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The younger children of British aristocrats didn’t inherit titles*, so they eventually intermarried with commoners and faded into the general population. It isn’t so surprising that so many Americans have a dash of royal ancestry. It was different on the continent where all the children and grandchildren of nobles remained noble.

*Well, they had “courtesy titles” like “the honourable” and “lord” or “lady,” but unless they could earn a title of their own, their children would be commoners.

Much depends on how you are defining “Europe” and whether you do it consistently. In any case, that half a million figure is far too low, especially if you consider Russia, Albania, and Bosnia part of Europe. Even without them, France had close to 3 million Muslims in 1999, Britain had over 1.5 million in 2001, and Germany had 3 million Muslims in 2000.

No, Virginia. There isn’t any Santa Claus coming to save you.

“Woman” or “women”? If it’s just one, no big deal and no sign of anything bigger than her. Who hasn’t walked out of a hotel with something?

If it happens, they will blame it on Trump.

I can sort of see now why you might come to the conclusion that I said that, but that’s not what I was saying or implying.

That is a better rhyme than "The Falklands are Britain's," but war would be folly.

That was James Bradley’s argument in “Imperial Cruise.” But were we in charge of Korea? We were still largely a hemispheric power back then and weren’t going to go to war for Korean independence. We should have objected to Japan’s annexation of Korea, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. Bradley foolishly blames Theodore Roosevelt for WWII, IIRC.

At first, it is the solitude. Maybe the slow realization comes later, and maybe it doesn’t. Is it really the loneliest, the most fundamental or the most important or the most common aspect of a lonely old age?

The Secret Service
Makes me nervous:
A brief excursus.

AI says the opposite of “preterism” is “futurism,” so why not “he was a futurist and then evntually he became an atheist.”

People like Bart Ehrman became atheists because they could no longer assume everything in the Bible was literally true as they had assumed.

Sure, put all of your festivals close to the border. In this case, it’s the border with Jordan, rather than with Palestinian territories, but still.

I don’t know the details, but my first thought is that it’s possible to holster a handgun.

What is “self-awareness” without consciousness?

If you tell a robot to imitate what you do, should you really be surprised when it imitates you?

If a robot is given to understand that you are doing the job that you want it to do, of course it’s going to imitate you to get the job done.

We’ll know the blue-furred dogs are mutants if they get tats and nose-rings.

Notice how New Hampshire bent the district lines to throw a few of the border towns with Massachusetts (including the city of Nashua) in with the Northern Inland district. There are probably a lot of Democrats in those towns that the Democrats didn’t need to win the Seacoast district but that would help them out with the other district. Draw the boundaries a little differently and you’d be more likely to have one Republican district in the state.

If your eyesight is good enough, you can also see the remains of Barney Frank’s old Massachusetts district which started with his home in Boston and went down the state to New Bedford on the South Coast. It doesn’t go as far now, but the intent’s still to give Boston-area Democrats another district to run in. MA’s two Western districts are dominated by big Democrat cities Springfield and Worcester. That probably can’t be helped much now, but different district lines might give Republicans more of a chance.

The problem in Massachusetts is that areas that would go Republican aren’t contiguous. You have a little in the West, a little in the Center, more in the Southeast, a few scattered towns in other parts of the state, and the rest of the Republicans are in areas that go Democrat. Gerrymandering would be the only way to carve out a GOP district. It’s not the reason why there isn’t one.

Connecticut is getting that way, too. They were split between Republicans and Democrats in Congress before they lost a seat in 2000. There are Republicans to rural areas to the East and West of Hartford, but it’s now hard to build a seat without including a big city or its suburbs, and affluent Vermont types have made CT’s (and MA’s) trendier rural towns more progressive. Rhode Island has the same problem. The towns carried by Republicans are about half the state in area, but far less than half in population.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been some really ridiculous examples of redistricting in the past, but the main reason isn’t redistricting. There is more hope for Republicans in Maine and New Hampshire.

If Orlando’s Sloth World goes out of business, there will still be the original Sloth World in Washington D.C.

If you shoplift, you are working for Bezos and putting bricks and mortar retail out of business.

“Abrahamic” is a way of referring to Western monotheistic religions. Other major world religions are classified as “Dharmic” (South Asian) or “East Asian.”