Kerry has a 23 point lead in Virginia polls and a 24 point lead in Tennessee polls. Edwards needed to win those states, and it’s looking very unlikely. Kerry also has a fairly commanding lead in the latest polls out of Wisconsin. There’s still a chance someone could turn it around there, but it’s unlikely.
Last week’s Apprentice was intensely dull, so I’m only just now getting around to writing about it. Executive summary: Sex still sells and the women are still using it. The contestants are stuck in the mode of individual achievement these days; they can’t stop running around long enough to delegate to non-contestants. Nick used some pretty good tactics to buy himself an out, and they worked. Bowie got kicked out for no good reason. Omarosa is smart enough to turn people around and get them to like her in one week flat. ...
President Bush says, regarding his National Guard service in Alabama: There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been honorably discharged. In other words, you don’t just say “I did something” without there being verification. Military doesn’t work that way. I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama. This really simplifies the question. It’s not about the honorable discharge, or whether or not it was OK to miss some service as long as you got the OK from your CO, or any of that. It’s about whether or not he showed up in Alabama. This isn’t a matter of missing documentation, either; it’s about documents which show no service in Alabama in 1972.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court just ruled (original) that civil unions won’t satisfy the constitutional requirement to permit gay marriage. This guarantees that a Massachusetts constitutional amendment will wind up on the state ballot in 2006. Despite all the whining about judicial activism, this is the only way Massachusetts voters were going to get to vote on the issue — the Massachusetts legislature wasn’t going to go out of their way to put a constitutional amendment allowing gay marriage on the ballot. Seems to me that a) the judges acted correctly, fulfilling their obligation to rule on Constitutional questions and b) their actions have made it possible for the matter to be considered by the voters. Ironic.
Time for mashup number twenty-six. Hey, that’s half a year! Not too bad. Our subject today is the classic Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days (original). It’s your basic travelogue in fictional form, with the added excitement of (unjust) pursuit by the law. Phileas Fogg, accompanied by his faithful servant Passepartout, must transnavigate the globe in 80 days to win a fairly sizable bet. That provides the essential aspect of time pressure. Everything else is just trouble along the way, with Detective Fix as a secondary plot backbone. Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron—at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old.
The prelim Nebula ballot is up, with links to many of the nominees in full. Three out of the four novelettes were published on-line first.
According to Sistani’s office, there was no assassination attempt. That’s a distinct relief.
Look! Consequences. Consider this as, perhaps, retribution for the suicide bombings up in Kurdish territory.
So, how’d I do on predictions? Arizona I said it’d go Kerry, Clark, Dean in that order. It did. Missouri I said Kerry, Edwards, Dean. Yep. Oklahoma I said it’d go Clark, Edwards, and Kerry in a tight race. (Polls had Kerry ahead of Edwards for second.) Yep again. South Carolina Edwards won it pulling away, as per prediction. Delaware I said Lieberman would come in second to Kerry and then quit; I was right but only by a couple of hundred votes. Edwards nearly beat him. Lieberman did quit. ...
Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe is out. He’s made it available on the Web under a Creative Commons license again, so you can always download it and read it if you aren’t sure about buying it in the store. This one didn’t work so well for me. As an extrapolation of current cultural trends, I can’t make it dovetail. Doctorow gets the tribal aspect of Internet culture right — we do form tribes across the time zones, driven by our own interests — but I’ve never ever seen a tribe form around a specific time zone. In fact, part of the attraction of the Internet tribe is the knowledge that whenever you log onto the MUD — hit the IRC channel — visit the bulletin board — fire up AIM — whatever — someone will be there. Part of the attraction is that the Internet is always on. Time is irrelevant. ...