Across the Great Divide

What's the Least Pentecostal State in the U.S.?

Probably not the one you'd think, but when you see the map, you'll say, "of course!"

Hint: It's the state that's least like North Dakota, in terms of Saints.

And the site offers even more fun with 2000 Census data.

Biking on the Thin Edge.

Imaginative and astounding riding on display here. I suppose also semi-irresponsible, although pedestrians mostly appear in the shots looking to make sure the cyclist who just disappeared is not dead.

Before you try this, kids, note the fat tires and lack of a seat.

[via New York Times]

Mark Dayton and the GOP's Immaculate Innuendo.

"The Red Star," aka the supposedly liberal Star Tribune, is continuing to play out DFL governor candidate Mark Dayton's disclosure about his depression — but in a way that reads more "Red State" than commie conspiracy.

In an apparent redressing of the sympathetic column that revealed Dayton's struggles, the Strib now hands over 30 inches of counterpoint to the GOP.

"Everybody in town knew that some Democratic candidate had planned to use it against him," said Sarah Janecek, a GOP strategist and director of political coverage for Politics in Minnesota. "The game right now is the DFL endorsement. It's not a pretty time in politics."

Did you get that?

In case you didn't, the story quotes another operative, Ben Golnick, former executive director of the Minnesota GOP and regional director of the McCain campaign, for the scoop on what other unnamed DFL opponents were planning to do.

This is political jiu jitsu at its finest.

The GOP gets to float all the negative messages about Dayton by ascribing them to backstabbing DFLers and non-existent push polls. They aren't saying anything bad about Dayton, understand. It was his own terrible party that was going to do it.

Of course, now that the news is out, the claims will never be tested. And this story, without any confirmation that a plot was in the works, will stand. Talk about immaculate innuendo.

Then, just for a little icing, it concludes by comparing Dayton's non-secret with the revelations about Jon Grunseth's teen hot tub encounter (skipping over the mistress part) and Matt Entenza's oppo research on Mike Hatch. At least the latter "secret" is semi-germane, since Entenza is now in the governor's race.

Janecek is well-connected and may even be right. But saying "everybody in town knew" is not the same as putting a name with "some" Democratic candidate. And if she knew, presumably PIM would run it first. 

Instead, it ran this:

“Mark Dayton now has the news for probably at least the next two weeks,” Schultz says. “Nobody will be talking about anything else; the debate shifts to him and his qualifications for office during a normally slow news time.

“Most reporters probably wouldn’t be covering politics at this point, and now he has the opportunity to capture the news for a couple of weeks.”

Until the GOP propagandists grab it back.

How to Tell an Aspirant from a Hole in the Ground.

While many Minnesota Twitterers seemed to be following the ups and downs of the Vikes-Bears game last night, Deputy Party Chair and chief GOP propagandist Michael Brodkorb was swimming upstream with the likes of this:

RT @mzkirkpatrick: All 7 candidates pledged 2 abide by the endorsement. I'm sure @MinnesotaDFL would like such loyalty. #SD26special #mngop

Of course, this was not a display of loyalty, but recognition that without the party label, 5/7ths of those aspirants would lose to a hole in the ground, and the other two would split the hole vote.

The DFL slate has no such name brand problem, though it is a challenge to sort out the ways they differ from each other on policy, same as with the Republicans.

But you can tell who the GOP considers a threat on the DFL side — by monitoring the Deputy Chair's tweets about them.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak rates 28 mentions over the past two weeks. I had to go back that far just to find him some competition. (Candidate and House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher came in second with 10, and Sen. John Marty got the only other mention.)

Of course, all those retweets basically recirculate the same couple points, which is Brodkorb's stalk in trade. 

Seeing Her Ideas in a New Light.

Mina Bissell will never forget the reception she got from a prominent scientist visiting Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she worked. She gave him a paper she had just published on the genesis of cancer.

“He took the paper and held it over the wastebasket and said, ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ Then he dropped it in.”

– "Old ideas spur new approaches in cancer fight," New York Times

Interesting piece on new/old thinking about how cancer tumors spread, and how that spread might be arrested by addressing the healthy cells around the tumor.

“Think of it as this kid in a bad neighborhood,” said Dr. Susan Love, a breast cancer surgeon and president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. “You can take the kid out of the neighborhood and put him in a different environment and he will behave totally differently.”

“It’s exciting,” Dr. Love added. “What it means, if all this environmental stuff is right, is that we should be able to reverse cancer without having to kill cells. This could open up a whole new way of thinking about cancer that would be much less assaultive.”

There's more research to be done, especially since this direction has been largely dismissed by the cancer establishment for decades.

I also can't help but notice that two of the key scientists, whose early papers are now seen a new light, are named Mina and Beatrice.

Emmer Shows He's a GOP Prospect.

I left the comment below over at mnpACT!, where Dave Mindeman dropped a flag on Rep. Tom Emmer's "I don't know why someone hasn't floated taking some of that arts and entertainment tax and putting it toward the Vikings stadium."

Um, you just did, although in a way that allows you to step out of bounds and deny it was your idea if someone tries to tackle you. This maneuver shows Emmer is clearly GOP governor material.

Another commenter noted that Legacy amendment,  stuck in the state constitution by voters in 2008, says what the arts money is to be spent on "arts, arts education, arts access, and to preserve Minnesota’s history and cultural heritage."

Emmer is in the legislature, and he may not be the only one there who equates "arts" with "entertainment." Still, despite all the drama over the years, it's not going to be too difficult to cut the Vikings out of the arts definition.

"Cultural heritage," following "history" as it does, seems to mean Native Americans, German Turners, Slovak miners, Irish entrepreneurs, Norwegian ministers and Rondo dwellers, among others. But what about General Mills, Polaris snowmobiles and a sports franchise "meant to reflect Minnesota's place as a center of Scandinavian American culture" that has been around longer than most Minnesotans have been alive?

We can thank Rep. Emmer for illustrating so soon the folly of trying to work around legislative gutlessness by putting more bricks in the state constitution.

A President, Arrested.

A sort of valentine for Obama, from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, no less.

He is appreciative of his staff's efforts. "When you're working hard for your country and you know [he cares] it is huge." How does he show his thanks? "It's a little like a basketball game—'Thanks for that, I know what you did.' It's not a note or a pat or a call, it's a guy-to-guy thank you, 'That's cool, that's good.' You think, 'My coach got that I worked my ass off.'"

"As a person he is just an incredible human being who you can't help but love."

Number of the Day: Cowboy Mustaches.

Bryce was trim and kind of handsome in that Mormon way that makes you think a little inbreeding isn’t all that bad. He tempered the good looks some with a stubble he removed whenever he took a hot bath, which was not too often. Pinky was rounder and looked a bit like a frog, though if you said monkey, nobody would argue. He had the stubble, too, but within it, he curated a mustache that the rest of America rarely sees unless they visit Albania or deep cattle country. 

— Work in progress

Describing a couple characters who decide to open up a hunting club on someone else's land, I reached for an analog to the cowboy mustache. Albanian facial hair seemed right, but I decided to confirm my hunch.

Turns out Albanians have 27 words for mustache .

Running out of Xs for the XXLs?

Are men the new women?

This is totally unscientific, but I think men's sizes have started to go the way of women's.

Today, I bought a medium basic long-sleeved shirt made from a "performance fabric." Back in the day when I was actually performing, a medium t-shirt fit snugly but not at all constrictingly.

This shirt is not quite baggy, but let's say I could add another 20 pounds to the 20 pounds or so I've added to my marathoning weight before this shirt would fit me like a medium did in the old days.

Business Hearts are Not as Black as That.

Harvard Business Review regularly publishes case studies followed by contrasting opinions on how the executive in the case ought to deal with a touchy situation.

In my manager days, I used to read these regularly and marvel at how different wise men could draw very different conclusions from the same set of facts.

In this case, an apparent terrorist bombing, coordinated with another in the city, strikes a subway station across the street from a financial services company that trades in international currencies. The question: should the company open its lobby and cafeteria to emergency personnel dealing with the dead and wounded, or should it keep the doors locked and keep on trading?

As of today, all 26 commenters at the blog sided with community over company. Though they offered different suggestions, most agreed with this one:

What a sad world to ask this question at all, isn't it?

(I refrain even from discussing pro's and con's. If you are still undecided, just imagine yourself explaining to one of the bloodied victims, that he or she may search for shelter somewhere else: "You know, for the sake of our investors." You get the picture.)

What a sad editorial decision if HBR honestly couldn't predict the predictable one-sided responses from its business audience.

[h/t Shawn_Leonard]