I’ve been hearing good things about the Capitol Words API for months now, so I decided to try doing something with it. I wrote a script which queries the API for instances of a given word and returns two text files: the first is a compendium of sentences from every time a Republican has said [...]
Massachusetts is not a great place for transparency. We have some of the worst public access to information of any state in the country, and legislators have barely any oversight or accountability. I’ve heard people talk about trying to get access to information from closed meetings where no attendance is taken and no minutes are [...]
On the six hour drive to New York City last week, my family somehow got on the topic of political campaign songs. Campaign songs today are pretty boring, because politicians just use popular music. Although it’s kind of fun to watch Republicans try to find music made by artists who won’t sue them to get [...]
This post lists common ways that people used to die from their jobs. They’re mostly due to inhaling toxic chemicals. One of them, Soot Wart, is a type of cancer that was commonly found among chimney sweeps. The discovery of this link between job and disease, in the late 18th century, was pretty vital in [...]
I tend to have complex feelings about elections. I don’t buy the idea that there’s “no difference” between the major parties. I think the Democrats are in most ways clearly superior to the Republicans. The incremental changes that Obama has made have brought measurable good to peoples’ lives, even as the choices Bush made (and [...]
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