Painfully Obvious.

We didn’t see much of the Bradley effect last night, but now we might have to invent the “Stevens effect” — reluctance to admit to pollsters that you would vote for a convicted felon.

The rules are explicit here — if you have consensual sexual relations with anyone not legally old enough to consent to such behavior, it’s statutory rape regardless of whether they turned themselves into an adult by making a wish to a Zoltar machine. [Elizabeth] Perkins’ character worked with Josh Baskin (the Tom Hanks character) in New York City when the age of consent was 15 years old. Well, Baskin was only 13 at the time. So there you go.

Just a quick note on language, but I noticed a number of deal critics throughout the day refer to the bailout package as involving “nearly $1 trillion.” I’m outraged, too, but you need to be careful when rounding very large numbers. If somebody was trying to sell you a $7 hamburger, you might get upset and complain that it cost “nearly $10” but you certainly wouldn’t complain that it cost “nearly $300 billion.”

Most often in recent years, Biden has taken the No. 2103, which leaves Wilmington at 7:35 a.m. and pulls into Union Station — barring delays — at 8:55 a.m. Amtrak has become a recurring character in the hearings Biden participates in. “Gentlemen, I apologize,” he told a Judiciary Committee hearing in 1996 when he showed up late. “One of those things that I keep telling my colleagues: If they fully funded Amtrak, I would not be late.”

A good rule of thumb when theorizing about cable TV production is that everything is less expensive and less elaborate than you think it is.

At a recent Congressional hearing, the head of the airlines’ primary lobbying organization, the Air Transport Association, asserted that pricing is not an effective mechanism for balancing supply and demand for landing slots. When lobbyists argue that basic economic principles do not apply to the industry they represent, a red flag should go up.

Immature testing organizations tend to have about five clean tests for every dirty test. Mature testing organizations tend to have five dirty tests for every clean test. This ratio is not reversed by reducing the clean tests; it’s done by creating 25 times as many dirty tests.

If I were the benevolent dictator, I would make it capital offense for members of the punditocracy to opine ignorantly about the tastes and habits of “regular people,” who apparently have comfort zones no larger than their footprints, and who are unwilling to vote for anyone who doesn’t live their lives exactly like they (are imagined to) do.

Because we all know where black teenage males in the hood get their inspiration from — famous middle‐aged people. I’ll never forget when I was a kid and everyone was in those Cosby sweaters… man, that was a hot‐ass summer.

When writers purport to educate readers about complex matters, and they are arguably wrong, I think The Times cannot label it opinion and let it go at that.