A new study from the University of North Carolina shows that conservative trust in science has hit an all-time low, with just 35% saying they had "a great deal of faith in science". As far as those losing trust in it, they increasingly find science to be as elitist and 'intellectual' (amazing how 'intellectual' has become an insult in some circles).
In January 2011, I wrote about how nature doesn't care what happens in politics. It's going to do what it's going to do and that's that. It doesn't have approval ratings. It doesn't debate. It simply does what it does and you just have to deal with it.
MSNBC's Maddow Blog wrote an entry yesterday entitled "Science need not be a partisan issue". It isn't. We may choose to make political hay of science, we may decide legislation and elections based on our perceptions of science, and the workings of science may be up for debate, but the actual science itself is not partisan. Just like nature, science doesn't care what politics thinks. Science doesn't take a vote. Trust it or not, but science will do what science will do whether we agree on what it does or not, whether we even understand what it does or not, and whether or not we govern our lives in a manner that agrees with what it does. The Earth did not cease to revolve around the sun just because the Catholic Church said it was the other way around. The Earth will not cease to warm up just because someone hired a lobbyist to say it isn't. Oil will not replenish itself on a timeline convenient to you just so you can keep driving to work.
This is true for pretty much any of the hard subjects. There are aspects of life and the universe that are governed by facts, absolutes, right and wrong answers, and things beyond plausible human control. Nature is one. Science is another. Math. History. You can try to cover up these things, pretend they are not there and that something else is, but they're still there. You cannot legislate those things away. Well, you can, but those things will still be true. You can't vote science out of office. You can't legislate pi as exactly 3, even though someone has tried. And what has happened in the past cannot unhappen, no matter how much one may try to hide, alter, or destroy the records. You may win a political debate about such things, but you're still going to be wrong.
In fact, even the attempt to bring law or politics into a scientific debate is enough to utterly demolish the credibility of an argument in the scientific world- if you feel the need to bring legislation or lawsuits down on the people you're debating with, the feeling is that you must know your argument doesn't hold up and now you're just doing nothing more than trying to 'win' instead of trying to be right.
One notable example of this, as Discarded Science by John Grant explains, came when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Utah made the announcement in 1989 that they had discovered cold fusion. After having published their findings, other scientists leapt on it to check their work and could not replicate the results. And as even the Mythbusters will tell you, if you can't replicate the results, it's no good. (Though some scientists think they have replicated the results, many more have not, and what might have happened is that they discovered something, just not cold fusion.) But more than anything else, Pons and Fleischmann went down in flames when the University of Utah started to threaten lawsuits against their critics. As Grant penned in Discarded Science, "It's an obvious rule of thumb that only a scientific illiterate would attempt to use a lawsuit to influence a scientific debate." Or as one of those critics, Dr. Michael H. Salamon, put it, "It's outrageous. It is really an unparallelled attack on academic rights. You don't threaten scientific colleagues with lawsuits. That just doesn't happen."
Trust or don't. But science, regardless of how or whether we understand it, is what it is and your opinion on what is, and the political opinions on what is, will not change that.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
You Know That "Winter" We Had?
According to a new report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, winters like that may be the new normal. The 594-page report, with authors from 62 countries, has basically said that stopping climate change wholesale is pretty much impossible at this point, given woefully inadequate action taken by the world as a whole. Asia and low-lying areas are expected to take the brunt of it, particularly island nations and the Third World, but every nation is expected to take damage.
First against the wall among large cities is expected to be Mumbai, India, which the report warns could become uninhabitable. Miami was also singled out as a city at particular risk, as were Bangkok, Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City, Kolkata, Yangon and Guangzhou.
And yes, there will be more, stronger heat waves. Stronger and stronger and stronger as the years go by.
The focus, according to the report, is now on trying to implement "low regrets" solutions over the next few decades. As Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution puts it, "That's a time frame where most of the climate change that will occur is already baked into the system and where even aggressive climate policies in the short term are not going to have their full effects."
Or in other words, 'you all spent too many years bickering over who ought to take responsibility and do something before everyone else first, nobody did anything, and now it's too late and people are going to die. Congratulations, assholes. Hope you're happy.'
First against the wall among large cities is expected to be Mumbai, India, which the report warns could become uninhabitable. Miami was also singled out as a city at particular risk, as were Bangkok, Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City, Kolkata, Yangon and Guangzhou.
And yes, there will be more, stronger heat waves. Stronger and stronger and stronger as the years go by.
The focus, according to the report, is now on trying to implement "low regrets" solutions over the next few decades. As Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution puts it, "That's a time frame where most of the climate change that will occur is already baked into the system and where even aggressive climate policies in the short term are not going to have their full effects."
Or in other words, 'you all spent too many years bickering over who ought to take responsibility and do something before everyone else first, nobody did anything, and now it's too late and people are going to die. Congratulations, assholes. Hope you're happy.'
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Teach Me How To Dugan
I think we've gone quite long enough without a TED talk around here.
So we're going to remedy that. I hereby hand you over to the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Regina Dugan. (And then I run off to sneak in some book work.)
So we're going to remedy that. I hereby hand you over to the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Regina Dugan. (And then I run off to sneak in some book work.)
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Random News Generator- Swaziland
Swaziland, that little dot carved out of the northeast corner of South Africa, is pretty much as scary and angry lately as everywhere else in the news.
Swaziland's mainstream press is severely hamstrung, ranking 144th in the 2011-12 Press Freedom Index out of 179 countries. As such, those unhappy with the ruling absolute monarchy of King Mswati III often go to Twitter and Facebook to express their displeasure over what is widely seen as a kleptocracy, with the monarchy cutting funds to education, pensions and disaster management, living extravagantly while the general population is beset by the world's highest HIV infection rate, showing a 26.1% infection rate among adults 18-49. In addition, there is 40.6% unemployment, with 81% of the population living on less than $2 US a day (62.9% live on under $1.25). Swaziland also suffers from the second-lowest life expectancy on Earth, one of only two countries- the other Mozambique- where someone born today is not expected to see their 40th birthday. The life expectancy is 39.6 years. (King Mswati III is 43 years old.)
They may not be able to rage about all this in social media for much longer, at least legally, as the monarchy is mulling making such acts illegal. According to one senator (Swaziland is an enforced one-party state), Thuli Msani, "It's like, the moment Swazi people cross the border to neighbouring countries they begin to go on a campaign to disrespect their own country and king. Surely there is something that must be done with them. There must be a law that can take them to task."
Given that protests are common and organized via social media, such as this one yesterday, onlookers do not see this as likely to be taken lightly. It's not like there's all that much left to lose.
Swaziland's mainstream press is severely hamstrung, ranking 144th in the 2011-12 Press Freedom Index out of 179 countries. As such, those unhappy with the ruling absolute monarchy of King Mswati III often go to Twitter and Facebook to express their displeasure over what is widely seen as a kleptocracy, with the monarchy cutting funds to education, pensions and disaster management, living extravagantly while the general population is beset by the world's highest HIV infection rate, showing a 26.1% infection rate among adults 18-49. In addition, there is 40.6% unemployment, with 81% of the population living on less than $2 US a day (62.9% live on under $1.25). Swaziland also suffers from the second-lowest life expectancy on Earth, one of only two countries- the other Mozambique- where someone born today is not expected to see their 40th birthday. The life expectancy is 39.6 years. (King Mswati III is 43 years old.)
They may not be able to rage about all this in social media for much longer, at least legally, as the monarchy is mulling making such acts illegal. According to one senator (Swaziland is an enforced one-party state), Thuli Msani, "It's like, the moment Swazi people cross the border to neighbouring countries they begin to go on a campaign to disrespect their own country and king. Surely there is something that must be done with them. There must be a law that can take them to task."
Given that protests are common and organized via social media, such as this one yesterday, onlookers do not see this as likely to be taken lightly. It's not like there's all that much left to lose.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The 'Dream Ticket'
If you'll think back to the 2008 Democratic nomination process, you might recall the phrase 'dream ticket'. This was used when considering the possibility of Hilary Clinton, second place in the nomination race, being the running mate of Barack Obama, the eventual nominee.
Rick Santorum has now invoked the possibility of being Romney's running mate.
This leads to one simple question: has this ever actually happened? Has any ticket ever been the 'dream ticket'- the runner-up being the running mate? And if so, what happened to that dream ticket in November?
(Thanks to Our Campaigns for providing some much-needed stats on everything that follows.)
In the first few elections, the answer was yes. In fact, it was mandated as such- each elector cast two votes, the person who gained the most votes became President, and the person with the second-most votes became Vice President.
In 1788 and 1792, this process gave George Washington John Adams as his VP. In 1796, John Adams got Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and Adams both technically had running mates, but under the rules of the day, they were on their own.
So that's not really in the spirit of what we're looking for. So let's discount those and keep going through the timeline, up to the point where candidates began to have formal running mates who stood to enter office with their nominees.
1800: There were only two candidates per party- Thomas Jefferson and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney from the Federalists, and John Adams and Aaron Burr from the Democratic-Republicans. The Constitution had not yet been altered to allow self-selection of running mates, so those were the tickets by fiat. Still not really what we're trying to get at.
From 1804, party bosses elected the running mate without input from the nominee. However, they were free to choose the runner-up or someone else. So this is where we can pick up.
1804: N/A. Neither candidate had effective opposition for the nomination.
1808: The Federalists had no effective opposition. Democratic-Republican nominee James Madison was given third-place finisher George Clinton. We need 2nd place. No dream ticket here.
1812: N/A. Neither candidate had effective opposition.
1816: Democratic-Republican James Monroe took noncandidate Daniel D. Tompkins. ('Noncandidate' in this context means 'did not run for the Presidential half of the ticket'.) The Federalists had no effective opposition.
1820: N/A. James Monroe was completely unopposed.
1824: Four candidates ran for President in a post-Federalist environment. The unanimous Vice President, John C. Calhoun, was none of these people.
1828: N/A. Neither candidate had effective opposition.
1832: The Democrats and National Republicans saw no effective opposition. The Anti-Masonic nominee was William Wirt, who took noncandidate Amos Ellmaker as his running mate.
1836: The Democrats had no opposition. The Whigs wound up with four candidates and two tickets, but both nominees, William Henry Harrison and Hugh Lawson White, took noncandidates as their running mates.
1840: Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren somehow wound up without a running mate. Whig nominee William Henry Harrison got noncandidate John Tyler as a running mate.
1844: The Whigs had no effective opposition. Democratic nominee James Polk got noncandidate George M. Dallas as a running mate.
1848: Whig candidate Zachary Taylor got noncandidate Millard Fillmore. Democratic nominee Lewis Cass got William Orlando Butler, who never placed higher than fifth in the convention balloting. Free Soil nominee Martin Van Buren took fourth-place finisher Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
1852: Whig nominee Winfield Scott took noncandidate William Alexander Graham. Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce took noncandidate William R. King.
1856: Democratic nominee James Buchanan took noncandidate John C, Breckenridge. Republican nominee John C. Fremont took noncandidate William L. Dayton. Know Nothing nominee Andrew Johnson took noncandidate Andrew Jackson Donelson.
1860: Constitutional Union nominee John Bell took fourth-place finisher Edward Everett. Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln took noncandidate Hannibal Hamlin. Northern Democratic nominee Stephen A. Douglas took noncandidate Herschel V. Johnson. Southern Democratic nominee John C. Breckenridge took noncandidate Joseph Lane.
1864: Republican nominee took noncandidate Andrew Johnson. Democratic nominee George McLellan took noncandidate George H. Pendleton.
1868: The Republicans had no opposition. Democratic nominee Horatio Seymour took Francis Preston Blair, who topped out at fourth place during convention balloting and wasn't among the final five receiving votes.
1872: Liberal Republican nominee Horace Greeley took Benjamin Gratz Brown, who started in fourth place and dropped out early in convention balloting. The Republicans had no opposition.
1876: Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes took noncandidate William Wheeler. Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden took runner-up Thomas A. Hendricks. DREAM TICKET #1. We'll get back to them at the end.
1880: Republican nominee James Garfield took noncandidate Chester A. Arthur. Democratic nominee Winfield Scott Hancock took noncandidate William Hayden English.
1884: Republican nominee James G. Blaine took John Logan, who came in fourth in balloting. Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland took Thomas A. Hendricks, who came in third in balloting.
1888: The Democrats had no opposition. Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison took noncandidate Levi Morton.
1892: Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison took noncandidate Whitelaw Reid. Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland took Adlai E. Stevenson, who came in fifth in balloting.
1896: Republican nominee William McKinley took noncandidate Garret A. Hobart. Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan took noncandidate Arthur Sewall.
1900: The Republicans had no opposition. Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan took noncandidate Adlai E. Stevenson.
1904: Republican nominee Teddy Roosevelt took noncandidate Charles W. Fairbanks. Democratic Alton B. Parker took noncandidate Henry G. Davis.
1908: Republican nominee William Howard Taft took noncandidate James S. Sherman. Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan took noncandidate John W. Kern.
1912: Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson took Thomas R. Marshall, who topped out at fourth place in convention balloting. Republican nominee William Howard Taft took noncandidate James S. Sherman, and then replaced him with noncandidate Nicholas Murray Butler. The Bull Moose Party had no opposition.
1916: The Democrats had no opposition. Republican nominee Charles Evans Hughes took Charles W. Fairbanks, who topped out at fourth place in balloting.
1920: Republican nominee Warren Harding took Calvin Coolidge, who topped out at sixth place in balloting. Democratic nominee James Cox took noncandidate Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1924: Republican nominee Calvin Coolidge took noncandidate Charles G. Dawes. Democratic nominee John W. Davis took Charles W. Bryan, who topped out at 10th place in convention balloting. The Progressives saw no opposition.
1928: Democratic nominee Al Smith took noncandidate Joseph Taylor Robinson. Republican nominee Herbert Hoover took Charles Curtis, who came in third place in balloting.
1932: Republican nominee took noncandidate Charles Curtis. Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt took John Nance Garner, who topped out at third place in balloting.
1936: Republican nominee Alf Landon took Frank Knox, who came in somewhere indiscriminate behind runner-up William Borah. Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt stuck with noncandidate Garner.
1940: Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt took noncandidate Henry A. Wallace. Republican Wendell Willkie took noncandidate Charles W. McNary.
Right about here is when we shift to noting the results of primary elections and not the convention itself. Also around this point: the nominee was starting to get to have their choice of running mate.
1944: There was no Democratic opposition. Republican nominee Thomas Dewey took third-place primary finisher John W. Bricker.
1948: Republican nominee Thomas Dewey took primary vote leader Earl Warren. (Dewey, despite being the front-runner by convention time, had finished fourth in the primaries.) DREAM TICKET #2. Democratic nominee Harry Truman took noncandidate Alben Barkley. The Dixiecrats had no opposition.
1952: Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson took noncandidate John Sparkman. Republican nominee Dwight Eisenhower took noncandidate Richard Nixon.
1956: There was no Republican opposition. Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson took runner-up Estes Kefauver. DREAM TICKET #3.
1960: Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy took Lyndon B. Johnson, who technically ran but didn't campaign, attempting to be a compromise candidate in case the leaders ate each other alive; Hubert Humphrey would be the runner-up. Republican nominee Richard Nixon took noncandiate Henry Cabot Lodge.
1964: Democratic nominee Lyndon B. Johnson took 13th-place finisher Hubert Humphrey. Republican nominee Barry Goldwater took noncandidate William E. Miller.
1968: Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey took noncandidate Edward Muskie. Republican nominee Richard Nixon took noncandidate Spiro Agnew.
1972: Democratic nominee George McGovern took noncandidate Thomas Eagleton, then replaced him with noncandidate Sargent Shriver. Republican nominee took noncandidate Spiro Agnew.
1976: Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter took noncandidate Walter Mondale. Republican nominee Gerald Ford took noncandidate Bob Dole.
1980: Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter took noncandidate Walter Mondale. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan took runner-up George H.W. Bush. DREAM TICKET #4.
1984: Republican nominee Ronald Reagan took noncandidate George H.W. Bush. (He's not the runner-up this time. Harold Stassen was.) Democratic nominee Walter Mondale took noncandidate Geraldine Ferraro.
1988: Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis took noncandidate Lloyd Bentsen. Republican nominee George H.W. Bush took noncandidate Dan Quayle.
1992: Republican nominee George H.W. Bush took noncandidate Dan Quayle. Democratic nominee Bill Clinton took noncandidate Al Gore. There was no Reform opposition.
1996: Democratic nominee Bill Clinton took noncandidate Al Gore. Republican nominee Bob Dole took noncandidate Jack Kemp.
2000: Democratic nominee Al Gore took noncandidate Joe Lieberman. Republican nominee George W. Bush took noncandidate Dick Cheney.
2004: There was no Republican opposition. Democratic nominee John Kerry took runner-up John Edwards. DREAM TICKET #5.
2008: Democratic nominee Barack Obama took sixth-place finisher Joe Biden. Republican nominee John McCain took noncandidate Sarah Palin.
-------------------
So. Paring it down to just the dream tickets from 1804 on, you've got:
1876: Samuel J. Tilden/Thomas A. Hendricks, Democrats. The ticket lost to Rutherford B. Hayes 185 electoral votes to 184, but only after an Electoral College dispute in which the Hayes ticket stole enough electoral votes to win election.
1948: Thomas Dewey/Earl Warren, Republicans, and, well, Dewey Defeats Truman. Truman and Barkley got 303 electoral votes, Dewey/Warren got 189, and Dixiecrats Strom Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright snagged 39.
1956: Adlai Stevenson/Estes Kefauver, Democrats. They were spanked by Eisenhower and Nixon 457-73.
1980: Ronald Reagan/George H.W. Bush, Republicans. They smoked Carter and Mondale 489-89. They then easily won re-election in 1984 as a non-dream-ticket.
2004: John Kerry/John Edwards, Democrats. They lost to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney 286-251.
So if Romney were to take Santorum on board, it wouldn't be unprecedented. It has happened before. However, dream tickets have a won/loss record of 1-4. One of the losses really should have been a win, but at the end of the day, it was still a loss. On average, the dream tickets have picked up 237.2 electoral votes. Their opposing tickets have averaged 264 electoral votes.
The dream ticket isn't quite as much of a dream as the name might imply. If the nominee is taking the runner-up, it may not be a matter of giving their party the best of both worlds, so much as it is done to keep the party from going at each other's throats and getting so divided that the opposition party cruises past them. As much as the best-of-both-worlds rationale may be played up- and it will- simply holding the party together is a large part of why it was considered in 2008, and it may play into Santorum's evoking it now.
The next question: will Romney take the chance?
Rick Santorum has now invoked the possibility of being Romney's running mate.
This leads to one simple question: has this ever actually happened? Has any ticket ever been the 'dream ticket'- the runner-up being the running mate? And if so, what happened to that dream ticket in November?
(Thanks to Our Campaigns for providing some much-needed stats on everything that follows.)
In the first few elections, the answer was yes. In fact, it was mandated as such- each elector cast two votes, the person who gained the most votes became President, and the person with the second-most votes became Vice President.
In 1788 and 1792, this process gave George Washington John Adams as his VP. In 1796, John Adams got Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and Adams both technically had running mates, but under the rules of the day, they were on their own.
So that's not really in the spirit of what we're looking for. So let's discount those and keep going through the timeline, up to the point where candidates began to have formal running mates who stood to enter office with their nominees.
1800: There were only two candidates per party- Thomas Jefferson and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney from the Federalists, and John Adams and Aaron Burr from the Democratic-Republicans. The Constitution had not yet been altered to allow self-selection of running mates, so those were the tickets by fiat. Still not really what we're trying to get at.
From 1804, party bosses elected the running mate without input from the nominee. However, they were free to choose the runner-up or someone else. So this is where we can pick up.
1804: N/A. Neither candidate had effective opposition for the nomination.
1808: The Federalists had no effective opposition. Democratic-Republican nominee James Madison was given third-place finisher George Clinton. We need 2nd place. No dream ticket here.
1812: N/A. Neither candidate had effective opposition.
1816: Democratic-Republican James Monroe took noncandidate Daniel D. Tompkins. ('Noncandidate' in this context means 'did not run for the Presidential half of the ticket'.) The Federalists had no effective opposition.
1820: N/A. James Monroe was completely unopposed.
1824: Four candidates ran for President in a post-Federalist environment. The unanimous Vice President, John C. Calhoun, was none of these people.
1828: N/A. Neither candidate had effective opposition.
1832: The Democrats and National Republicans saw no effective opposition. The Anti-Masonic nominee was William Wirt, who took noncandidate Amos Ellmaker as his running mate.
1836: The Democrats had no opposition. The Whigs wound up with four candidates and two tickets, but both nominees, William Henry Harrison and Hugh Lawson White, took noncandidates as their running mates.
1840: Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren somehow wound up without a running mate. Whig nominee William Henry Harrison got noncandidate John Tyler as a running mate.
1844: The Whigs had no effective opposition. Democratic nominee James Polk got noncandidate George M. Dallas as a running mate.
1848: Whig candidate Zachary Taylor got noncandidate Millard Fillmore. Democratic nominee Lewis Cass got William Orlando Butler, who never placed higher than fifth in the convention balloting. Free Soil nominee Martin Van Buren took fourth-place finisher Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
1852: Whig nominee Winfield Scott took noncandidate William Alexander Graham. Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce took noncandidate William R. King.
1856: Democratic nominee James Buchanan took noncandidate John C, Breckenridge. Republican nominee John C. Fremont took noncandidate William L. Dayton. Know Nothing nominee Andrew Johnson took noncandidate Andrew Jackson Donelson.
1860: Constitutional Union nominee John Bell took fourth-place finisher Edward Everett. Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln took noncandidate Hannibal Hamlin. Northern Democratic nominee Stephen A. Douglas took noncandidate Herschel V. Johnson. Southern Democratic nominee John C. Breckenridge took noncandidate Joseph Lane.
1864: Republican nominee took noncandidate Andrew Johnson. Democratic nominee George McLellan took noncandidate George H. Pendleton.
1868: The Republicans had no opposition. Democratic nominee Horatio Seymour took Francis Preston Blair, who topped out at fourth place during convention balloting and wasn't among the final five receiving votes.
1872: Liberal Republican nominee Horace Greeley took Benjamin Gratz Brown, who started in fourth place and dropped out early in convention balloting. The Republicans had no opposition.
1876: Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes took noncandidate William Wheeler. Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden took runner-up Thomas A. Hendricks. DREAM TICKET #1. We'll get back to them at the end.
1880: Republican nominee James Garfield took noncandidate Chester A. Arthur. Democratic nominee Winfield Scott Hancock took noncandidate William Hayden English.
1884: Republican nominee James G. Blaine took John Logan, who came in fourth in balloting. Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland took Thomas A. Hendricks, who came in third in balloting.
1888: The Democrats had no opposition. Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison took noncandidate Levi Morton.
1892: Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison took noncandidate Whitelaw Reid. Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland took Adlai E. Stevenson, who came in fifth in balloting.
1896: Republican nominee William McKinley took noncandidate Garret A. Hobart. Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan took noncandidate Arthur Sewall.
1900: The Republicans had no opposition. Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan took noncandidate Adlai E. Stevenson.
1904: Republican nominee Teddy Roosevelt took noncandidate Charles W. Fairbanks. Democratic Alton B. Parker took noncandidate Henry G. Davis.
1908: Republican nominee William Howard Taft took noncandidate James S. Sherman. Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan took noncandidate John W. Kern.
1912: Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson took Thomas R. Marshall, who topped out at fourth place in convention balloting. Republican nominee William Howard Taft took noncandidate James S. Sherman, and then replaced him with noncandidate Nicholas Murray Butler. The Bull Moose Party had no opposition.
1916: The Democrats had no opposition. Republican nominee Charles Evans Hughes took Charles W. Fairbanks, who topped out at fourth place in balloting.
1920: Republican nominee Warren Harding took Calvin Coolidge, who topped out at sixth place in balloting. Democratic nominee James Cox took noncandidate Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1924: Republican nominee Calvin Coolidge took noncandidate Charles G. Dawes. Democratic nominee John W. Davis took Charles W. Bryan, who topped out at 10th place in convention balloting. The Progressives saw no opposition.
1928: Democratic nominee Al Smith took noncandidate Joseph Taylor Robinson. Republican nominee Herbert Hoover took Charles Curtis, who came in third place in balloting.
1932: Republican nominee took noncandidate Charles Curtis. Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt took John Nance Garner, who topped out at third place in balloting.
1936: Republican nominee Alf Landon took Frank Knox, who came in somewhere indiscriminate behind runner-up William Borah. Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt stuck with noncandidate Garner.
1940: Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt took noncandidate Henry A. Wallace. Republican Wendell Willkie took noncandidate Charles W. McNary.
Right about here is when we shift to noting the results of primary elections and not the convention itself. Also around this point: the nominee was starting to get to have their choice of running mate.
1944: There was no Democratic opposition. Republican nominee Thomas Dewey took third-place primary finisher John W. Bricker.
1948: Republican nominee Thomas Dewey took primary vote leader Earl Warren. (Dewey, despite being the front-runner by convention time, had finished fourth in the primaries.) DREAM TICKET #2. Democratic nominee Harry Truman took noncandidate Alben Barkley. The Dixiecrats had no opposition.
1952: Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson took noncandidate John Sparkman. Republican nominee Dwight Eisenhower took noncandidate Richard Nixon.
1956: There was no Republican opposition. Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson took runner-up Estes Kefauver. DREAM TICKET #3.
1960: Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy took Lyndon B. Johnson, who technically ran but didn't campaign, attempting to be a compromise candidate in case the leaders ate each other alive; Hubert Humphrey would be the runner-up. Republican nominee Richard Nixon took noncandiate Henry Cabot Lodge.
1964: Democratic nominee Lyndon B. Johnson took 13th-place finisher Hubert Humphrey. Republican nominee Barry Goldwater took noncandidate William E. Miller.
1968: Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey took noncandidate Edward Muskie. Republican nominee Richard Nixon took noncandidate Spiro Agnew.
1972: Democratic nominee George McGovern took noncandidate Thomas Eagleton, then replaced him with noncandidate Sargent Shriver. Republican nominee took noncandidate Spiro Agnew.
1976: Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter took noncandidate Walter Mondale. Republican nominee Gerald Ford took noncandidate Bob Dole.
1980: Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter took noncandidate Walter Mondale. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan took runner-up George H.W. Bush. DREAM TICKET #4.
1984: Republican nominee Ronald Reagan took noncandidate George H.W. Bush. (He's not the runner-up this time. Harold Stassen was.) Democratic nominee Walter Mondale took noncandidate Geraldine Ferraro.
1988: Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis took noncandidate Lloyd Bentsen. Republican nominee George H.W. Bush took noncandidate Dan Quayle.
1992: Republican nominee George H.W. Bush took noncandidate Dan Quayle. Democratic nominee Bill Clinton took noncandidate Al Gore. There was no Reform opposition.
1996: Democratic nominee Bill Clinton took noncandidate Al Gore. Republican nominee Bob Dole took noncandidate Jack Kemp.
2000: Democratic nominee Al Gore took noncandidate Joe Lieberman. Republican nominee George W. Bush took noncandidate Dick Cheney.
2004: There was no Republican opposition. Democratic nominee John Kerry took runner-up John Edwards. DREAM TICKET #5.
2008: Democratic nominee Barack Obama took sixth-place finisher Joe Biden. Republican nominee John McCain took noncandidate Sarah Palin.
-------------------
So. Paring it down to just the dream tickets from 1804 on, you've got:
1876: Samuel J. Tilden/Thomas A. Hendricks, Democrats. The ticket lost to Rutherford B. Hayes 185 electoral votes to 184, but only after an Electoral College dispute in which the Hayes ticket stole enough electoral votes to win election.
1948: Thomas Dewey/Earl Warren, Republicans, and, well, Dewey Defeats Truman. Truman and Barkley got 303 electoral votes, Dewey/Warren got 189, and Dixiecrats Strom Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright snagged 39.
1956: Adlai Stevenson/Estes Kefauver, Democrats. They were spanked by Eisenhower and Nixon 457-73.
1980: Ronald Reagan/George H.W. Bush, Republicans. They smoked Carter and Mondale 489-89. They then easily won re-election in 1984 as a non-dream-ticket.
2004: John Kerry/John Edwards, Democrats. They lost to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney 286-251.
So if Romney were to take Santorum on board, it wouldn't be unprecedented. It has happened before. However, dream tickets have a won/loss record of 1-4. One of the losses really should have been a win, but at the end of the day, it was still a loss. On average, the dream tickets have picked up 237.2 electoral votes. Their opposing tickets have averaged 264 electoral votes.
The dream ticket isn't quite as much of a dream as the name might imply. If the nominee is taking the runner-up, it may not be a matter of giving their party the best of both worlds, so much as it is done to keep the party from going at each other's throats and getting so divided that the opposition party cruises past them. As much as the best-of-both-worlds rationale may be played up- and it will- simply holding the party together is a large part of why it was considered in 2008, and it may play into Santorum's evoking it now.
The next question: will Romney take the chance?
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The Next SOPA Clone Down The Pike
Yep, we've got another one to shoot down.
The next one is called ACTA, or the 'Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement', and the name belies the fact that this one is international instead of purely American in scope.
And if this one doesn't go through, some Internet service providers are prepared to just go over the heads of the legislature and perform the intended actions themselves. According to the CNN link, a proposed format being tossed around is called the Copyright Alert System, also known as the 'six strikes' system: on suspicion of copyright violation, your service provider would give you a warning. (Not necessarily an actual violation, just something that looks suspicious.) On the sixth red flag raised, your ISP would dramatically throttle down your Internet speed and redirect you to a page telling you to contact the ISP.
So that's your outrage alert for the day.
I've got a dentist appointment tomorrow to handle a chipped tooth, I'm going to schedule an off day because I don't know how long that'll take or what mindset I'll be in afterwards.
The next one is called ACTA, or the 'Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement', and the name belies the fact that this one is international instead of purely American in scope.
And if this one doesn't go through, some Internet service providers are prepared to just go over the heads of the legislature and perform the intended actions themselves. According to the CNN link, a proposed format being tossed around is called the Copyright Alert System, also known as the 'six strikes' system: on suspicion of copyright violation, your service provider would give you a warning. (Not necessarily an actual violation, just something that looks suspicious.) On the sixth red flag raised, your ISP would dramatically throttle down your Internet speed and redirect you to a page telling you to contact the ISP.
So that's your outrage alert for the day.
I've got a dentist appointment tomorrow to handle a chipped tooth, I'm going to schedule an off day because I don't know how long that'll take or what mindset I'll be in afterwards.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
How To Be A Successful Criminal
Step 1: Don't be a criminal.
Step 2: If you must be a criminal, do not rob a bank across from the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee.
Step 3: If you must rob the bank across the street from the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee, pay attention to your escape route. If three blocks into your escape route, you notice a police car up ahead, select a different route.
Step 4: Do not run alongside the police car.
Step 5: If you have a book in your possession titled "How To Be A Successful Criminal", do not bring it with you to the robbery.
Step 6: Please note that the book does not actually give such instructions, but rather attempts to steer at-risk youth away from a life of crime altogether, or failing that, attempts to explain how the skill sets used in a life of crime can be redirected towards more legitimate pursuits.
When the cops joked about the criminal not reading the book, it's possible they had read it themselves, but more likely, they hadn't and simply didn't know how right they were.
Step 2: If you must be a criminal, do not rob a bank across from the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee.
Step 3: If you must rob the bank across the street from the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee, pay attention to your escape route. If three blocks into your escape route, you notice a police car up ahead, select a different route.
Step 4: Do not run alongside the police car.
Step 5: If you have a book in your possession titled "How To Be A Successful Criminal", do not bring it with you to the robbery.
Step 6: Please note that the book does not actually give such instructions, but rather attempts to steer at-risk youth away from a life of crime altogether, or failing that, attempts to explain how the skill sets used in a life of crime can be redirected towards more legitimate pursuits.
When the cops joked about the criminal not reading the book, it's possible they had read it themselves, but more likely, they hadn't and simply didn't know how right they were.
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