Taraji P. Henson and the Oscar of Doom!

Taraji P. Henson and the Oscar of Doom!

Taraji P. Henson and the Oscar of Doom!

A mostly political weblog.
Feb. 21 2009 9:24 PM

Taraji P. Henson and the Oscar of Doom!

Saturday, Februay 21, 2009

Will Taraji P. Henson destroy Nate Silver ? Oscar oddsmakers say yes! ... But given Silver's track record, the odds on Henson (you can currently get 19-1) look mighty attractive. ... Except, you know, she wasn't that good in the movie. ... There is also Dana Stevens' methodological objection :

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The Academy's voting practices don't involve "logistic regression"; they involve actual regression , the acting out of primitive, unmappable affects like grief, pity, fear, and desire. 

  8:10 P.M.

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Isn't the border fence shovel ready ? ... [ Thks. to reader C.W.8:03 P.M.

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"The Best We Can Do": A few days ago I said there were only four GM cars I would consider buying. That was before I bought the most recent Consumer Reports guide, in which the Cadillac CTS and the GMC Acadia --about which GM VP Lutz said, "This is the best we can do" --get below-average reliability ratings. That leaves two, the Chevy Malibu and Pontiac G8 (and one of those two, the G8, is too new for reliability reports). ... The case for further subsidizing GM would seem to be almost entirely macroeconomic (i.e., bankruptcy now would deepen the recession). ... 7:32 P.M.

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Don't Answer That, Part XVIII: Mark Hemingway, among others, is charging that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "is angling for a 'big chunk"' of the stimulus bill's $8 billion for high-speed rail "for his pet project," a magnetic-levitation train between L.A. and Las Vegas. ... Am I crazy--I sort of like the idea of a high-speed rail line to Vegas. It wouldn't destroy existing communities--the route is mostly desert. It seems like a good full scale test bed for new technology that, if it works, can later be applied in more densely-populated, harder-to-build-in areas.  And it would open up the route for development. (Don't worry about an office park boom destroying the fragile Barstow ecology. Barstow is already a mess.)  .. As Keynesian boondoggles go, this seems like a promising one (although, Yglesias notes , there are other possible routes) ...   7:07 P.M.

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