Mal ,'Shindig'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Man, I'm tired. I had probably the worst night of sleep ever -- wide awake at 4:30, which never happens to me. Then to work early because there's a big meeting that I'm not a part of. And I didn't do any work over the weekend like I meant to, so I'm already behind.
Good times.
Man, I'm tired.
Me too. Why am I here? I should be sleeping....
ION, The disappearing Bradley effect
A hot topic among polling nerds is the “Bradley effect,” which occurs when a non-white (usually black) candidate falls short of opinion polls on Election Day when he/she runs against a white candidate. For this reason it has been suggested that support for Obama might be overstated - a hidden bonus for John McCain. Now comes a large-scale empirical study (in preprint form) by Harvard political scientist Dan Hopkins. He finds that since the mid-1990s, the Bradley effect has disappeared. His paper is a must-read.
...
Polls did show a significant Bradley/Wilder effect through the early 1990s, which includes the period when Bradley and Wilder were running for office. However, Hopkins notes that the effect then went away in races from 1996 onward. To quote the study: “Before 1996, the median gap for black candidates was 3.1 percentage points, while for subsequent years it was -0.3 percentage points.”
This is pretty funny:
McCain camp prays for Palin wedding
In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.
Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”
Um... where to begin....
IONonCampaignN, Jermaine Dupri Vomits On Janet Jackson
OK, the caffeine is now taking effect.
Did I mention that I bought an iPod Touch? One of the cool things it has is a stock tracker. So on some days I can press the stock button and watch the stock market plunge. Like today.
William Kristol is not only stupid, he's this close to being deluded.
Happy New Year!
Now I'm gonna go throw a ton of work at my jewish coworker because it needs to be done before she's off to observe it. I don't think she'll appreciate it.
My day so far: up at 6:30 due to Loki chewing on my hair. Off at 8 to pick up cat. Car smells like death (there has to be a leak somewhere because this is happening whenever it gets rained on heavily.) MK poops in the carrier 4 parking spaces from home. A cat barfed on the bed. Get to work at 9:30. Ahrg, so much to do. So I'd best get started.
Oh, and some other not good news that'll probably come out later.
IONonCampaignN, Jermaine Dupri Vomits On Janet Jackson
I just don't get that -- he's a grown man! Keep yourself together, people!
This is fascinating - how close the economy came to disaster last week....
September 26, 2008 · The potential for disaster was horrifying. For people on Wall Street and in the inner circles of government, last Wednesday and Thursday will long be remembered as the time when the American economy survived a brush with death.
The nation's entire financial system slid toward a terrifying abyss, they say — a landscape where no one would lend and no one could borrow, where no one could buy anything and no one could get paid. As Congress and the Bush administration continue debating a proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, those with intimate knowledge of the crisis say that whatever solution emerges must avert future brushes with very real disaster.
eta: The Week America's Economy Almost Died