John Tyler’s Grandsons Are Still Alive!
Born in 1790, John Tyler was our 10th President. He took office in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died. And he has two living grandchildren!
Not great-great-great-grandchildren. Their dad was Tyler’s son.
How is this possible? The Tyler men have a habit of having kids very late in life. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, one President Tyler’s 15 kids, was born in 1853. He fathered Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1924, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler in 1928.
[Source: Genealogy of John Tyler]
Newt Gingrich’s three marriages mean he might make a strong president — really
1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.
2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.
3) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.
Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.
"A quick rule of thumb is that when someone seems to be acting like a jerk, an economist will defend the behavior as being the essence of morality, but when someone seems to be doing something nice, an economist will raise the bar and argue that he’s not being nice at all."
— Econ debate about prices at a fancy restaurant « Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (via felixsalmon)
(via felixsalmon)
