A Curious Little Blog

When we think of America's origins, we normally think of England, for good reason.  In the Southwest, obviously, there is a lot of Spanish influence.  But we rarely think of the amount of French influence in the settlement of America, even though there is a lot of evidence in geographic names. Three states -- Vermont, Maine, and Louisiana -- have French names.  Several others get their names from Indian tribes that were first contacted by French settlers, and two of them, Illinois and Arkansas, retain a portion of the French pronunciation as a reminder. There is a surprising number of cities over a wide geographic area with French names.  We typically think of Louisiana first, especially New Orleans and Baton Rouge ("red stick"), but they are just the tip of the iceberg.  Mobile, Alabama was founded by the French and owned by them for over half a century.  Detroit ("strait") and St. Louis were also founded by the French.  A large number of other ci...

The presidential election teaches us an important lesson, but not the one that most people have been drawing from it.  It's not that the Republicans are a minority party.  They may be, but there is no way to reach that conclusion from a single presidential election.  In general, people are far too hasty to draw long-term conclusions from short-term events.  In 2000, we learned, supposedly, that America was hopelessly divided between blue states and red states.  In 2004, it looked like Republicans had a virtual lock on the presidency, having won 7 of the last 10, and only one of the three Democrats elected had won a majority.  In 2008, we learned that Democrats were permanently ascendant, and Republicans would no longer be a political force in 10 years.  Obviously, that turned out to be very wrong, as did the previous predictions.  That's one of the reasons that I am sceptical this time around. Another reason is that there is a bigger lesson:...