Likelihood of Success

Ron Coleman’s pretty good blog

Glad to be Ron

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 18, 2007

IMAO:

Ron Paul has gotten the coveted Andrew Sullivan endorsement if you needed any more proof his supporters are primarily crazy, hysterical people.

It certainly does help when things align nice and neat like that. Spacemonkey adds: “I just want to know if when Ron Paul restores the Constitution will it have that new Constitution smell?”

Posted in Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »

Rolling down the river

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 17, 2007

Donald Fagen explains, as sympathetically as you can hope for, the legacy of Ike Turner.

Posted in Americana, Ars Longa | Leave a Comment »

The brains behind the operation

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 17, 2007

Pamela Meister explodes the myth of intellectualism as a (much less the) sine qua non of qualification for the job of President of the United States.

After Reagan — who was far wiser, and smarter than given credit for, but still not strictly speaking a heavy hitter in any sort of academic sense — how can we even still ask this question? One reason is that the elites in this country still consider Reagan not only an idiot, but a failure as a President; so, too, George W. Bush, despite all the facts.

One thing’s for sure: The number one brain in this campaign must be Barack Obama, the “one who got away” — one of the few people on the planet with a path opened to him to for a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship who simply walked away from it. I don’t know if that’s really “smart,” though it seems to have “worked out” for him; still in terms of being a testament to recognition for unusual intellectual gifts, the way he was regarded at that stage of his career is extraordinary.

Of course, he should not be President.

I’m glad Meister wrote the article and is wrestling with this issue, because it’s sure to come up again once the nominations are in and the Republican is automatically painted — regardless of who it is — as the dim bulb in the race. The idea that qualification for leadership correlates meaningfully with linearly-measured intellectual achievement is a preposterous position to take, and is a favorite of people, ironically, who are not nearly as smart as they think they are.

As for me, well, for a guy who’s always showing off his brains, I’ve been pretty humbled as time goes on about what pigskins on the wall can and can’t accomplish, and the humanity and wisdom a person with no academic credentials at all can teach, and then some.

Posted in Americana, Politics and Poker, Scientificus | 6 Comments »

Hotwired

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 17, 2007

The New York Times looks into why a lot of seemingly “with it” old folks have brains that look more or less the same as people with Alzheimer’s:

[W]hen these sharp old folks die, autopsy studies often reveal extensive brain abnormalities like those in patients with Alzheimer’s. Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas and Yaakov Stern at Columbia University Medical Center recall that in 1988, a study of “cognitively normal elderly women” showed that they had “advanced Alzheimer’s disease pathology in their brains at death.” Later studies indicated that up to two-thirds of people with autopsy findings of Alzheimer’s disease were cognitively intact when they died.

“Something must account for the disjunction between the degree of brain damage and its outcome,” the Columbia scientists deduced. And that something, they and others suggest, is “cognitive reserve.”

Cognitive reserve, in this theory, refers to the brain’s ability to develop and maintain extra neurons and connections between them via axons and dendrites. Later in life, these connections may help compensate for the rise in dementia-related brain pathology that accompanies normal aging. . . .

Cognitive reserve is greater in people who complete higher levels of education. The more intellectual challenges to the brain early in life, the more neurons and connections the brain is likely to develop and perhaps maintain into later years. Several studies of normal aging have found that higher levels of educational attainment were associated with slower cognitive and functional decline.

Dr. Scarmeas and Dr. Stern suggest that cognitive reserve probably reflects an interconnection between genetic intelligence and education, since more intelligent people are likely to complete higher levels of education.

This is fascinating and encouraging — especially for people who have had the opportunity for lots of intellectual stimulation, and hotwiring, so to speak, early in life.  Never underestimate the importance of good wiring!  It’s almost as important as a good heart.

Posted in Scientificus | 2 Comments »

More Blog Awards – Right Wing News

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 17, 2007

John Hawkins has hit us with the 6th Annual Right Wing News Conservative Blog Awards.  Here’s an interesting list:

Most Overrated Blog

4) Power Line (3)
4) Redstate (3)
4) Wonkette (3)
3) Hot Air (4)
2) Instapundit (7)
1) Daily Kos (8)

People are still reading Wonkette?

Posted in Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »

Comma comedian

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 17, 2007

I am not an expert on the Second Amendment, but other people are. One of them is Glenn Reynolds, and he’s got a very good insight into something that had been eluding my understanding, based on a piece by Adam Friedman that focuses on the placement of commas in the text:

[T]he Framers considered an armed populace important, but didn’t trust the government — at either the state or federal levels — to arm the people. Since the armed populace (the “militia” was said to consist of “the body of the people”) was essential as a check on government power, the government couldn’t be allowed to disarm it by neglect. Thus, the Second Amendment may be “about protecting militias,” but it does so by keeping the populace armed.

Still pretty shoddy draftsmanship, but after all, they were pretty much new at this.

Posted in Lex scripta | Leave a Comment »

Obama the Unready

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 16, 2007

From the New York Times:

Former President Bill Clinton made an unusually direct attack Friday night on Senator Barack Obama, one of his wife’s leading rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, suggesting that voters who would support someone with Mr. Obama’s experience were willing to “roll the dice” on the presidency.Appearing on “The Charlie Rose Show” on PBS, Mr. Clinton repeatedly questioned Mr. Obama’s preparedness for the White House, noting that he took office in January 2005 and became a presidential candidate about two years later. (Mr. Obama was an Illinois state senator before that.)

“When is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?” Mr. Clinton said. At another point, he appeared to compare Mr. Obama to a “gifted television commentator” running for president. “They’d have only one year less experience in national politics” than Mr. Obama, he said.

Why, Bill Clinton — that scheming, philandering, political assassin! That traitor to the cause of another black man being elevated to the Presidency! That….

completely on-target Bill Clinton.

Yes, Obama is in the driver’s seat in terms of the Democratic polling right now. It’s delicious to see the coronation of Empress Inevitable be delayed or even threatened this way. But the fact is Bill Clinton has hit Obama in his absolutely most vulnerable place: His utter lack of appropriate experience for the job of President. As I wrote almost a year ago:

What struck me was the picture that went with the article — how absurdly young Obama is, especially for someone in his first term in the Senate, to run for President. Yes, black people age “better” than we flinty alabaster Europeans; and Obama is blessed too with a thin, Kenyan physique that accentuates his downright boyishness. But he doesn’t only look young: He is young, very young. We have had young Presidents, and the results have been decidedly mixed — especially in matters of judgment and maturity, in fact, especially in modern times. This does not speak to the personality of Barack Obama; but young he is, too young to for the job he says he wants now.

I understand that he is very liberal, perhaps more liberal than Senator Clinton. That would probably cause me to oppose his nomination if I were not so compelled by the idea that he is too inexperienced to be President of the United States. I am not moved by the fact that he is well-spoken, and a member of a minority that has never occupied the White House, and bright. I am all those things, too, and though I’m two years younger than he is, this is no Constitutional deficiency. Besides, I look 50, whereas he looks about 24. I think it’s time again for a round-shouldered President, and plus, I’m not quite bald yet. Yet I restrain myself despite these obvious qualifications, because I am not ready.

Senator Obama is not ready.

And yet he may win the nomination. But thanks in part to Bill Clinton, and his far better-aged better half, and the campaign they’re determined to wage against Obama, he will certainly not be elected President.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

UPDATE:  What a mess!

UPDATE:  Now a playing in a Ron Coleman Info-Me-Cial near you!

Posted in Politics and Poker | 7 Comments »

Trust us, we’re from the government

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 13, 2007

Ilya Somin:

When the Supreme Court upheld the condemnation of private property for transfer to other private parties in Kelo v. City of New London, it was in large part on the theory that courts should defer to local governments’ judgments about when the use of eminent domain is needed to promote “economic development.” However, two and one half years after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city and some seven years after the condemnation proceedings were first initiated, little or no economic development has occurred on the condemned land.

You’d almost say it’s enough to make anyone a small-L libertarian, except the fact is the Supreme Court booted this under plain old constitutional law.

Posted in Gelt, Lex scripta, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »

December presses down

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 13, 2007

A tryptich of December images from a commuter’s life in the City.

Posted in Metropolis | 4 Comments »

“They killed my husband”

Posted by Ron Coleman on December 12, 2007

Above The Law reprints a bizarre obituary evidently written by the widow of a lawyer, who believes his partners killed him by overwork.

Posted in Americana, Gelt, Lex scripta | 5 Comments »