Not opinion but mathematical analysis! With models that actually look like the real world instead of using the easiest examples. --Go here and read it. And for the "math is hard" whiners,* fear not, no calculator needed.
All thanks to Geek With A .45, who had an itch this might be the case and found someone who had preemptively scratched it!
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* Yeah, that's kind of mean but if you spent as much time as I do with people who style themselves "engineers" yet have to be dragged kicking and screaming to punch in the numbers and turn the crank...! Thankfully, neither Boss's Boss nor the XO himself suffer this peculiar aversion.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
7 comments:
Wow, excellent article! Thanks.
I found my old slide rule from college last night. I wonder if you can still get batteries for it.
What do you think about the author's contention that the electoral college forces candidates to form huge coalitions rather than seek narrow majorities? Doesn't this thwart or at least slow down the will of the people? Doesn't it encourage a homogenization of the candidates' positions in order to seek a huge mega-majority in the popular vote that will assure success in the electoral college?
If you can solve it with a calculator or a slide rule, it's not math, it's arithmetic.
Turk, I don't dislike it. I think the analysis of the EC's influence to urge office-seekers towards consensus-building as a moderating influence is spot-on. Consider that in a balanced two-party system, at least half the time it's gonna be pushing the doofii (doofuses?) away from positions one dislikes.
...Of course, it would be a lot more positive a thing under a Federal govenment of very limited powers and without political parties. The last time that condition prevailed was, h'mm, during Washinton's presidency?
My best toolbox sliderule was stolen, along with the rest of my (then) toolbox, 19 years ago. Grrrr! I've still got a 12" Pickett stashed away in my desk, just in case.
In Latin, the past-perfect imperative tense of doofus is "dooforandulum": of or pertaining to the act of wanting to have been a doofus. It's a modifying gerund.
Note to self: BZZZT, Wrong!
Presidental races didn't go wholly party-centric in an "us vs. them" way until after the early 1830s. And the first real second party, our old pals the Whigs? Pikers. Choke artists; the party didn't even last 20 years as an effective force in politics.
How 'bout that.
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