I bought a Hamilton Beach ShortCut food processor at Target on Saturday. My wife took it out of the box today, only to discover the following warning, in English, French, and Spanish, on the plastic bag enclosing it:

IMPORTANT: REMOVE BAG BEFORE USE

For those who are willing to look, there is at least one salient difference between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry: Bush “doesn’t nuance,” while Kerry, er, does. David Brooks captures the essence of Kerry quite well in his Saturday Times op-ed. Here’s the lede:

The 1990’s were a confusing decade. The certainties of the cold war were gone and new threats appeared. It fell to one man, John Kerry, the Human Nebula, to bring fog out of the darkness, opacity out of the confusion, bewilderment out of the void.

Actually, Kerry is just applying the lessons of the great social scientists; after all, we methodologists always say it’s a bad idea to dichotomize continuous variables. Kerry just extends this sound methodological advice to matters of public policy…