Sandbox (3)

Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

This is also a continuation of previous Sandbox threads (1) and (2) that have fallen victim to the dreaded page bug.

1,013 thoughts on “Sandbox (3)”

  2. I do not do good and evil in politics. I have consistently posted that I think most political activity is counterproductive. I have no opinion on whether Trump will be a disaster or not. I didn’t vote for him.

    But I like politics as a spectator sport. I watch it in lieu of football (either kind). I like trying to figure out how the world works.

    I think someone in either law enforcement or intelligence set out to prevent Hillary from becoming president. I have read a lot of things about motives. I do not really endorse this action. Even if I agreed it was a worthy goal — based on some insane level of corruption — things done for good reasons have unintended consequences.

    But I think it is silly to ignore an unprecedented kind of political activity, something done in plain sight, not hidden at all. If you think a foreign government was at the heart of it, I have to ask why the FBI seemed to support it with their unprecedented FOIA releases.

  3. Mung: I’m surprised this site is still up and running. I thought a Trump victory meant the end of the world.

    Give him a little time, he isn’t sworn in yet.

  4. walto,

    I agree. I think when poor people are actually believing it is Donald Trump who is going to look out for them, the fault lies with the Democrats.

    Well, if there is any silver lining at all, now when the country is more fucked up three years from now then it is now, the Republicans will have no scapegoats. Let’s see what their solution is and how well it works. It aint going to be pretty.

    Socialism is going to sound like a pretty good word in about two years.

  6. In the words of Beckett (later paraphrased by Annie, and then Obama):

    You must go on.

    I can’t go on.

    I’ll go on.

  16. Acartia: NBC must be using Dembski to make predictions.

    Rather late to be mentioning this, but the New York Times had the best election website. It made all other news coverage seem amateurish. They made no errors in their projections and pretty much called the close states like Michigan and Pennsylvania by 9:30.

  17. OK, now we’ve got Sessions and Bannon to go along with Pence. I hope the local “libertarians” are happy.

  22. From an interesting WashPo article:

    The divide is economic, and it is massive. According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America’s economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country’s economic activity last year.

    Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy.

  23. keiths,

    Electoral college is “vote weighting”. I’m thinking of spinning up a website that weights votes by other measures such as GDP, aid, education, criminality etc.

  24. Richardthughes:
    keiths,

    Electoral college is “vote weighting”. I’m thinking of spinning up a website that weights votes by other measures such as GDP, aid, education, criminality etc.

    That’d be interesting.

  28. Just a thought. Would it be of use to have a permanent page entitled something like “Old Favourites” where members could add links and recommendations to previous OPs and threads that they think still worth a read? I find it a bit tedious sometimes looking through for previous material that I can recall but can’t find easily.

    Would it be useful?

    Title suggestions for the page?

    Rely on comments or add suggestions to the OP?

    Forget it?

  29. How about threads we wish someone would start. Every time Patrick makes a claim and fails to back it up I think that deserves a new thread, but who has time to write so many OP’s.

    My question is, even if you had a page for “Old Favorites” how would you recall which of them to look in to find what you wanted?

    Don’t get me wrong, it might have it’s uses of people could stay on topic or we had a way to clean out all the anti-ID or anti-theist comments. 🙂

    But frankly, I have enough trouble keeping up with the present without going back through past posts. Perhaps once keiths retires you can avail yourself of his services. He’s good at dredging up the past.

  30. Mung:
    How about threads we wish someone would start. Every time Patrick makes a claim and fails to back it up I think that deserves a new thread, but who has time to write so many OP’s.
    . . . .

    If you would care to point out any instances of that, I’ll be happy to address them.

    If you cannot, a retraction is in order.

  32. Donald Trump body slams, beats and shaves Vince McMahon:

    Now trump nominates Vince McMahon’s wife to head SBE:
    http://patch.com/connecticut/greenwich/linda-mcmahon-be-nominated-trump-cabinet

    McMahon contributed more than $6 million to a pro-Trump super PAC and was a delegate at the Republican National Convention. McMahon and husband Vince McMahon were the largest donors to the Donald J Trump Foundation from 2004 to 2014.

    You know, I think now that whole thing about Trump body slamming and beating and shaving vince McMahon was all an act.

  45. Working. Now try

    1\, This is the first paragraph and I’m blathering on long enough to get this sentence to a second line, I hope. Is the paragraph long enough? Let’s see
    2. This is the first paragraph and I’m blathering on long enough to get this sentence to a second line, I hope. Is the paragraph long enough? Let’s see
    3. This is the first paragraph and I’m blathering on long enough to get this sentence to a second line, I hope. Is the paragraph long enough? Let’s see

  46. OK, it sort-of worked, except where I mistyped a comma instead of a period. But it did not indent the material in the paragraph that followed each number. But at least the numbers stayed on the points.

  47. Additional test:

    1. This is the first paragraph and I’m blathering on long enough to get this sentence to a second line, I hope. Is the paragraph long enough? Let’s see
    2. This is the first paragraph and I’m blathering on long enough to get this sentence to a second line, I hope. Is the paragraph long enough? Let’s see
    3. This is the first paragraph and I’m blathering on long enough to get this sentence to a second line, I hope. Is the paragraph long enough? Let’s see

  49. I can re-enable the Markdown plugin, if anyone would like to give it a try. It allows easy numbering and doesn’t collapse paragraphs like HTML is fond of doing.

    I disabled it when it appeared to be interfering with the LaTeX plugin. I’ll have some time to test more over the holidays if no one else would like to now.

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