Owen Parker

In 2012 Democrats won 1.4 million more House votes and 33 fewer seats. Mathematics can expose a gerrymander, but no formula can say what a fair map looks like.

Tell Leilan, Akkad, Egypt's Old Kingdom, the Hittites and the Classic Maya all fell to droughts that outlasted their reserves. The same proxies that record those collapses now track the American Southwest, the Fertile Crescent, northern China and the Horn of Africa.