Bred any good rooks lately?

[zotz]

As I'm still awake, I'll just note that the NY Times is quoting early exit polls in Michigan as giving a huge lead to Clinton and a very respectable one to Romney. But - ha ha - that's based on exactly one county having declared.

The reason I'm still up is that I've been reading Marek Kohn's "A reason for everything", a lovely set of biographical sketches of British (he says English, but Haldane wasn't - English-educated, maybe) evolutionary biologists, with an emphasis on the trend towards adaptationism, the Gould-reviled tendency to regard most features as some sort of adaptation rather than having a similar respect for happenstance. thehumanstomach lent me is copy against my strenuous objections and insisted I read it - and, well, he is very tall . . .

It's very good. Wallace comes off well, a thoroughly good and generous bloke if a bit insecure. Fisher's compared to Kenneth Williams and to Wagner, which is a neat trick. Haldane was, of course, imposing in all senses. I'd forgotten Naomi Mitchison was his sister. She had much better political judgement than he did. I'm trying to work out why I haven't read any of her fiction. Maynard Smith seems to have been very down-to-earth, while Hamilton got rather misanthropic in his old age (but no less energetic). Dawkins only gets one chapter rather than two, presumably for being very familiar, but comes over as rather admirable also. As Chris said, the little things are fascinating - most of them were fairly or completely tone deaf. Haldane had Maynard Smith tell him when a piece of music was the national anthem, so he could be sure he was sitting down. And they all went to Eton. Well, no, but there were some staggeringly posh schools involved.

Recommended.

Comments

[nils.livejournal.com]

Given that Clinton is the only major candidate running in Michigan, any other result would be somewhat surprising...

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

Given that Clinton is the only major Democratic candidate on the Michigan ballot, a huge win here is meaningless (the MI policy on write-in candidates is somewhat byzantine, and Edwards and Obama had pulled their names off the ballot at party insistence). Besides, the DNC stripped all of Michigan's delegates for defying the party's decrees about primary scheduling.

According to the numbers I just saw, Romney is leading, but only by about 6% with about 6% of precincts reporting in. I have yet to be impressed. I could have it all wrong, but I think Romney will need to end up winning by more than a handful of percentage points to really claim a victory in his real home state.

[ETA: I think the other thing to watch here is Rudy. If he fails, again, to poll in double digits, I think his goose is cooked. So far, that's looking like safe money. And I have no idea why this ended up in the middle of the post the first time.]

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

After 7% of the vote, according to the local radio station in Ann Arbor which I am listening to right now, Clinton leads "uncommitted" 62%-36% in the non-event that is the Michigan Dem primary.

Meanwhile at the same early stage, the GOP candidates are polling Romney 37%, McCain 31%, Huckabee 16%, Paul 6%. Where's Rudy?

FURTHER EDIT @ 2.30 am; it appears the answer to Rudy's whereabouts is "nowhere". Running totals, after about 20% of the vote have him on 3%. Fast updates online here.

[jinty]

Mitchison's Diaries of a Spacewoman is rude (for its time rather than objectively, I think) and fun - that's the only one I've read of hers, but yes, do read it.

A Reason for Everything

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

It's a great book, I've been pressing it on people since I read it over the summer. It led me to me calling my new rats Hamilton and Haldane, which I'm sure they'd be suitably impressed by.

[thehumanstomach.livejournal.com]

I maybe tall But I'm really thehumanstomach