Thank you

Donald Hall on performing poetry.

You mean Jonathan Swift *doesn't* want to eat babies?

Satire detection fail by Vox Day.

Thanx to james_nicoll

Something else like…

Jo Walton is doing a series of "If you like Writer X, you might like Writer Y," beginning with Robert A. Heinlein.

Don't touch that dial!

Willard Romney, by his own admission, is the wrong candidate for 47% of the American people. That probably understates the case, since he is the wrong candidate for workers and women in general. And yet we are told that the presidential race is neck-and-neck, which suggests that the electorate is even stupider than I believe it to be, and that's saying something. Herewith, a plausible conspiracy theory to explain the apparently dramatic race.

Thanx to Mercury Rising.

Cross-post to bear

Cross-posting to livejournal is intermittent. Are they having a hurricane in Russia, too?

Numbers

I am likely to assume that British Members of Parliament [MPs] are smarter than American Congresspersons, perhaps because I am more familiar with the latter. After some thought, I have decided that the following does not change this belief:

A recent survey by the Royal Statistical Society’s “getstats” campaign asked MPs to give the probability of getting two heads when tossing a coin twice. More than half failed to get the answer correct – including a humiliating three-quarters of Labour MPs.

source. Thanx to andrewducker