One Scary Thought

As Alex Tabarrok suggested today, Sarah Palin has a greater chance of becoming President than does John McCain.

The betting markets are currently giving McCain about a 16% chance of winning. If McCain wins then let's assume that all things considered Palin has a 40% chance of becoming president (either if McCain dies in office--a 33% possibility given his age and history of melanoma--or as his successor). If McCain loses many people suggest Palin could be a future Republican leader (in fact, most Republicans have labeled her "the future of the GOP") so let's put her chances of becoming president in that scenario at 12%. Thus:

Pr(Sarah Palin as President) = .16*.4 + .84*.12 = 16.48 > 16% = Pr(John McCain as President).

Uh-oh.

Christopher Hitchens's Latest

The latest article from Hitchens on Slate hits home with what I've been saying about Sarah Palin ever since she was nominated to the Republican ticket. Some Americans cringe when confronted with Barack Obama's dubious religious past (with many an ignoramus decrying his middle name, Hussein, as evidence of his association with Islam). I, on the other hand, cringe when reminded of Sarah Palin's past as a Pentecostal and an advocate of teaching only creationism in schools and banning books.

With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. We never get a chance to ask her in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now. This would make DNA or any other kind of research pointless, whether conducted in Paris or not. Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.

Get the article here.

Krugman Wins Nobel

Many of you know Paul Krugman for his factually inaccurate and acerbic Op-Ed in the NY Times. Well, my friends, guess who won the Nobel in Economics? You betcha (wink)--Paul Krugman. His work in labor markets, my friends, garnered him the award, research that really was quite groundbreaking, even to the average hockey mom and Joe Sixpack. If not for his twice weekly column, many journalists believe he would have won the Prize several years ago. Darn right he is intelligent, but perhaps his idelogy rears its head too often for him to be taken seriously. Perhaps the Nobel will change that, my friends.