Photo of the day

This is from a very cool gallery of photos captured at just the right moment.  This image is pretty typical. Lots of good ones.

reddit

To vaccinate or not?

Sometimes the Onion just nails it so well.  Love this pros and cons of vaccination.  Here’s most of it:

PROS

• Helps out pharmaceutical industry
• Get to puncture child with needle
• Old family syringe shop depends on it
• Habituates children to the pain of existence
• Flies in face of science by discrediting single unanimously refuted paper from 10 years ago
• Healthier children equals friendlier waiters at Chili’s down the line
• Could save a few million children’s lives

CONS

• You have to go to a place
• Chance of developing autism 100 percent
• Puts the onus of character-building entirely on sports
• Without suffering through diphtheria, the flu, and measles, American children will become effete, pampered do-nothings
• Free lollipops promote unhealthy eating habits
• Child won’t get to be kindergarten’s Typhoid Mary
• Bullies parents into slavishly following actions recommended by decades of physicians’ peer-reviewed research that establishes an irrefutable scientific consensus

Quick hits (part II)

01) Did outside spending change the result of midterm elections?  John Sides says probably not.

2) Dan Hopkins on how incumbency isn’t what it used to be:

But more polarized parties mean that voters frequently face stark ideological choicesat the ballot box, and given that elections are more nationalized, backing an incumbent from the other party with a reputation for bringing home the bacon becomes harder to countenance.

3) Fantastically wrong things people used to believe about elephants (no knees?!)

4) Tomasky on how you just can’t tell the truth about race in America

5) Nice Reihan Salam piece about what Republicans can learn from Democrats about how to govern.

6) Julia Azari on the (very dim) outlook for judicial appointments.

7) Is the Libertarian Party starting to hurt Democrats more than Republicans?

8) You’ll be shocked to learn that post-election GOP proposals would increase the deficit.

9) It’s kind of become a truism that the media treat female candidates worse/different.  Thing is, the best evidence suggests otherwise.

10) Yglesias pushes back against the argument that the Democrats have a message problem.

11) Politico(!) with a very nice piece on how all Ebola is local (i.e., how we invest in local public health infrastructure is key).

12) Love this Dan Drezner piece on how Obama is like the Tampa Bay Rays of presidents (it was going to have it’s own post, but my 8-year old closed the tab before I saved).

13) Paleontology finds really really cool stuff and there’s surely lots more cool stuff to be found.

14) A new theory on how complex cells evolved (that whole prokaryotic to eurkaryotic is a bit of a mystery).

15) The fact that we seem locked into a cyclical nature of American politics has been one of my talking points for a while.  But I’ve never taken the time to make the case as straightforwardly as Yglesias does here.

16) If you haven’t seen this viral clip of Kevin Spacey doing impressions on demand, now’s your chance.  Great stuff.