Frederik Pohl's Blog, page 20

  "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." —Aaron Levenstein

  The first sign of something called "Occupiers" was in an ad in a little Canadian — that's right, Canadian — magazine called Adbusters and published in Vancouver, British Columbia. It displayed a picture of the bronze figure of a bull which decorates Wall Street, with a ballet dancer posed on it. The only text [...]

Algis Budrys became my client within a matter of just months before, crippled by money troubles, I closed my literary agency's door forever. I hadn't really had enough time to position him in the kind of publications he deserved, but I had made a pretty good start. I had sold almost all of his backlog [...]

Question: Who is the best of the four remaining Republican candidates? Answer: There is no best of these four professional politicians. None of them has proposed remedial action for, or even shown they know a problem exists with, the most serious problem we and the rest of the world faces, namely the mounting ferocity of [...]

Some numbers about assorted people's grasp of arithmetic: % of population who think they know enough household mathematics to handle problems: 80% % of population who got at least one-half of test questions on a sixth-grade arithmetic test right: 42%   The less math people know, the more confident they are in their decisions. Scores [...]

  "Why do we need a Constitution? We already have the Koran, which has all the laws we need as a society." —Abdelmajid Habibi

Citizenship test answers: Name one of your Senators. (If you have none say why.) Answer correct for answerer. What is the number of your Congressional district? (If you have none say why.) Answer correct for answerer. What does the President's Cabinet do? Advise the President. Name two Cabinet-level offices. Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, [...]

You have now read about the fascinating life, or lives, of the man who has looked like our next president more often — but also more briefly — than any other American. And in the last two days, two things have happened. Newt has released his tax returns, while his main opponent, Mitt Romney, has [...]

Way back when — specifically in 1996 — the world was different in several ways. I was writing a regular column for Andy Porter's great old newsmagazine SF Chronicle and my great but definitely never old wife, Betty Anne Hull , had allowed herself to be nominated to represent our 8th Illinois district of Congress [...]

These questions are taken from the USCIS New Naturalization Test (Civics, History and Government). We will provide five questions and if you get three right, we will let you become a citizen. (The actual government test is stricter.) Name one of your Senators. (If you have none say why.) What is the number of your [...]