Electoral college "math"

AP has a story: Kerry Trails Bush in Electoral Votes. According to that piece, if the election was today, it'd be Bush 217, Kerry 193, with 128 up for grabs.

But if you look at today's Electoral Vote Predictor, their numbers say Bush 184, Kerry 222, with 132 up for grabs.

So, who's right? They can't both be. For example, the former says that Arizona and Tennessee are so far in the Bush camp that they're "no longer being seriously contested," while the latter says that Tennessee is tied dead even and Arizona leans slightly towards Kerry. Is this just more evidence of "Liberal Media Bias"?

Thanks, Neil and Buzz

The 35th anniversary of the first lunar landing just passed (obligatory note of the national shame that we haven't been back), and here is a cool story about The Most Important Thing Armstrong and Aldrin Left on the Moon. It's an experiment that's still running, still providing science data. Thanks, Neil and Buzz, and thanks to all of the Apollo astronauts that walked on the Moon, and to all of the people at NASA and the contractors that got them there and back.

Radio coolness

Up until recently, my all time favorite radio station was one that only existed for a couple of weeks in San Diego in the 80's. A classic rock station was in the process of turning into a heavy metal station, and unlike the usual process of changing formats (you wake up one day and find that your clock radio is suddenly singing in Spanish), they slowly shifted formats, in a way that you never were quite sure what was going to come on next. It was great!

My new fave: 96.7 Bob FM. Yes, it's a radio station named Bob; why, I don't know. Their slogan is, "We play anything," and after listening to them for a bit, it appears that they do, so long as your definition of anything is "anything in popular music released in the last 40 years." Thankfully, that's exactly what I like, so it works great for me.

Unfortunately, they don't have web streaming (sob!), but you can check out their TV spot (QuickTime required).

We're ten years older, I know we are

Happy tenth anniversary, sweetie. Here's to the next ten being even better.

It's Funny...But It's Not

Computers are good things, but they can be used for bad results. The ACLU gives you an example of aggregated personal information that is over the top, but still scary. See what could happen the next time you try ordering a pizza. Flash required. Via Paul Music.

Odd press release

I have to say that I've never seen a press release quite like this one before: Blue World announces employee theft has cost the company over $200,000. A few questions immediately come to mind: first, are they pressing charges? The statement makes it sound like the answer's no. If not, why not? And I have to say, if you're going to embezzle (which we, unsurprisingly, do not recommend) you should embezzle at least enough money to afford a really good defense lawyer. $200K isn't going to go that far.

Party tonight!

Just a reminder for the Bay Area folks: tonight's is Dan Lyke's party. I believe that everyone's welcome, so see you there?

MoveOn "Debate" Ad

Check out the excellent new "Debate" ad from MoveOn PAC (QuickTime format; other formats available from the MoveOn.org home page). If you like it, make a donation so that they can air the ad in battleground states.

What Wasn't a Lie?

OK, so we all know that Saddam was a brutal dictator, and I agree that his country is better off without him. It appears that he wasn't quite as horrible as he was made out to be, though; that was just another bit of propaganda by the Bush and Blair governments. We were told repeatedly that coalition forces had discovered 400,000 bodies in mass graves. That appeares to have been off by, oh, eighty times, as only 5,000 bodies have really been found. Kevin Drum has the story.

Second, and perhaps more important, is the question of whether Tony Blair (and apparently the U.S. government as well) flatly lied about this. This was not a case of intelligence estimates, after all, it was a categorical statement that 400,000 bodies had actually been found by actual troops digging up actual graves. How could he have been off by a factor of 80x?

Needless to say, this wouldn't matter if it were the only exaggeration surrounding the war. But it's not. There was no WMD, no collaboration with al-Qaeda, no 45-minute missiles, no mobile bioweapons labs, no regional military threat, and now it turns out that even the humanitarian case wasn't as clear cut as they suggested.

Is there anything left that these guys told the truth about?