Guilty pleasures

JT & Andy Sandberg making SNL Digital Shorts…

Holy Mother of God… they outdid themselves (and a great Susan Sarandon cameo):

Guilty pleasures

Just can’t get enough of JT… how’d that happen?

Bush and the Republican brand

Nate Silver:

As annotated in the chart below, the popularity — or lack thereof — of the President when the voter turned 18 would seem to have a lot of explanatory power for how their politics turned out later on:

Partisan ID Gap, Based on Identity of President When Voter Turned 18

It’s become common knowledge that the younger generation is highly predisposed toward Democrats. (Actually, that’s not quite right — they’re more predisposed against Republicans than they are toward Democrats — but the net effects on their voting behavior are probably about the same.) What’s more remarkable, though, is how sharp the increase in the partisan ID gap becomes at about age 25. People aged 26-34 are pretty Democratic, put people aged 18-25 are really Democratic. [...]

In general, however, this points toward the idea that partisan identification — while not exactly being “hard-wired” — can be quite persistent as the voter moves through her lifecourse. Voters who came of age during the eight years of the Bush Presidency are roughly eight points more Democratic than the rest of the country; that advantage could be worth an extra point or two to Democrats throughout the next half-century.

Sullivan casts the blame:

Republicanism has been branded as toxic in the imagination of a generation. That won’t end soon. And if Obama manages to engineer an economic recovery that lasts … then the retrospective could hurt the GOP for the rest of our lifetime. Rove will have managed the durable majority he long sought – for the Dems.

I just wonder if this will hold true in an era with ever-increasing speed of information. Does this make my generation more prone to switch sides? Could it be that our generation has political-affiliation ADHD?

I think that might be the Republicans’ only hope if they want to return viability. Otherwise, the elephant might become the new dinosaur.

Pretty sweet surfing photography/video

(Danke: Just a Guy Thing)

Tribes will change the world

ReTweet: “The Fruits of Cheney”

Andrew Sullivan:

Two Americans captured by the North Koreans and about to be put on “trial” prompted this nugget from a news story:

“The rumor was that they are being housed at one of the guest villas,” said Han S. Park, a University of Georgia expert who was visiting North Korea as part of a private U.S. delegation after the women were captured. Park told CNN International that the North Koreans scoffed at any suggestion that the Americans were receiving harsh treatment. “They laughed. ‘We are not Guantanamo.’ That’s what they said,” Park said.

We may want to “move forward”. But those in the wider world – the tyrants and the persecuted – keep seeing what’s behind us. And until we face and cauterize it, they always will.

Indeed.

Doomsday averted

…and we have cowardice to thank.

LiFePO4 battery

This is cool… mostly because that “University of Texas professor” is who I’ll be doing research with in the fall:

“It’s a revolutionary battery because it is made from non-toxic materials abundant in the Earth’s crust. Plus, it’s not expensive,’” says Michel Gauthier, an invited professor at the Université de Montréal Department of Chemistry and co-founder of Phostech Lithium, the company that makes the battery material. “This battery could eventually make the electric car very profitable.”

The theory will soon be tested, since the 100 percent electric Microcar that’s set to debut in Europe this year will be and powered by the LifePO4 battery.

Phostech Lithium’s production plant in St. Bruno, Quebec, produces the black LifePO4 powder, which is shipped across the world in tightly sealed barrels.

“The theoretical principle behind the battery was patented by a University of Texas professor in 1995. However, without the work of local chemists such as Nathalie Ravet, we couldn’t have developed it,” says Phostech Lithium engineer Denis Geoffroy.