Tag: European Union

In two years of Last Week in Weird, I have never talked about this guy. My bad.

Last Week in Weird

by Darien Sumner

Public service

It’s been only a few short weeks since the eight-year horror that was the Obama administration gave way to the new and exciting horror of the Trump administration, but I bet you’d already forgotten about Joe Biden. No, admit it, you forgot. Well, uncle Joe’s been a busy man, starting a new career for himself at the University of Pennsylvania, where he’s been named the "Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor," a gigantic mouthful of syntax stew with no clear meaning. What does it mean to be a professor of "presidential practice?" Does the University of Pennsylvania have a "Being the President" major? Was Benjamin Franklin ever president? These questions, and many more, are in need of answer.

Don’t ask the university, though; they’re as clueless as we are.

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Secession and the Political Elite

by Darien Sumner

I’m sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to use the awful word-ish "Brexit." It’s not that I’m opposed to portmanteaux just in general, mind you; it’s just that "Brexit" is positively hideous. It’s neither clever nor funny, it certainly isn’t the least little bit mellifluous, and the two words don’t even join together properly. At least when everybody was saying "Grexit," ugly as it was, the two words actually did have a letter in common — "Brexit" is bits of two utterly dissimilar words artlessly smooshed into each other to no good effect whatsoever. The worst thing about it is that it’s completely soured me on "Texit," which on its own would be sort of clever and cute.

That’s not what I came to talk to you about today, though. I came to talk about prediction markets. Michael Rozeff had been watching the prediction markets on the British secession question for some time, and only a few days ago, they had "leave" at only 36 cents, to 64 cents for "stay" — in other words, the markets had stay nearly 2:1 over leave. This was directly in contrast to the opinion polls, which were reporting an expected leave victory.

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