Events

Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has run out of patience: Many Republicans now are demanding that we simply ignore the progress we've made, the extensive debate and negotiations we’ve held, the amendments we've added (including more than 100 from Republicans) and the votes of a supermajority in favor of a bill whose contents the American people unambiguously support. We will not. We will finish the job. As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by...

NPR ran a story this morning on gender-bending chickens: Michael Clinton of the University of Edinburgh studies these peculiar chickens, called "gynandromorphs." They're split down the middle: One side looks male; the other side, female. Clinton wanted to know how this happened. When he started studying the half-and-half birds, Clinton figured there would have been some weird chromosomal abnormality so the gonads would send out scrambled hormonal signals. But that turned out to be wrong. The chickens...

You never need to watch cable news again (NSFW): The British version:

After months of beautiful weather I finally arranged a flight check-out at a local flight school. I had to get an hour of additional training to learn how to use the Garmin G1000 flight instrument panel yesterday, but today's flight went just like any other check-out. (Google Earth track.) My passport, unfortunately, is at the Chinese Consulate in Chicago getting a visa stuck in. So I'll have to wait until I get it back to rent planes. This is because the TSA believes, as would anyone, that only U.S....

I mentioned that the traffic and chaos in Delhi just seems to work most of the time. Sometimes, however—as when 60 bicycle rickshaws try to make a right turn through traffic at the same time—it doesn't: I'm curious what everyone is saying...though I can guess.

Last photo from Ponder Cove, Parker happy enough to levitate: I also forgot to mention the sign on the door that suggested the B & B's proprietors were our kind of people:

First one from Windsor Place at Janpath, opposite Le Meridien hotel: Second from a bicycle rickshaw going throw Chandni Chowk: More as time and bandwidth permit.

Via reader AS, Floating Sheep analyzed the relationship between bars and grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada: We had expected that grocery stores would outnumber bars and for most parts of North America that is the case. But we could also clearly see the "beer belly of America" peeking out through the "t-shirt of data". Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a...

Can anyone figure out the Best Picture voting, and why they changed it? One economist tried: To dig deeper into the radical change made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists we turned to Justin Wolfers, associate professor of economics in the Business and Public Policy Department at the Wharton School. This year's Oscar voting is, Wolfers says, "a fairly common election system. We call it the 'exhaustive preferential' system, or 'instant runoff system,' and it’s the way we elect our...

A North Carolina congressman wants to put Reagan on the fifty: It's a Republican -- Rep. Patrick McHenry -- who has introduced the bill to replace the general who led the Union to victory in the (War Between the States) and led the nation as well with another more modern president, the late Californian and great communicator, Reagan. Reagan transformed the nation's political and economic thinking, the way McHenry sees it. He maintains that "every generation needs its own heroes." Grant may have had his...