Simon van Zuylen-Wood

A new round in our ongoing national conversation about the “end of men” has kicked off in the past month. First, Hanna Rosin released her eponymous book on the subject. Then, the Atlantic published “The Weaker Sex,” all about inadequate men. Finally, last weekend, an opinion piece in the Times argued that men were not, […]

I’m not fond of the notion that the “crowds” are inherently “wise.” Sure, InTrade works pretty well. But that only tells us that crowds are pretty good at predicting binary outcomes like election results. For much else, I’m willing to ignore the crowds. That we should receive restaurant recommendations from Yelp! or get our book […]

In response to habitual conservative claims that polling firms are cooking the books in Obama’s favor, Jon Chait recently made the case that poll denialism was understandable, even if its reasoning was wrong. A good deal of what undecided voters who are just now tuning in will learn about Romney is that he’s a loser […]

Since it began its so-called “secret books project” in 2002, Google has scanned 20 million books from university libraries, usually displaying portions of each book for free, and making them fully-searchable. For that effort, it has spent much of the past decade embroiled in litigation with publishers and authors who contend the company is violating […]

Jaded by relentless GOP vote suppression efforts directed towards phantom voter impersonators, it’s easy to forget that real fraud actually happens. Today Adam Liptak of the New York Times surveys some recent problems with absentee ballots, which now make up twenty percent of all votes. Recently, he writes, mayoral elections in Indiana and Illinois have […]

No longer content to sit idly by while the commentariat uses him as a political talking point, Big Bird finally speaks out on “Saturday Night Live.”

For the most part, Mitt Romney’s education platform—a move away from Bush and Obama’s federal accountability measures– reflects contemporary GOP orthodoxy. To a lesser degree, he has spoken favorably about Obama’s Race to the Top effort. During Wednesday night’s debate, however, he floated two ed reform ideas that don’t seem broadly popular with anyone. First, […]

“A former Charles Manson follower who was imprisoned for a double murder engineered by Manson won a recommendation of parole Thursday after 40 years in prison.”–CBS News, October 5, 2012. “Thirty years ago, the state accounted for nearly 70% of [California’s] public higher education funding; today, it’s 25%…The [California] prison system saw its state funding […]

It’s old news by now that Mitt Romney wants to fire Big Bird (and Rick Santorum wants to eat him, apparently) by cutting federal subsidies to PBS, where Sesame Street is broadcast. Romney’s remark should be tempered, no surprise, with some context on his own history with public broadcasting subsidies. Today’s Boston Globe brings news […]

After Obama’s downer performance in Denver, what could be worse for Chicago than a looming vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan? In one corner the goofy, irrepressible gaffemeister; in the other, the intellectual mitochondrion of the Republican Party. The conventional wisdom on the Biden-Ryan debate seems to favor the Janesville Kid. Indeed, conservatives […]