Robert's Stochastic thoughts

I recall being surprised to learn that I was born, bred and then living South of the Mason Dixon line. I considered the border between Nort...

The smart and ruthless Jon Chait writes of the Trump administration "(petty graft ranging from lavish office expenses to making staff p...

Max Boot is a candidate member of the Rubin Gerson can't be a conservative anymore, because I always agree with them club of Washington ...

Jon Chait remains as enthusiastic about Barack Obama as I am, so it isn't surprising that he wrote a blog post entitled "If Only Ob...

In a clinical trial the therapy is decided by a pseudo random number generator. How can this be ethical ? People are treated differently ...

When incurious George made a total mess of everything, I hoped the man in the yellow hat would save the day. But I didn't photoshop it....

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said that he doesn’t want President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency to fund the wall because of the p...

The very wonderful Charlie Pierce faceplants here In an interview with Anderson Cooper, she [@AOC]posed a top marginal tax rate of 70 per...

(most boring title after "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative" but I couldn't resist) Web savvy ultra wonk Matthew Yglesias wrote ...

not for publication, but published here h.t. Evan Hurst CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL COMMUNICATION NOT FOR PUBLICATION. Julian Assange has publis...

In a generally excellent column on what the authoritarian depravity of Donald Trump shows about the utter worthlessness of the Republican pa...

This ad is clearly designed to go viral also I enjoyed it, so I want to reward them. Notice one aspect of the viral strategy -- the ad l...

A) CAR CD28 The question is why CARs don’t infiltrate solid tumors & why they don’t proliferate as much when targeted against a solid...

Robert Costa and Mike DeBonis wrote an excellent retrospective on the career of Paul Ryan ‘He was the future of the party’: Ryan’s farewe...

I am quite confused. I see a racially integrated group of 4 long haired kids escorted by an (also young) scary looking police officer in ri...

Dorothy was in a strange land and had no idea what would happen next. The good witch of the North said she should follow the scientific met...

Charlie Pierce wrote a great post on the abuse of the word "centrist" as a term of abuse. Then he criticized Bernie Sanders (who...

Over at twitter I learned a lot. I claimed (and claim) that there is no such thing as an uninformative prior. I also claim that the penalty...

Conservatives object to the Washington Post defining never-ever-ever Trumper Jennifer Rubin as a conservative. Reflecting, I had to admit t...

Yes, Spinal Tap is now part of federal criminal cases. We live in days of wonder not seen since druids danced naked around Stonehenge.