The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I both love and loathe many holidays. I love them for the simple fact they can provide me with a day off, and also give me an excuse to spend time with extended family. However, when thinking about the traditions of many, I have to scratch my head, and ask, "Why?" Groundhog Day is such a day for me. It gives me a reason to spend time with family and watch the film by the same name for the 37th time. However, what does this holiday revolve itself around? A groundhog, based on whether or not the sun is out at that time of the day, predicting whether or not we'll have an early spring. What is the groundhog's rate of accuracy? Just 39%. The groundhog is wrong 3 times out of every 5. That's worse than most meteorologists...barely. I don't know what's sadder, the fact we celebrate a day looking to a groundhog for all the answers regarding when spring will start, or that I'm seriously wondering if the groundhog's forecasts are more accurate than our act...

On August 23rd of 2012, it can be confirmed that the November presidential election is over and we will have ourselves a new man in the Oval Office - Mitt Romney. Yes, that's right - prior to either party's convention, a debate - two and a half months before the election, the race has been decided. The Republican nominee - Mitt Romney - has come away with 320 electoral votes and President (for the time) Barack Obama finished with just 218. Romney won the states of: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota and New Hampshire. Okay, so it's not November; it's not even September, but that doesn't seem to matter to political science professors Ken Bickers of Colorado-Boulder or Michael Berry of Colorado-Denver. They've devised a forecasting model which made the before-mentioned prediction and which they claim has never been wrong before. I find this to be ridiculous. We haven't heard the two candidates debate yet. ...