and unrelated to distracting smears. Tomorrow's Sunday Times (available by 9 pm
here) on a lighter side has a small story on things near and dear to all our hearts:
The Political Brain speculates on hard-wire differences between Repubs and Dems.
As the Times reported not long ago, a team of UCLA researchers analyzed the neural activity of republicans and democrats as they viewed a series of images from campaign ads. And the early data suggested the most salient predictor of a 'Democrat' brain was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence: either the Bush ads that featured shots of a smoldering ground zero or the famous
'Daisy' ad from [LBJ]'s 1964 campaign...
Now, besides proving that Dems do have brains, this has been already taken one step further.
Sometimes the most unexpected press releases pop up in our inbox. For example, today we got one from the Raelians demanding compulsory brain scans for all elected officials and candidates for public office. The stated rationale: "Mental and emotional balance is the least we should expect from the people running for public office."
Crazy idea or sound public policy? You decide. Here's the full release...
I wonder what code your HMO uses for "politician" under 'disease categories' to justify the scan.
[editor's note, by DemFromCT] feel free to use as a SBVT-free open thread... there's plenty of threads for that elsewhere.