Nate Silver’s Braying Idiot Detractors Show That Being Ignorant About Politics Is Like Being Ignorant About Sports
By David Roher
In case you haven’t been hanging around the benighted corners of the political internet lately, there’s an idiotic backlash afoot against Nate Silver, the proprietor of the FiveThirtyEight blog who made his name as one of the sharpest baseball analysts around.
With the election just a few days away, analysis based on state poll aggregation—Silver’s included—suggests that Barack Obama is a heavy favorite against Mitt Romney. The president holds a slight but strong lead in key electoral states. This doesn’t sit well with many political pundits, who insist that the outcome is anyone’s guess and headed down to the wire. Many of these people have directed their anger toward Silver, whose New York Times-hosted blog has predicted a strong probability of an Obama victory since June. They insist he is biased or sloppy in his methodology, even though they seem unaware of how he makes his predictions and of statistical analysis in general. They say—and I’m not kidding—he’s too gay for this sort of work.
In retrospect, we should’ve seen it coming. It was only a matter of time before the war on expertise spilled over into the cells of Nate Silver’s spreadsheets. In fact, in some ways it had already. Turns out that nothing could have prepared Silver better for the slings and arrows of a surly and willfully obtuse pundit class than working on the fringes of sportswriting over the past decade.
![jezebelcom:
Can we take a minute just to appreciate the best photo of the President of the United States that I’ve ever seen? And by best, I obviously mean sassiest. Seriously, this could be the cover of Sassy magazine! SASSYPANTS FOR PREZ.
[via Washington Post]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcu8w7D6qe1rk5df6o1_500.jpg)
Can we take a minute just to appreciate the best photo of the President of the United States that I’ve ever seen? And by best, I obviously mean sassiest. Seriously, this could be the cover of Sassy magazine! SASSYPANTS FOR PREZ.
[via Washington Post]
Do whatever you need to do to make yourself feel better, but do not confuse your World Net Daily caliber, therapeutic, conservative alternative reality fantasy babble for what actually happened.
(reblogging for truth and posterity)
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I *had* to make this.
Thanks to the idiocy of certain #Sherlock fans on tumblr, I upvoted the preview. AND, I’m going to watch the show, DVR it on a different cable box, watch on On Demand, and anything else measurable.
Because, while I love Sherlock and #Cumberbatch and Martin, I also realize that this show doesn’t negate the other. They can and will co-exist. And Sherlock isn’t “the original” but merely one a very long line of interpretations of Sherlock Holmes, (even an animated one) and the world goes on.
So, grow up, Sherlock fans.
Even if you’re not in any related fandoms.
I’m talking to BBC Sherlock fans, too.
Look, it’s really uncool to try and make this thing flop before you see more than a three-minute clip. No matter why they made it, or when, it’s obviously going to be pretty dissimilar to the BBC version (which is making people complain, for some reason? Even though copying the BBC characterization and look would be met with equal or greater resistance? idek)
This is my act of goodwill, as a BBC Sherlock fan and a potential Elementary fan. You can like two things at once, for different reasons! You can like them for the same reasons! You can totally avoid one thing because you absolutely loathe it while not actively trying to destroy it for the people who might like it!
You can stop flooding the tag with hate so people can get to nice graphics!okay one step at a time hereI could get into how great it is that a WOC has a great role for once, and how there are literally hundreds of other adaptations, including modern ones (and future ones and one where they are mice and an anime featuring Holmes as a little girl) and how this one is no worse. How it’s not actually erasing textual queerness because no matter how great the fanfic was, no matter how much it teased, BBC Sherlock itself was never queer. It “no-homo’d” all over the place pretty bad, in fact. And even if you disagree with me there, we will get to keep the BBC fanfic! We will get to keep the show! Nothing will change, except there will also be a show featuring Lucy Liu kicking ass that is totally unrelated to the BBC version!
So please. Take the olive branch, Sherlock tag. Let this thing have a chance to find its feet instead of raving all over it like a pack of wolves who like to say “WRONG” and “ANDERSON DID IT” a lot. It’s going to make the fandom look a lot better in the long run, instead of becoming “that one fandom that killed another one out of pure malice.”
Please reblog!!
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