn’t calling [...]

At the end of a friendly exchange on the subject of conspiracy theory or ‘counterknowledge’ between Richard Landes and ShrinkWrapped which was started by Landes’ review of Counterknowledge by Damien Thompson there is the following commentary by Landes on the final paragraph of Shrinkwrapped’s post: (I’ve labeled who said what for clarity. Both quotes are [...]

Here is a different approach to assessing the situation in Iraq. It is a small part of a larger assessment of political risk around the world by Ian Bremmer entitled A Political-risk Outlook for 2008. He is a political scientist who makes his living advising Wall Street clients specifically on the political risk aspect of [...]

As the extraordinary drama of the American elections approaches its first decisive moment, the February 5th or Super Tuesday primaries, I find myself once again turning to Jay Cost, the The Horse Race blogger. I believe he is the best technical analyst of both polling and the the candidate’s underlying strategies. Jay Cost, “is [to [...]

I began buying the New York Times regularly in 1956 at Fletcher’s on the Square in Bellows Falls Vermont when I started high school. The Times had always been around the house because my father subscribed to it off and on and I must have developed the habit of reading it regularly by ’56. Nothing [...]

I bought an Asus eee PC yesterday. What is special about the Asus eee PC is the form factor. It is really small. I have read umpteen reviews, many with good pictures showing the size – but it didn’t prepare me for how small it was when I saw it. Here it is with several [...]

I was recently happily surprised to see a US presidential candidate – any candidate would do – show an awareness of the nature of the new media environment created by the Internet and in particular its darker side. I ran into this exchange near the end of this Pajamas Media interview of John McCain by [...]

As someone who follows the war in Iraq closely it has surprised me that the Democratic candidates are still very negative about the surge and still refuse to acknowledge the progress General Petraeus has made even when put on the spot during the New Hampshire debates. It is unremarkable that pro Republican sites have been [...]

To me one indication that the Obama phenomena is real is the simultaneous success of Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is a much less well known and a less attractive candidate on the issues to conservatives than Obama is to liberals. Huck seems to be a big government Republican – which also describes the present occupant of [...]

Peter Magnusson is engaged in a project to try to pin down Quality on the Web. He points to the crux of the matter thus: “on the Internet, everybody can see if you’re an idiot, they just can’t do much about it.” He does not disclose exactly what he is trying to do about it [...]