james_nicoll

From the Nixon article: "Virtually anyone who has ancestors who were born before the 1840's has this extremely distant genealogical kinship."

...are there people who don't have ancestors born before the 1840s?

The "American" is elided? Someone who immigrated from elsewhere after 1850 would be less likely to be related.

Perhaps, unconsciously or not, this is short for "ancestors who were considered to be people born before the 1840's".

That's what I understood it to mean, certainly.

So what you're saying is that Romney needs to pick Jeb Bush as his veep?

He's wearing the scales of a fish as a tie.

I think an actual fish tie is considered proper only in limited circumstances.

...as my high-school authorities insisted when a few of us noticed that the school uniform code required a "tie" rather than a "school tie".

(and now I'm wondering if that sentence was meant to be read as "actual [fish tie]" or "[actual fish] tie". Eels qualify as fish, yes?)

I had meant the ties imprinted with the image of a fish (which a tentative google shows me are for sale in alarming numbers), but if you can get an eel into a half-windsor, more power to you...

If it's an electric eel, way more power.

That smile belongs on the face of a victim of a mind control cult.

The Nixon Family Tree article looks as though it has been written by someone who has an odd acquaintance with the English language: "The Richard Nixon genealogy involves an adult life in public service ... Richard Nixon's family tree was relatively poor...The former president described a Richard Nixon family history with a quote from Eisenhower ..."

Eisenhauer?

VP was Nixon.

Nothing like foreigners commenting on parts of the American government they don't understand. "Federal Election"=/="Presidential Election" The Republicans won the 1994, '96 and '98 Congressional elections without a Bush or Nixon.

Now why don't you go back to worrying about whether Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha will impose martial law over the corruption of your political system.

Honestly, I have no idea if you're joking or not... but since every USian who commented here understood the sentence as written, using "Federal election" doesn't seem to be an enormous error of fact and logic.

The (amusing) misunderstanding over on Dreamwidth doesn't have anything to do with the phrase "Federal election" but rather the phrase "on the ticket," as far as I can tell.

When people were talking about how Bush and Kerry were distant, distant cousins, I was entertained by looking at the family tree, pointing at one bit, and saying "I'm descended from this bit."

When Stephan Dion was leader of the once-great Liberal Party of Canada, people asked if he was related to the more well known Dion, Celine. He is, as it turns out, but not very closely [1]. It does follow a pattern in Canadian politics, where one finds entertainers who are related to politicians but people tend not to move from one category to the other.

1: At least Quebec offers more people to be related to than Cape Breton does. Odds are fairly good any given Catholic in Cape Breton is a relative of mine somehow.

Katie Beaton?

See, until I clicked through, I was hoping you'd meant the Paranoid Android.

Actually, after clicking through, I'm still hoping that.