This is a time of the year when the phrase “luck of the Irish” is often heard. What “luck”? Except for the golden age before 1171 AD, and the “Celtic Tiger” years from 1990 to 2007, I would not wish the “luck of the Irish” on my enemies! The luck of the Irish, for most of these years, has been the English.
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During the mid-20th century the image of the cigar was a rather tacky one. Its high class image flourished in the First Gilded Age, 1865-1917, and again in the Second Gilded Age, approximately 1975 to the present day. In the […]
Down With the Macron!
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The Median Center of Population and Why It Matters
The ‘mean center of population’ gets a lot of publicity. But it is misleading, and it even misled me for 70 years. There is a less publicized ‘median center of population’ that is more useful for some purposes, like where […]


