Jaber Borran

Category: Politics

  • Ignorance is Bliss (1)

    The president elect has started announcing his picks for cabinet and other important positions in the executive branch. And each picks is more astonishing and controversial than the previous one. I am not planning on going through all of his picks here, but just mentioning a few will help appreciate the scope of the disaster.…

  • Agree to Disagree

    In the current tumultuous political environment, I often hear people say “let’s agree to disagree,” when they realize that they really don’t have any reliable source or evidence for their claims or arguments other than that they had heard it in a Trump rally, or from Fox News or Newsmax, or had seen it in…

  • The Joke Is on Me!

    You are probably wondering if I made a typo or some other mistake in choosing the title of this post. I did not. Bear with me for a few minutes, and you will agree. A few weeks ago, I posted a piece with the title “Poetic Justice,” in which I argued that the conservative super-majority…

  • The Day After

    So, we didn’t just lose the presidency, we lost the senate too. And chances are we will lose the house as well! 😟 Go project 2025. 😥 In his last term, he did what he promised (except for the wall): tax cuts for the wealthy (Reagan’s trickle-down economics) and overturning of Roe v. Wade (probably…

  • The Election Night

    With most polls indicating a very close presidential race -pretty much within their margins of error- I doubt anyone can confidently make a prediction about the outcome of the presidential election (please see How Reliable Are Election Polls for a more sinister view on the predictions made solely based on such polls in general). However,…

  • Questions for Elon Musk

    How much is a person’s dignity worth? or their pride and self-respect? in absolute terms, or relative to one’s current worth. What does it take for a well-educated, incredibly intelligent person to set aside all that intelligence and play dumb, pretending that they don’t understand or appreciate the absurdity of pretty much anything the former…

  • You won’t have to vote again

    This is what the former president said in a recent speech at a Christian summit. In fact, the following are his exact words, hopefully with sufficient context to prevent drawing misleading or incorrect conclusions: Christians, get out and vote, just this time, you won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know…

  • Fact or Opinion?

    You look at the little display on the A/C thermostat at your home, which reads 78 degrees, and you think, “what a pleasantly warm day.” Your wife just gets back home from grocery shopping, looks at the thermostat, and says: “Oh my God, it’s 78, don’t you think it’s too hot here? Why didn’t you…

  • How Reliable Are Election Polls?

    I will provide, below, a brief and very basic introduction to the main concepts involved in the polling process, to setup the stage for the main point I would like to make in the last few paragraphs. If you are familiar with statistics and probability theory, you are encouraged to skip to the last few…