In the end, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron probably didn't need to go hat-in-hand to Ed Miliband, but the dead-enders in his own party forced him to. Regardless, marriage equality has passed the House of Commons tonight 375-70, will probably pass the House of Lords easily:
But the prime minister, who attempted to reach out to his party by emailing a "personal note" to all members saying that he would never work with anyone who "sneered" at them, suffered the humiliation of having to plead with the Labour party for support. He also saw more than 100 Tory MPs, including the cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, vote against him on the first amendment of the day.
The prime minister will understand the dangers of relying on opposition support for a flagship measure after he personally ensured that Tony Blair's schools reforms survived with Tory support in 2006 three months after he became leader. Within months, supporters of Gordon Brown forced Blair to name the date of his departure the following year.
But who could become Tory leader next? William Hague? And how likely would that make an election before 2015?
I'm glad the U.S. isn't the only English-speaking country with swivel-eyed loonies, but still, can you imagine the U.S. House passing marriage equality by the same margin? (366 to 68, for those keeping score at home.) Hell, marriage equality has overwhelming support in Illinois but somehow it can't get to the house floor in Springfield. It's disappointing that the U.K. could have marriage equality before Illinois—but that's fine. The U.K. can teach the U.S. something about conservative values in the meantime.
Apparently Chicago has one:
Typically, a team of four to six researchers fans out, whacking through the brush looking for holes surrounded by fresh digging or other signs, such as tracks, fur or scat. Sometimes they find two or more in a day, but often they strike out.
At a promising site near Hoffman Estates, a team recently dug for an hour. Forest preserve biologist Chuck Rizzo wormed his way in and explored it with his burrow cam — an infrared camera with its cable stiffened by a noodle, one of those long, floating pool toys. He was pulled out by his feet, looking disappointed.
When a den is found, researchers put their ears to the opening and listen. The mother may still be close, so sometimes they can hear her barking — either to warn the pups or draw away the intruders.
You know what else we have in Chicago? Coyote puppy photos.
Oh, the results of the census: the Chicago area has about 2,000 coyotes, and litter sizes have leveled off. That suggests the area has about the population it can support, as long as they don't start eating fast food.
If you're a geography nerd, whatever you do, don't try playing Geoguessr. It will take hours of your life away.
The idea: it puts you down at a random spot on Google Street View, and you have to figure out where you are. Here's one of my attempts, before I realized I needed to do some work today.
I blame Randall Munroe.
A little grisly accident via The Atlantic:
Now you know the last thing a whole bunch of salmon ever saw.
I have 21 hours of budget to finish a substantial project at work, and then another project to finish by the end of May. Posting may be iffy the next couple of days.
Coming up, the final figures on how much moving to Azure saved me.
It's 26°C and sunny in Chicago right now, so I'm going for yet another walk. Regular posting to resume later today or tomorrow.
The BBC has a list of 10 euphamisms that bring back memories of political scandals past:
2. "Discussing Uganda" In 1973, the satirical magazine Private Eye reported that journalist Mary Kenny had been disturbed in the arms of a former cabinet minister of President Obote of Uganda during a party. Variations of "Ugandan discussions" or "discussing Uganda" - the term is believed to have been coined by the poet James Fenton - were subsequently used by the Eye to describe any illicit encounter, and the phrase soon became part of common usage.
I am still trying to work out how badgers fit into it...
It's sobering that babies born the day I graduated college can take their first legal drinks today.
Via Sullivan, American Public Media's Kai Ryssdal yesterday committed an act of journalism against the former defense secretary:
I don’t know if y’all had a chance to listen to Donald Rumsfeld being torn a new one on Marketplace yesterday, but it was glorious to hear. Rummy was no doubt expecting softball questions about his new book Rumsfeld’s Rules and instead was grilled about how the wisdom in his book is in stark contrast to his work with Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve never felt a man squirm through airwaves like that.
I had to rewind a couple of times during the interview. As Sullivan said, "this guy is dangerously out of touch with reality, even as he insists he alone grasps reality."
Via Sullivan, Max Fischer at WaPo found an interesting proxy for racial tolerance:
Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society.
Here’s what the data show:
Anglo and Latin countries most tolerant. People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America. The only real exceptions were oil-rich Venezuela, where income inequality sometimes breaks along racial lines, and the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of its adjacency to troubled Haiti. Scandinavian countries also scored high.
Here's the map:
I'd love to see this data mapped at the U.S. county level...