I have seen an interesting political meme a few times of late. It says that third party candidates are always spoilers, and cites the Republican dominance of the Presidency between 1896 and 1932 as partial evidence. The argument is that Eugene Debs pulled votes away from the Democrats, causing them to lose. It also cites other examples, but it’s the turn of the century example I’m going to address here. (Because it’s the one which is wrong. The others are pretty much accurate.) I’m making this post because I spent a while putting together the data and I don’t want to lose it; also because I believe in spreading accurate information, where such is available. My data source is David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Content moved into the extended entry because it was messing up the front page.

Dave’s shut it down. So I’m shutting down Scripting News now, to give me some time to think, and to give you all a demo of what it would be like if it weren’t here. These last few days have been really awful. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have so many people screaming at you. It’s inhuman, especially considering that my health isn’t that good. The only conclusion I can come to is that I shouldn’t be doing this. ...

Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, is all about criminalizing gay marriage (original). It’s a pretty odd argument, too. Let’s step closer, shall we? His fear is that “this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I’m concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned.” That’s a little stumblemouthed on the face of it, actually. If criminal activity within the home was being condoned, that’d be expanding the zone of privacy. Not encroaching upon it. Still, I think you can see what he meant. ...

Katharine Hepburn, rest in peace.

Warren Zevon has been diagnosed with lung cancer. He’s long been one of my favorite musicians and I am very sad that I never took the chance to see him play before now. It seems unlikely that I will have another chance.

The 2003 Origins Awards ceremony is over and done with, without too many surprises. I’m quite happy to see Z-Man Games picking up a Vanguard Award for Warchon — nicely done! As happens every year, we demonstrate our fascination with the Origins Awards by talking about how irrelevant they are (original). (Sorry, but Celtic Age was actually pretty good; particularly noteworthy are the experience rules for weapons.)

Jimmy Breslin is pissed off. Who can blame him? He says he’s thinking about getting out of the news business. Hope he doesn’t. This government’s kidnapping of Faris/Rauf violated the laws handed down by Madison, Jefferson, Marshall. A small religious zealot, John Ashcroft, takes their great laws and bravery and using our new Patriot Act, turns it into Fascism. He could do this openly because news reporters go about the government like gardeners, bent over, smiling and nodding when one of the owners shows up. You only have to look at a White House news conference to see how they aggressively pursue your right to know. ...

T-Mobile is removing the games from the color Sidekick (via Boing Boing). That’s pretty much the suck. I don’t know that I like having a provider who removes functionality from my cell phone. Apparently it was a licensing issue, but guys — suck it up and pay for the license. Hrm. Palm Tungsten? Treo? I have a portable cell phone number now, so I can switch when my current plan expires.

Big revelation of the night: Bill Simmons sounds exactly like any random 16 year old fan. I caught him calling into 1510 on the way home, and he really is the voice of the Boston fan. To a tee. I think that’s a compliment. Notes on the NBA draft (original) follow in real time. I’m shamelessly ripping off Bill’s format, by the way. Just saying.

The new World Trade Center designs are a vast improvement over the previous set of designs. I don’t like all of them, but I like that this set takes risks. I do like a few of them very much; in particular, the Peterson/Littenberg seems to me to be elegant without being boring, and the Studio Daniel Libeskind proposal would be my choice. It maintains certain features of the current site, so that we won’t forget, and the shattered crystal feel of the buildings seems really appropriate.