How did you and Claire McCaskill come to be at the same wedding? In Michigan, no less.

Her husband, the new husband's great-uncle, was the officiant.  I know the bride from undergrad.

Go for it... even senators are people too

At the very least, she's on the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, so we could talk NSF

You're the best!

I'm just not sure what the benefit to the Midwest is of selling our public property to businesses.  Is there something intrinsic to toll roads that privatization would help with?

I'm strongly extroverted, as any of the forumnites who have met me offline can probably attest

Do we even have toll roads?  I would support a motion abolishing them if so, and at the very least I don't think I support privatizing them.

I was at a wedding last night in Michigan, and saw a name tag that said Claire McCaskill.  "What an astounding coincidence!" I said.  Nope.  Not a coincidence.  I may have shown the Claire McCaskill my flaily dance moves last night.  But I don't really know her by sight in person, and I had so competely written off that it was the real Claire McCaskill that I didn't even look up a picture of her or the like.  The bride Facebook messaged me today to tell me about it.  And to say she'd be fine with me dropping by her office anytime.  Might take her up on it

Torie, the poll you posted asks if one approves of Obama's handling of _______. Young people could be disapproving from the left. TNF & Opebo disapprove of Obama's handling of the deficit but that hardly makes them lean GOP.

There's this, and also, crucially, there's no control condition, Torie; what are young peoples' attitudes towards the GOP on those issues?  I disapprove of Obama's leadership on the deficit, but I disapprove of the GOP's leadership much more.  "Raise taxes and raise [domestic] spending" isn't great, but it makes a lot more sense to me to cut the deficit than "cut taxes and raise [military] spending".

Possible configurations:

B) 4-3

1) Duluth-Northern Exurbs-St.Cloud
2) Western Minnesota - Manitoba to Iowa, with a somewhat irregular border.
3) Southeastern Minnesota.

This version exchanges St.Cloud for Brainerd and Bemidji.  Like the previous version this will require about 27,000 persons shifted from Sherburne to the metro area.

This one seems very nice!

Sounds lovely!

Ok, I was wanting an arguing but I find we pretty much agree on everything (except maybe one or two semantic points) so yeah...

Like I've said, taking the history of sexuality class I took really opened my eyes to what your viewpoint is actually trying to do with respect to your critiques of science: keep us scientists humble and working to make the world a better place.  Once I figured that out, responding appropriately to criticisms like this became a lot easier

Allen County, Indiana

1992
Bush—55,003—45.2% (+2.3% vs. IN, +7.7% vs. US)
Clinton—39,629—32.6% (-4.2% vs. IN, -10.4% vs. US)
Perot—25,809—21.2% (+1.4% vs. IN, +2.3% vs. US)
Other—1,136—0.9% (+0.4% vs. IN, +0.3% vs. US)

2012
Romney—84,613—57.5% (+3.0% vs. IN, +10.3% vs. US)
Obama—60,036—40.8% (-3.1% vs. IN, -10.2% vs. US)
Other—2,597—1.8% (+0.1% vs. IN, 0 vs. US)

In other words, Fort Wayne is a pretty consistent town.

Bush will win because he was in a war, and the economy is doing decently.

I'm forming a 'Liberal League' around my school, and the #2 reason why people say no is because Bush was in a war.  I asked one of them what would happen if he hadn't gotten into the war, and she said she wouldn't like Bush.

And, of course, the #1 reason is that either I'm stupid, or the organization is stupid.

*sigh* The perils of being a young overenthusiastic liberal.

Any thoughts what the DFL would draw if they have total control in 2020?

That probably depends on whether they want to violate the usual sensibilities by linking Mpls to outer suburbs. The public has not looked highly on those type of games in MN. Minnesota nice and all.

No one except partisans cares enough about gerrymandering to take it out on the offending party, ever.

Yes, but members of political parties are residents of their state, too.  Given Minnesotans' very limited experience with single-party control of government, anything could happen, including a coalition of Republicans and "Good Government" Democrats trying to force through a decent map.

Your most recent maps make angels cry, muon.

Just another sign of the embarrassing state of science reporting.  Pretty much any and all neuroscience stories I see are full of fail, and in just about all of them all the "experts" are, well, promoted as "leading scientists", aka, "people at a big name institution listed under the directory of faculty".

Ok, this is totally true (Which reminds me for now on, read the linked article before commenting).

Which doesn't mean that there aren't 'real' scientists who don't do this kind of thing either.

Oh, certainly it doesn't! Grr.

I think your side's nonsense about how "provide an objective and qualitative difference that denotes a mental disorder OH WAIT YOU CAN'T THEREFORE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MENTAL HEALTH" is wrong

As for someone who has suffered on-off from depression over the years, that's not my position at all. And I certainly wouldn't go as far as the radical anti-psychiarists of the 60s and 70s did and say, for example, there is no such thing as schizophrenia (or at least that there are no conditions that amount to some similar diagnostic category)

we do similar things with what constitutes "high blood pressure" or "obesity" or "fever" or "AIDS" and no one seems to have any problems

A concept of 'obesity' for example is different because it is much, much easier to a) know what you are measuring (weight and body fat) and b) correlating it to effects upon health. Ditto for blood pressure and AIDS. Albeit fever admittely is slightly more problematic - as it refers to a category of symptoms and behaviours caused by such.

Well, yes and no.  I mean, it's true, right now we don't have similarly "objective" measures for some mental health issues, but we're getting quite a bit better.  I know language best (duh ) and it might be that we could use issues with language to better get a handle on mental illness... surprisingly, there's a small cottage industry right now looking at abnormal language interpretation and production in people with schizophrenia.  But my argument would be that a half measure is better than no measure; though, o/c, we all seem to be in agreement here that what this crazy lady is proposing is more of an "anti-measure".

Heck, even with simple words like "packed" as in "the theatre is packed".  If you have a theatre that seats 1000, and there are 1000 people in the seats, it's fair to say that the theatre is packed If you take 1 away, it doesn't seem like we'd want to change our assessment of the theatre as "packed".  Yet if you follow this logic to its conclusion, there could be 0 people in the theatre and the thing would no longer be "packed". 

The amount of seats at a theatre can be quantified quiet easily. Level of 'sanity'/'attachment to reality' is not so easy.

Well, that's true, but I just happened to use an example that has easily quantifiable numbers.  How about an amphitheater in a public park?  Or a cafeteria?  Or the like?  Regardless of whether we can count the number of people in a location, we can still describe it as "packed" if it's, well, packed.  The same applies to a lot of words.

Mental disorders are just a convenient label for behaviors, beyond a certain point we want to say make life more challenging, and for which we may want to say that we could follow similar treatments for people with this behavior and expect similar outcomes.  That said, it of course makes no sense to stigmatize people with mental disorders, particularly given that the definitions we've come up with (e.g., in the DSM) seem to be notoriously unreliable.

Ok, I agree with this. Actually NIMH has recently dropped the DSM-V as a guideline for mental disorders preferring to replace strict behavioral diagnosis' with spectrumal results (which is much much better imo).

Amen.  I'm glad they did.  Some of the reliability results for the DSM criteria are embarrassing, and this will free up the field for inferring useful categories rather than sticking with the DSM silliness.

I think this is a much better proposal than what we have now, but I would support amendment of the following clause:

Article 11. Geographic restrictions upon brothel locations and locations where the sale of sexual services are allowed shall be determined at the county level. No county may outlaw the sale of sexual services or prevent the opening or establishment of a brothel.

In fact, I would support this being more of an "opt-in" proposal, rather than an "opt-out" (and especially instead of what is proposed here, "hos or bust").  This is a big change in how counties would operate, and municipalities should not be forced to host legalized sex work.

Furthermore, I would oppose the existence of privately-run brothels.

This is why leading neuroscientists should not be in charge of public policy and/or mental health.

She's certainly not a leading neuroscientist; she's not even a tenure-track faculty member or lecturer.  (In her own words: "I’m a freelance science writer affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford")

Sorry. I should have put inverted commas around the term leading neuroscientists.

What is important here anyway is that this person was termed as such.

Just another sign of the embarrassing state of science reporting.  Pretty much any and all neuroscience stories I see are full of fail, and in just about all of them all the "experts" are, well, promoted as "leading scientists", aka, "people at a big name institution listed under the directory of faculty".

o/c, I think your side's nonsense about how "provide an objective and qualitative difference that denotes a mental disorder OH WAIT YOU CAN'T THEREFORE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MENTAL HEALTH" () is wrong; we do similar things with what constitutes "high blood pressure" or "obesity" or "fever" or "AIDS" and no one seems to have any problems.  Heck, even with simple words like "packed" as in "the theatre is packed".  If you have a theatre that seats 1000, and there are 1000 people in the seats, it's fair to say that the theatre is packed.  If you take 1 away, it doesn't seem like we'd want to change our assessment of the theatre as "packed".  Yet if you follow this logic to its conclusion, there could be 0 people in the theatre and the thing would no longer be "packed".  Mental disorders are just a convenient label for behaviors, beyond a certain point we want to say make life more challenging, and for which we may want to say that we could follow similar treatments for people with this behavior and expect similar outcomes.  That said, it of course makes no sense to stigmatize people with mental disorders, particularly given that the definitions we've come up with (e.g., in the DSM) seem to be notoriously unreliable.

It's so cute when non-linguists discover sociolinguistics!

Be established by who?

Perhaps we could also encourage some sort of self-monitoring for prostitutes.

That seems like a less-than-insane map.  Though I wonder whether the courts, etc., might like the districts a bit more connected than that.  The Walz southern district has I-90, but the north and middle ones are a bit more random.

This is why leading neuroscientists should not be in charge of public policy and/or mental health.

She's certainly not a leading neuroscientist; she's not even a tenure-track faculty member or lecturer.  (In her own words: "I’m a freelance science writer affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford")

for the record on that amendment.

I, ilikeveirn, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of Most Serene Representative of the Most Supreme Republic of the Midwest and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the Most Supreme Republic of the Midwest, so *hughughug* me Dave.

Red > Green (Red is my favorite color).