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Put it in the category of things we know for sure that just ain't so.

No sooner did the Democratic National Committee announce it had chosen Philadelphia, Pa., as its 2016 convention site than a lot of us political analyst types popped out the conventional wisdom about "appealing to a swing state in the general election."

It sounds good and it makes sense, as far as it goes. It just doesn't go very far.

Sure, it ought to help the Democrats to have their convention in a state that they absolutely have to win in November. It also ought to help the GOP to have its convention in Cleveland; no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.

But let's face it. If the Democrats do win Pennsylvania, it won't be because they had their convention in Philadelphia, which is already a motherlode of Democratic votes. And if the Republicans wind up winning Ohio, it won't be because they won over a lot of precincts in Cleveland, which is a similarly rich trove of Democratic support in elections at all levels.

The idea that conventions are located with an eye toward winning the host city's state is popular to the point of being irresistible. But it doesn't fare well against the facts.

Convention State Wins & Losses

2012

Republicans in Florida (November loss)

Democrats in North Carolina (November loss)

2008

Republicans in Minnesota (loss)

Democrats in Colorado (win)

2004

Republicans in New York (loss)

Democrats in Massachusetts (win)

2000

Republicans in Pennsylvania (loss)

Democrats in California (win)

1996

Republicans in California (loss)

Democrats in Illinois (win)

1992

Republicans in Texas (win)

Democrats in New York (win)

1988

Republicans in Louisiana (win)

Democrats in Georgia (loss)

1984

Republicans in Texas (win)

Democrats in California (loss

1980

Republicans in Michigan (win)

Democrats in New York (loss)

1976

Republicans in Missouri (loss)

Democrats in New York (win)

1972

Republicans in Florida (win)

Democrats in Florida (loss)

1968

Republicans in Florida (win)

Democrats in Illinois (loss)

1964

Republicans in California (loss)

Democrats in New Jersey (win)

1960

Republicans in Illinois (loss)

Democrats in California (loss)

1956

Republicans in California (win)

Democrats in Illinois (loss)

True, both parties took their conventions to swing states in 2012. But both parties wound up losing those swing states. The Republicans headed for Tampa in pivotal Florida but their nominee, Mitt Romney, lost the state in November. The Democrats went to Charlotte, N.C., in part to celebrate winning there in 2008 (for the first time in 32 years). But four years later, after holding their convention in the Tar Heel state, they saw it go GOP.

In a sense, both parties thought they were wooing swing states in 2008, too. The Democrats saw Colorado as winnable, even though they had only won it three times since the 1930s. The Republicans went after Minnesota, which had the longest streak of voting blue for president in the whole country. The Democrats managed to make their swipe, the GOP didn't even come close.

But to the two Obama elections, the parties' choice of their convention sites seems to have had only occasional connection to the voting patterns of the states. From 1988 to 2004, the parties sited 10 conventions and chose a swing state only once (the GOP went to Philadelphia in 2000). The rest of the time they were in states as reliably red as Texas and Louisiana or as true blue as Massachusetts and California.

In fact, through those five cycles, the Republicans twice went to states (California and New York) that they would lose by double digits in the fall voting for president. The Democrats, for their part, took a similar drubbing in Georgia after convening in Atlanta in 1988. It is hard to imagine that party professionals in either case really thought things would be different because of the convention.

In the cycles where the two parties did manage to win their convention-site states, they held those gatherings in states they could scarcely have lost – such as Texas for the GOP and Massachusetts for the Democrats.

The truth is, political parties locate their conventions much the way large trade associations and professional groups do. They look for geographical balance (which is why the first generations of conventions were usually held in Baltimore and later generations in Chicago). They look for fun stuff to do (see New Orleans, for example, or San Diego). But in the end, it comes down to state-of-the-art facilities, an adequate supply of quality hotel rooms and a financial aid package from the city and private donors.

Those criteria make a lot more sense than a hopeful lunge after an iffy package of electoral votes, especially given the poor return on past attempts.

Going back to the 1950s, and the last 30 choices of convention sites, the party has lost the state where it held its convention 16 times and won it 14.

The pattern holds perfectly within each party, too. Republicans have won the state that hosted their convention seven times but lost it eight times. For the Democrats the numbers are exactly the same: seven wins, eight losses. One bright note for the Dems, though, prior to the 2012 loss in North Carolina, their nominee had won the convention site state five times in a row (after losing five of six).

Two days before a cease-fire is set to take effect in eastern Ukraine, forces on both sides are fighting over strategic territory they hope to control after the peace begins. A truce between the government and Russian-backed separatists is set to begin Sunday.

Despite Thursday's apparent breakthrough, "The enemy shelled positions of the 'anti-terrorist operation' forces with the same intensity as before," a Ukrainian military official said Friday, according to Reuters.

The news agency reports that fighting continued at separatist strongholds such as Donetsk, and at other sites such as a railway junction. The clashes followed reports that more Russian equipment had been sent across the border to separatist-controlled areas shortly after the temporary peace was announced.

There are also concerns about the terms of the cease-fire. From Brussels, NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports for our Newscast unit:

"Some feel the deal, reached after 16 hours of negotiations among the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, may give too much to Russia and the pro-Russian rebels.

"Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko says they did what they had to, in order to stop the fighting.

"'We managed to get the sides to commit to the ceasefire,' he says, 'and this wasn't easy task, because other side was not inclined to stop the aggression.'"

Both U.S. and European leaders say that they're waiting to see actions that match the the cease-fire's peaceful intentions.

European Council President Donald Tusk says the EU will go ahead with sanctions "against 19 Russian and Ukrainian individuals and nine entities next week," France 24 reports.

Secretary of State John Kerry says the U.S. "is prepared to consider rolling back sanctions on Russia when the Minsk agreements of September 2014, and now this agreement, are fully implemented."

"The parties have a long road ahead," Kerry said, explaining later that the conditions for sanctions to be eased include "a full ceasefire, the withdrawal of all foreign troops and equipment from Ukraine, the full restoration of Ukrainian control of the international border, and the release of all hostages."

Ukraine

Russia

Universal Pictures put a woman in charge when it hired Sam Taylor-Johnson to direct Fifty Shades of Grey. It also got an art world star nominated for such prestigious awards as Britain's Turner Prize. Truth be told, Taylor-Johnson sounds slightly relieved to discuss her photography and videos instead of the movie she's in the thick of promoting.

"It feels so far away from me right now," she says, in her plummy London accent. "And it's so nice to talk about again — gives me a bit of a breather."

Accent aside, Taylor-Johnson is hardly from a posh British background. Her father was a biker. Her mother was a hippy who meditated in orange robes before abandoning the family when Taylor-Johnson was only 15. She went on to attend Goldsmiths College, a school that forged a movement known as the Young British Artists.

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"They were just a most raucous, rebellious group of artists in revolt," says Margo Crutchfield. Now curator-at-large for Virginia Tech's Center of the Arts, she organized Sam Taylor-Johnson's first major US solo show back in 2008. Crutchfield says the YBAs, as they were known, were exuberant post punk troublemakers.

"Probably some of the most provocative work made in recent times," she says.

Exhibit A: Damien Hirst, who suspended sharks and sheep in formaldehyde. Exhibit B: Tracey Emin, best known for displaying an unmade bed surrounded by underwear, empty liquor bottles and condom wrappers as something of a sarcastic monument to an ex-lover. Comparatively, the artist then known as Sam Taylor-Wood was understated. Still, themes of sex and sensation surfaced in such work as her recreation of the Last Supper that imagined Jesus as a topless woman.

"There was a lot of experimentation in the early days," Taylor-Johnson dryly concedes.

Throughout her career, Taylor-Johnson's work has explored vulnerability, passion, performance, celebrity and control. Take her series of portraits of leading Hollywood men such as Paul Newman, Laurence Fishburne and Dustin Hoffman. All of them, crying.

"I didn't want to do something where it's just a projection of ego and a big smile and, you know, 'Here I am, at the top of my game,'" she explains.

Taylor Johnson's video portrait of soccer star David Beckham, commissioned by Britain's National Portrait Gallery, shows one of the world's most famously active bodies sleeping — for an hour and seven minutes. At the time, says Crutchfield, she was married to another art world celebrity.

"Probably the most powerful art dealer in Europe if not the world at the time," Crutchfield notes. But Taylor-Johnson left him soon after directing her first feature film, 2009's Nowhere Boy. It's about the Beatles' early years in Liverpool, before they became famous, and Taylor-Johnson married the actor who played John Lennon. He was 19. She was 42. She'd already had two children and had two more with him — even after surviving cancer twice. Not long ago she directed her husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who she describes as a muse, in a music video for R.E.M. He's dancing down a city street in a faded yellow T-shirt.

"I can't wait for us to work together again because he's so talented," she says. "And that R.E.M video is, I think, one of the best things I've done. It was so much fun."

It was admittedly less fun, she says, to film Fifty Shades of Grey.

"I mean, the thing is ..." she pauses. "I'm an artist and I had lots of sort of wild ideas about how to do this. And wildly off-the-wall ones."

For example, a sequence she fought for showing jellyfish as a sensual metaphor for the heroine's state of mind ended up on the cutting room floor. The movie Fifty Shades of Grey ended up as a straightforward, respectful adaptation of the book, but critics still mostly praise it as more sophisticated than its source material, from the Helmut Newton-inspired cinematography to the female-dominated soundtrack, with powerful singers such as Beyonc, Sia and Anne Lennox. It's a woman's journey, says Taylor-Johnson, that ends with the male lead vulnerable and emotionally exposed.

And the movie Fifty Shades of Grey teases the fundamental idea of who holds power — from the woman who tells the story, to the women readers who enjoy it, and the woman director who put it on the screen.

Scientists are warning that construction of a $50-billion interoceanic shipping canal through Nicaragua could spell an environmental disaster, threatening nearly two-dozen endangered species and jeopardizing Central America's largest source of drinking water.

An article published in the latest issue of Scientific American reports that the Hong Kong-backed Nicaraguan Grand Canal project, which would be deeper and wider than the existing shipping canals through Panama, could destroy millions of acres of rainforest and contaminate Lake Nicaragua. The project has already raised concern over the displacement of communities in its path and, as NPR's Jasmine Garsd reported last week, the company building it has also unearthed tens of thousands of pre-Columbian relics.

Even before the project's official start, protests broke out from those who would be displaced by it. Managua insists that the canal could help lift the country out of poverty.

In December, President Daniel Ortega announced that construction on the project had already begun, although a consultancy hired by the backers Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development (HKND), has denied that.

Scientific American reports that consultants doing the environmental impact assessment, British-based ERM, noted "the potential for fuel spills to affect freshwater fish in the area, interrupt agricultural activity and impact cultural heritage on native reserves as a result of work that disturbs the soil. The report also stated 'the acquisition and compensation for the land deal...do not meet international standards.'"

The magazine also notes that scientists around the world, including those belonging to the Humboldt Center of Nicaragua, have warned that the habitat for 22 species would be placed in jeopardy and that by 2039, climate change will result in a 3 to 4 percent deficit in the water needed to run the canal.

Many have also questioned the economic viability of the project.

In 2013, The Economist wrote: "The economic case is not easy to make. And if the engineering challenges are too severe, even some supporters of the project say it may be impossible to raise the billions of dollars necessary to go any further. HKND argues that large volumes of globally traded goods are being carried on ships already too big for the Panama Canal, even after its current expansion. Nicaragua's canal, with twice the draught of Panama's, would aim to accommodate such giants. But world trade is sluggish; and meanwhile, new routes may develop through the Arctic."

Last year, National Geographic said:

"[Many] economists, scientists, and sociologists say that the time for a Nicaraguan canal has long since lapsed, that the waterway—if it's ever completed—will end up being the world's costliest boondoggle.

"The Panama Canal, they say, which has gigantic new locks scheduled to be operational next year, is more than capable of meeting future demand. They also cite projections for global warming that suggest ships could traverse an ice-free Arctic by the middle of the century, further reducing demand for passage through Central America."

And, there are also doubts about the financing of the project too. As The Washington Post wrote last month:

"Ground was broken only after a deal hatched last year between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and a consortium led by Chinese telecoms billionaire Wang Jing. Critics wonder how the little-known Wang came to win the bid, which gives his Hong Kong-listed company, HKND, a 100-year-long concession over the canal's operation. There was next to no transparency in the process. Wang is exempt from local taxes and commercial regulations, and has been granted hiring and land-expropriating powers, according to The Guardian.

"There are already doubts about Wang's ability to finance the project, and some speculate that it will never actually be completed, leaving perhaps at best some ports and container facilities but no canal in between."

Nicaragua

shipping

Panama

China