Thursday Miscellany!

• Standard and Poor was minutes away from cutting the US credit rating to its lowest level. Yesterday's deal means we avoided that; however, I'm still not sure we've avoided a credit rating downgrade to a less scary level. In fact, Dagong, a Chinese credit rating term, cut the US credit rating from A to A-. We'll have to see whether other, more influential rating agencies follow suit. Analysis like this and this will not help our case.


• During the Iraq war, the US relied on mercenaries"contractors" for security services, meals, and other bits of logistics. Those contractors are now being let go.


• Russian opposition leader navalny has avoided jail time on embezzlement charges; those charges are seen in the West as trumped up by the Kremlin to shut him up.


• Why do male writers, by and large, suck at writing female characters? One strong hypothesis here. (Taken from a reader of this blog, whom I thank.)


• My friend is on the crew of Milagro Theater's "Day of the Dead" show, Corrido Cavalera, which opens tonight. The Oregonian's Faith Cathart took some stunning photos of a rehearsal session here. Check them out!

Princeton Election Consortium - Nate Silver for Math Geeks

If you want a sneak preview of what will happen in the 2014 elections, go ahead and add this site to your RSS feeds now. You can also add it to your friends list by adding princetonelect. Just go do it and get it over with. I'll be referring to this site in future postings.