Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. It’s Wednesday so I guess this means it’s emo day. Why don’t we try to talk about something other than tax cuts. You can do it, I know you can.
One race that is still left undone from November is the Minnesota governor’s race. Democrat Mark Dayton leads Republican Tom Emmer by almost 9000 votes. The state did an automatic recount and it looked like Emmer was going to keep challenging so that Tim Pawlenty could stay governor and do mischief with the new Republican assembly. Emmer lost a court challenge and it appears that he will concede today.
Republican Tom Emmer will concede the 2010 Minnesota governor’s race this morning to Democrat Mark Dayton, a Republican source with direct knowledge confirmed to the Pioneer Press.
Emmer’s 10:30 a.m. concession means he will not contest the election in court — thus averting a scenario that could have kept Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty in office past the scheduled Jan. 3 swearing-in of the next governor, the source said.
Emmer’s announcement will take place at his Delano home, multiple sources said. Emmer couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
The Dayton campaign had received no official word of the news as it was breaking late Tuesday night and had no immediate comment.
Emmer’s concession will put a final punctuation mark on what had become the inevitable truth: Dayton received more votes — perhaps about 9,000 more votes — on Nov. 2, as tallied on that night and recounted the past week.
Apparently Democrats have not held the governor’s mansion in Minnesota in 24 years. Dayton’s win means that Republicans hold 29 governorships and Democrats hold 21.
PZ Myers has a challenge for you:
just finished off one big chunk of grading, and on this exam, as is my custom, I give students a few bonus points with an easy question at the end. It is also my custom every year to have one of those easy questions be, “Name a scientist, any scientist, who also happens to be a woman,” just to see if they’ve been paying attention.
About 10% of the class leave it blank. C’mon, it’s a free 2 points on a 100 point exam! Over half the time, I get the same mysterious answer: Marie Curie. We do not talk about Marie Curie in this class at all, and it’s always a bit strange that they have to cast their minds back over a century to come up with a woman scientist. Next year, I should change the question to “Name a scientist, any scientist, who also happens to be a woman, and isn’t named Marie Curie,” just to screw with their heads. They won’t be able to think of anyone but Marie Curie.
Second runner up is Jane Goodall. Again, we don’t talk about her, but I guess she is well known.
Try it. Try more than one, and just to make it harder don’t name Marie Curie, Jane Goodall or Unstable Isotope.